Maud Newton

Mar 08

Vladimir Nabokov was a cat lover, or at least he doted on one, May Sarton’s, a tom named Tom Jones whom he renamed Tomski. According to Sarton, when the Nabokovs sublet her house and kept the cat one year:

Tom Jones soon learned that he was welcome to install himself at the very heart of genius on Nabokov’s chest, there to make starfish paws, purr ecstatically, and sometimes — rather painfully for the object of his pleasure — knead.

The Nabokovs became so attached to him that they later arranged for a reunion tea in a hotel suite. Unfortunately, the guest of honor spent the hour hiding under the sofa.

Another temporary charge, Bandit, “a Siamese cat with a milky stare who proved more difficult than Tom Jones,” also came with a rental and may have been at least part of the inspiration for Judge Goldsworth’s pet in Pale Fire. (Unfortunately, the only photo I know of that includes both Nabokov and Bandit is under copyright.)

But my favorite Nabokov cat story? His “diagram of the themes of Bleak House”:

“I want you to copy this exactly as I draw it,” Vladimir Nabokov instructed us…. He turned to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and scrawled “the theme of inheritance” in a weird arching loop. “The theme of generations” dipped and rose and dipped in an undulating line. “The theme of social consciousness” wiggled crazily toward the other lines, then veered sharply away.

Nabokov turned from the blackboard and peered over the rims of his glasses, parodying a professorial twinkle. “I want you to be sure to copy this exactly as I draw it.”

After consulting a piece of paper on the lectern, he turned back to the blackboard and scrawled “the theme of economic conditions” in a nearly vertical line. “The theme of poverty,” “the theme of political (the chalk snapped under the pressure, he picked up another piece and continued) protest,” “the theme of social environment” — all leaping and dipping wildly across the blackboard. Some people simply can’t draw a straight line.

Again he peered at us, over his shoulder and over his glasses, in silent reminder to copy this “exactly.”

And finally he scrawled the last “theme” in a neat dipping curve, a half-moon on its side, and we suddenly realized he had drawn a cat’s face, the last line its wry smile, and for the rest of the term that cat smiled out of our notebooks in mockery of the didactic approach to literature.

I can’t find his Bleak House lecture notes online, but above are some of his (much-linked) renderings of the insect Gregor Samsa becomes in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. And Fathom has collected his map of the action in Ulysses and his diagram of the “ladies’ sleeping car” Ana Karenina occupied. Many of his butterfly drawings are posted elsewhere.

I was surprised to learn that, once, when an interviewer said he wished it were possible to film scenes from the lives of dead writers, Nabokov enthusiastically agreed and wished for a clip of “Shakespeare in the part of the King’s ghost” and “Herman Melville at breakfast feeding a sardine to his cat.” (Less surprising: “Poe’s wedding” and “Lewis Carroll’s little picnics.”)