Abstract

Nabokov's frequent and often elusive philosophical declarations, expressed in his fiction, autobiography, and discursive writings, are engaged in a direct dialogue with some of the most significant philosophical debates of his time. The most intriguing of these declarations, and one upon which criticism invariably stumbles, is his assertion that he is an "indivisible monist" who does not believe in the "split" between "mind" and "matter." His unconventional views also include his conviction that nature is based on magic and deception, and his intuitions about the designedness of the cosmos. ;My introduction reconstructs the intellectual climate that shaped Nabokov's declaration, showing how "monism" dominated philosophical discourse in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia, turn-of-the-century Cambridge University , and early twentieth-century European and American philosophy. Chapter 1 argues that Nabokov's "indivisible monism" closely resembles George Berkeley's immaterialist idealism, which Nabokov would have encountered in the works of Bergson and Lenin. Chapter 2 explores Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev's and his father's intuited metaphysics, and discusses their direct opposition to the materialist monism of Chernyshevski and his successors. In chapter 3, I argue that Nabokov wrote Invitation to a Beheading as an illustration and refutation of Chernyshevski's, Bogdanov's, and Lenin's theories of knowledge, which he encountered while drafting Fyodor's biography of Chemyshevski. Nabokov's metaphysics are examined in chapter 4, with a particular emphasis on Bend Sinister, "The Vane Sisters," Pale Fire, Ada, and Transparent Things. The levels of design in these novels, the complex relationships between space, time, and matter, and the tension between fate and free will reach their most complex form in Ada, which is discussed in terms of its hidden Berkeleian subtext. The final chapter addresses the tension between subjectivity and truth, and the subtle union between philosophical realism and idealism in Nabokov's epistemology. ;The fundamental premise of my thesis resides in Nabokov's rejection of "matter" in its traditional Cartesian conception. Though controversial, it provides a coherent and convincing way of reconciling Nabokov's metaphysical and epistemological statements, and a more philosophically rigorous way of approaching texts where philosophical ideas play a formative role