Constellation and Harmony in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Cloud, Castle, Lake”

SUZUKI Akira

Vladimir Nabokov’s “Cloud, Castle, Lake” (1937, 1941) was written in Russian during his stay in Marienbad, Sudetenland. After immigating to the United States, he chose it as the first short story to be translated into English for The Atlantic Monthly. What we can infer from the fact that, according to the impressive depiction of the landscape, it is characterised as to be frequently seen in “Central Europe,” is that all events occurring within the story are somewhat related to the author’s own experience. Nevertheless, the situation is thoroughly imagined, as the protagonist is forced to participate a tour group which might not be improbable in Germany during the 1930s owing to various programmes proposed by so-called Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude), so that it is obvious that the author constructed the story as a totally counterfactual artefact. Though we could read this story as an attempt to criticise totalitarianism, what seems to be more important than that is that individuals can have ideas of happiness and harmony, standing against the currently accepted value system. In order to fortify these ideas, the most effectual is thought to be aesthetic contemplation accomplished through a use of a pattern or constellation which is induced by some sort of combination of three elements.