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Sueños de un insomne: Experimentos con el tiempo
El 14 de octubre de 1964, Vladimir Nabokov, un insomne crónico, comenzó un curioso experimento. Durante los días siguientes, justo al despertar, anotó sus sueños siguiendo las instrucciones que encontró en Un experimento con el tiempo, del filósofo británico John Dunne. El objetivo era probar la teoría de que el tiempo puede discurrir también hacia atrás, de modo que, paradójicamente, un acontecimiento futuro puede generar un sueño anterior. El resultado –publicado aquí por primera vez– es un diario fascinante en el que Nabokov registró sesenta y cuatro sueños (y los subsiguientes episodios diurnos) en 118 tarjetas, que ofrecen una visión singular del artista en su ámbito más privado. Más allá de una mera anécdota biográfica, este experimento avivó el apasionado interés del autor por el misterio del tiempo, concepto que influyó en numerosas de sus novelas, incluida la obra maestra Ada o el ardor.
216 pages, Paperback
Published September 5, 2019
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About the author
Vladimir Nabokov
893 books15k followersVladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up trilingual, speaking Russian, English, and French in a household that nurtured his intellectual curiosities, including a lifelong passion for butterflies. This seemingly idyllic, privileged existence was abruptly shattered by the Bolshevik Revolution, which forced the family into permanent exile in 1919. This early, profound experience of displacement and the loss of a homeland became a central, enduring theme in his subsequent work, fueling his exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irretrievable past.
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
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April 6, 2021
Siempre es bien venido un nuevo libro de escritos de uno de los novelistas mas inteligentes del siglo XX, muy comparable en su altura literaria a figuras como Borges, Joyce, Proust. En este libro se reúnen un conjunto de 60 sueños que constituyeron el experimento al que durante unos meses, a partir de 1965, se sometió Nabokov, siguiendo el "Un experimento con el tiempo" de Dunne (obra admirada por Wells y Borges): tomar nota literal de los sueños tenidos, con todo detalle, para demostrar que no solo el pasado, sino el futuro, es reavivado en los sueños. Lo cual demostraría que el Tiempo no fluye únicamente del pasado al futuro, y daría otro sentido al presente.
Los sueños son realmente poco estimulantes. De alguna manera, se siente el peso de la observación en Nabokov, el sofocar toda imaginación para dar cuenta de una ensoóñnaci que se queda en algo muchas veces burdo o demasiado sobrio (en especial, los sueños eróticos, marcados como tales y nunca explicitados). El libro se acompaña de una docena más de sueños, tomados de su diario, en el que esto que he señalado no ocurre. Y finalmente, de una antología de sueños tomados de obras de Nabokov, siguiendo la clasificación que él hizo para el propósito del experimento.
Un ensayo sobre la relación de Nabokov y el tiempo cierra este breve y exhaustivo volumen que nos deja al borde de revisitar las últimas novelas de Nabokov (Ada, Cosas trasparentes, Mira los Arlequines, novelas que siguen al experimento y que fraguan todo lo que Nabokov buscaba en él); así como releer sus novelas mayores: La dávida, Sebastian Knight y Pálido fuego.
Por cierto, el libro me ha recordado la edición de las Epifanías (y sueños) de Joyce, preparada por Richard Ellman. Aunque reconozco que el libro de Joyce me resultó más estimulante.
Los sueños son realmente poco estimulantes. De alguna manera, se siente el peso de la observación en Nabokov, el sofocar toda imaginación para dar cuenta de una ensoóñnaci que se queda en algo muchas veces burdo o demasiado sobrio (en especial, los sueños eróticos, marcados como tales y nunca explicitados). El libro se acompaña de una docena más de sueños, tomados de su diario, en el que esto que he señalado no ocurre. Y finalmente, de una antología de sueños tomados de obras de Nabokov, siguiendo la clasificación que él hizo para el propósito del experimento.
Un ensayo sobre la relación de Nabokov y el tiempo cierra este breve y exhaustivo volumen que nos deja al borde de revisitar las últimas novelas de Nabokov (Ada, Cosas trasparentes, Mira los Arlequines, novelas que siguen al experimento y que fraguan todo lo que Nabokov buscaba en él); así como releer sus novelas mayores: La dávida, Sebastian Knight y Pálido fuego.
Por cierto, el libro me ha recordado la edición de las Epifanías (y sueños) de Joyce, preparada por Richard Ellman. Aunque reconozco que el libro de Joyce me resultó más estimulante.
Displaying 1 of 1 review