Vladimir Nabokov
EXILE*
The spiral is a spiritualized circle.
In
the spiral form the
circle, uncoiled, unwound, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set
free. I thought this up when I was a schoolboy, and I also discovered
that Hegel's triadic series expressed merely the essential spirality of
all things in their relation to time. Twirl follows twirl, and every
synthesis is the thesis of the next series.
If
we consider the simplest
spiral, three stages may be distinguished in it, corresponding to those
of the triad: we can call "thetic" the small curve or arc that ini–
tiates the convolution centrally; "antithetic" the larger arc that faces
the first in the process of continuing it; and "synthetic" the still
ampler arc that continues the second while following the first along
the outer side.
A colored spiral in a small ball of glass, this is how I see my own
life. The twenty years I spent in my native Russia ( 1899-1919)
take care of the thetic arc. Twenty-one years of voluntary exile in
England, Germany and France ( 191 9-1940) supply the obvious
antithesis. The decade I have already spent in my adopted country
(1940-1950), looks like the beginning of a synthetic envelopment.
For the moment I am concerned with my antithetic years and more
particularly with my life in continental Europe after I had graduated
from Cambridge in 1922.
As I look back at those years of exile, I see myself and thousands
of other Russians leading an odd but by no means unpleasani
existence, in material indigence and intellectual luxury, among per–
fectly unimportant strangers, spectral Germans and Frenchmen in
whose more or less illusory cities we
emigres
happened to dwell. These
*
This is a chapter from an autobiography,
Conclusive Evidence,
to
be
pub–
lished this winter by H arpers.
