Two Faces of Paradise – Pornography in Theory, Pornography in Nabokov’s Texts Cover Image

Dva lica raja – pornografija u teoriji, pornografija kod Nabokova
Two Faces of Paradise – Pornography in Theory, Pornography in Nabokov’s Texts

Author(s): Zsuzsa Hetényi
Subject(s): Aesthetics, Russian Literature, Culture and social structure , Sociology of Culture, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Art
Published by: Hrvatsko filološko društvo
Keywords: Nabokov; Lolita; pornography; subculture; body; aesthetisation; mythologisation;

Summary/Abstract: Pornography is still hard to define in terms of aesthetics or philosophy. Unlike traditional discussions of Nabokov’s oeuvre which focus on the author’s intention, on the interpreter (subject), or on the message (object), the paper focuses on the interstitial space among these three categories. This space of artistic transmissions is created with codes and can be read with or without them. The first code is that of the “learned” reception, in which distance towards the work is the result of conscious engagement. The other code concerns the consumer who understands art as a copy of life, which, in turn, enables manipulation. Hence, when defining pornography what needs to be taken into consideration is not the artistic vs. the vulgar, or the division between high and low art (subculture), but rather the negligence of the two codes. With this in mind, the paper discusses the ways in which Nabokov helps the reader discover this double-entendre in his text, and how he introduces other motifs to destroy and eliminate pornographic stereotypes that, as a consequence, become vehicles of irony and parody in the text. The three distancing mechanisms are identified as aesthetisation, mythologisation and a double-bind concept of the erotic, which are counterbalanced by the imagery of the motifs of death. This “ero-smert” in Nabokov (a coinage of Eros and Russian smert meaning death) is accompanied by “corpsification”, i.e. when the body is visualized as a corpse. This ambivalence is a version of the complex image of the writer, a special aspect of his notion of the “otherworld”.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 53-64
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Croatian