A Nightmare is a Mare at Night.

Bend Sinister is a variation of the nightmare we see in Invitation to a Beheading. The nightmare is deep in Nabokov: the mass, the people, the Average Man controlling the genius, the great mind, the Author. The prose style is much akin to Joyceʼs Ulysses and there is a confirmation of this influence on the theme of Hamlet and Telemachus (Vintage International Edition, p. 115). The “good” protagonist versus de “evil” protagonist in a world gone absurd. There is an example of pedophilia (p. 71), two words that define Nabokovʼs novels with his repellent protagonists (“repellent perfection”, p. 69), “devices which in some curious new way imitate nature” that “are attractive to simple minds” (p. 69), a reference to the Droeshout Portrait in the First Folio (“Who is he? William X, cunningly composed of two left arms and a mask,” p. 106), the first authorial commentary on the magic of consciousness that from now on will be Nabokovʼs cliché, death as “a question of style” (p. 241), and this Nabokovian joke:

“But, my dear fellow … I or any other plain citizen can and must sit still, but you cannot. You are one of the very few celebrities our country has produced in modern times, and—”

“Who are the other stars of this mysterious constellation?” queried Krug, crossing his legs and inserting a comfortable hand between thigh and knee.

“All right: the only one” (p. 90).

Bend Sinister is dark, full of pain and suffering and a nightmare (which is a mare at night but different, to imitate the puns the Author plays with here). To write about the son of Krug being tortured and killed should be explained as the most deep nightmare of the Author. At the end, Nabokov (he himself) addresses his audience and tells it (paraphrased): Admire my fertile consciousness, the magic of it, its wonder! The novel does not achieve that at all. It is a fertile comparison to see here Joyceʼs “Book of the Dark” (Finnegans Wake) to learn how a nightmare can be made art, and how a funeral can be fun to read. Next time Nabokov would get a better try at dark fun: with Lolita.