VLADIMIR NABOKOV
347
quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off com–
pletely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the
rest of his bulk, flimmered
[flicker
+
shimmer]
helplessly before his
eyes.
"What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. " .
"Gregor's eyes turned next to the window-one could hear rain
drops beating on the tin of the windowsill's outer edge and the dull
weather made him quite melancholy. What about sleeping a little
longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be
done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his
present condition he cou ld not turn himself over. However violently he
tried to hurl himself on his right side he always swung back to the
supine position. He tried it at least a hundred times , shutting his eyes·
to
keep from seeing his wriggly legs, and only desisted when he began
to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never experienced before.
"Ach Gott, he thought, what an exhausting job I've picked on!
Traveling about day in, day out. Many more anxieties on the road than
in the office, the plague of worrying about train connections, the bad
and irregular meals, casual acquaintances never to be seen again, never
to become intimate friends. The hell with it all! He felt a slight itching
on the skin of his belly; slowly pushed himself on his back nearer the
top of the bed so that he cou ld lift his head more easily; identified the
itching place which was covered with small white dots the nature of
which he could not understand and tried to touch it with a leg, but
drew the leg back immediately, for the contact made a cold shiver run
through him. "
Now what exactly is the "vermin" into which poor Gregor, the
seedy commercial traveler, is so suddenly transformed?
It
obviously
belongs to the branch of "jointed leggers"
(Arthropoda),
to which
insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong.
If
the
"numerous little legs" mentioned in the beginning mean more than
six legs, then Gregor would not
be
an insect from a zoological point of
view. But I suggest that a man awakening on his back and finding he
has as many as six legs vibrating in the air might feel that six was
sufficient to be called numerous. We shall therefore assume that Gregor
has six legs, that he is an insect.
·VN's note in his annotated copy: "A regular bee tle has no eyelids and cannot close its
eyes-a beetle with human eyes. " About the passage in genera l he has the note: "In the
original German there is a wonderful flowing rhythm here in this dreamy sequence of
sentences. He is half-awake-he rea lizes his plight without surprise, with a childish
acceptance of it, and at the same time he still clings to human memories, human
experience. The metamorphosis is not quite complete as yel.· ' Ed.
