Contributed by Renata Goroshkova, St. Petersburg State University, Russia. Read Renata’s post on the reception of Dickens’s Christmas stories in Russia here.

While Charles Dickens often turned to topics of charity and justice for the underprivileged in his novels, stories and articles, the prose of Vladimir Nabokov appears completely different. V. Erofeev argues that the Russian man brought up on the books of Dostoevsky (who, we can add, borrowed much from Dickens), while reading Nabokov’s works, always seems to be twisted around Nabokov’s little finger (6). However, in his lectures, Nabokov showed his admiration for Dickens: ‘If it were possible I would like to devote the fifty minutes of every class meeting to mute meditation, concentration, and admiration of Dickens’ (63). Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine that Nabokov’s somewhat arrogant prose can find inspiration from the humanist-Dickens. It seems the writers are united only by the fact that they both possessed excellent stylistic devices and often covered the topic of children in their works (even though the problems of childhood in Oliver Twist or Little Dorrit are revealed in different ways from those in Mary or Lolita).

With a closer reading of Nabokov’s texts, it is possible to discover direct references to Dickens and an interweaving of plots and ideas between the two authors. No doubt a more profound academic analysis of the links between Nabokov and Dickens is needed, but whilst simply enjoying the prose of both authors, we can notice several interesting things. For instance, let’s look at two stories: Dickens’s ‘Going into Society’ (1858), included in A House To Let (published as a collaborative, interwoven set of short stories from four authors, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter in the extra Christmas number of Household Words), and Nabokov’s ‘The Potato Elf’ (1929), included in the collection of stories Vozvrashchenie Chorba (this book was first written in Russian, but later translated into English by Nabokov himself). The image of the dwarf Fred, and many details of his life and sufferings, have been borrowed from Dickens’s dwarf character Chops. In both stories, the main hero is a little man. ‘Little’ in all senses: because of his growth and because he is humiliated and pitiful, but still deserving of love and sympathy. In Dickens’s story we can find ‘The kindest little man as never growed! Spirited, but not proud’ (18). Nabokov’s potato elf is described in much the same way: ‘He differed from most dwarfs in being of a mild and friendly nature’ (250).

 Both ‘little men’ live in similar environments. Each of them lives in their own little world, and the worlds of the bigger men (that is, society and its cruel laws) do not see them. In Dickens’s story we are told ‘The curse of my position towards the Public is, that it keeps me out of Society’ (19), and in Nabokov’s story that:

The world was invisible to him. There remained in his memory the same faceless abyss laughing at him, and afterwards, when the performance was over, the soft, dreamy echo of a cool night that seems of such a deep blue when you leave the theatre. (251)

Both heroes are not bad circus performers, they receive a good salary, and they are similar in their relationships with women: Mr Chops ‘was always in love with a large woman’ (19), whereas Fred hates female dwarfs and is in love with Nora who was ‘a tall lady’ (265). Both heroes fail in their love. In ‘Going into Society’ we find:

He did allow himself to break out into strong language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an affair of the ‘art; and when a man’s ‘art has been trifled with by a lady, and the preference giv to a Indian, he ain’t master of his actions. (18)

Nabokov’s dwarf, being sensitive to the misfortunes of others, understands that Nora is unhappy with her husband, and wants to rescue her. He feels like Nora’s knight, but she refuses him: ‘All this, I am afraid, is an awful misunderstanding’ (264).

The culmination of both stories is the meeting of the heroes with what was desired, but inaccessible before. The Dickensian dwarf gets the attention of society and women, while Nabokov’s dwarf thinks that he finally has found his love. But in both cases, the little men are first grieved and humiliated, followed by an awareness of their own naivety and disappointment in what had seemed so necessary. Mr Chops realizes that society is only interested in money, and Fred also suffers a complete fiasco in his life and love. And, perhaps, finally, we understand one more of Fred’s partner Shock’s jokes, as he ‘appeared with a little creature all screwed up in his arms’ (232), predicting how the story will evolve. Shock, like the narrator, always designs the situation and manipulates other characters, ‘as he was always engaged in imagining secret devices for his show, always appeared unreal and shifty’ (231). As is so often the case, the narrator is a conjurer, who ‘talked little about himself, and was still unknown’ (232), being ‘a mirage, a peripatetic legerdemain of a man, a deception of all five senses’ (232), and the reader, like Nora, ‘could not get used to his demonstrating his art every minute, in all circumstances’ (232). Daniel Tyler argues that Dickens’s stories ‘become subtle investigations into the process of reading fiction, into the apparent paradox of a believable story’ (99). Like Dickens, who, according to Tyler, ‘raises the conjecture that the whole story may itself have been a vision’ (106), Nabokov reveals the secrets of the narrative and demonstrates how storytelling itself works.

The Dickensian dwarf wants to be like other people, but learns that the differences aren’t quite as stark as they seem. He claims that:

Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs… Fat Ladies that don’t exhibit for so much down upon the drum, will come from all the pints of the compass to dock about you, whatever you are. … And when you’ve no more left to give, they’ll laugh at you to your face … (21)

Fred Dobson, who loved Nora for so long, in the end seems disappointed in his former feelings: ‘He had ceased thinking of her so long ago that now he felt nothing except sadness and surprise’ (266).

Nabokov did not hide the fact that his story about Fred was borrowed from Dickens. As well as the shape of the story, this is indicated, for example, by the fact that Nora’s name is so consonant with the city of Norfolk, where the fat lady lived. The surname of Fred Dobson, who also loses his son, could be an allusion to the novel where another son dies at an early age – Dombey and Son. The name of Fred’s magician partner, Shock, has an assonance with the surname of Mr Chops. Both dwarfs have ‘a poetic mind’ and play musical instruments. Mr Chops’s ideas ‘never come upon him so strong as when he sat upon a barrel-organ, and had the handle turned’ (19), whereas Fred has ‘the little pianola on which the dwarf occasionally played wobbly waltzes’ (265). The combination of words ‘wobbly waltzes’ also resembles the style devices used by Dickens, heard when describing the quality of dwarf’s voice as ‘a castrato-like silvery voice’ (251). Like the Dickens story, the events of ‘The Potato Elf’ occur in England: Conjurer Shock, returning to his wife who has betrayed him, describes how ‘Those pigeons, you know, went flying around the queen. She shoo-flied them but kept smiling out of politeness’ (261). Another similarity is seen at the moment Fred wants to confess his love of Nora to Shock. Shock interrupts him by narrating details of his travel to India, a reference perhaps to the Indian from Dickens’s story whom the fat lady preferred over the dwarf.

Nabokov managed to convey not only a similar plot to the Dickensian story about the dwarf, but he, like Dickens, was also able to show the dramatic nature of the life of people who are different and not able to survive in a world of stereotypes, or a society where a childishly pure heart is met with cruelty. Both Dickens’s and Nabokov’s stories touch readers’ souls. But if Dickens sent his dwarf ‘into a much better Society’ (22), Nabokov left his dwarf in a world where ‘all around people noisily swarmed’ (247); it is not clear whether Fred Dobson dies, though we can be sure of the death of his eight-year-old son, who has appeared unexpectedly in the narrative. Ultimately his destiny is unknown to the reader. A short story often goes unnoticed and, like these two characters, seeks to be bigger and become a novel, fitting eight years of a protagonist’s life into one limited narrative. The dwarfs’ stories show that it is an impossible task, but each story pushes us to consider the unconventional with new eyes.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Household Words Christmas Stories, 1851-1858. London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1858.

—. Little Dorrit. New York: Sheba Blake Publishing, 2015.

—. Oliver Twist. London: Collector’s Library, 2003.

Erofeev, Victor. Nabokov in Search of Lost Paradise // Nabokov V. Drugie Berega (Other Shores), 1991. (In Russian)

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. 1st American Edition. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.

—. Lectures on Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. San Diego: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

—. Lolita. London: Penguin UK, 2012.

—. Mary. London: Penguin UK, 2012.

Tyler, Daniel. ‘Spectres of Style.’ Dickens’s Style. Ed. Daniel Tyler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.