William Shakespeare is often held as the paragon of literature, and he may well be, but in my view Vladimir Nabokov deserves a seat at that table. Indeed, Shakespeare’s influence is felt throughout The Tragedy of Mr. Morn, a Nabokov play written in verse.
Before I begin, though, I should note the peculiarity of this text. I’m a Nabokov enthusiast and have read all of his published novels, and when I stumbled across The Tragedy of Mr. Morn in the bookstore, I was taken aback—I’d never heard of this work. As a historical note, this play was written in 1923 or 1924 and was unpublished during Nabokov’s life, only resurfacing in 1997 in a Russian literary journal. This translated English edition is as recent as 2013 and is touted as Nabokov’s only completed play. I would put a bit of an asterisk on that, though, because a few passages in Act V with missing lines, so it’s maybe the only “basically complete” play Nabokov wrote. In any case, it was a surprising find.
The Tragedy of Mr. Morn is set across the backdrop of a revolution. The play is surprisingly conservative in nature in that there’s a king who is depicted as doing a generally good job of keeping the population happy—and his identity is a secret to all, never to be unmasked. Even the revolutionaries recognize it:
For the sorrows of my heart, for the tears
of my Midia, I will never forgive the King.
But, consider: while we were declaiming
grand words—on the oppressed, on poverty
and the suffering of the people—the King
himself was already acting in our stead. (16)
Meanwhile, there’s a group of revolutionaries that form the central cast, introducing us first to Tremens, an elderly revolutionary seemingly on the verge of a death that won’t arrive. The play begins with him waxing poetic on the glory of destruction, a longing for collapse. Tremens has remained free while his revolutionary comrades have been sent into exile. That is, until one of his champions, Ganus, returns in secret.
Like Shakespeare, Nabokov employs iambic pentameter to weave together multiple threads within a five-act structure. Nabokov also draws directly from Othello—required to return home in secret, Ganus, with the help of Ella, is disguised as the titular character. Some characters parrot lines directly from Shakespeare’s work, and certainly there’s a thematic connection: when Ganus enters (as Othello), he finds his wife Midia hosting a party and openly gallivanting with Mr. Morn. There’s a great tension to the scene where Midia is entertaining her guests and everyone is getting the hint to leave and Ganus is being wilfully obtuse to try to outlast Mr. Morn so that he can reveal himself. It’s awkward. It’s painful to watch.
From there, Morn and Ganus commit to a duel without Midia’s knowledge. Tremens is stacking the deck, so to speak, and being an agent of chaos. I’m not entirely clear on the specifics of his plan, but I think he has a lust for destruction in general. Unfortunately, Morn is the secret king that everyone loves and his death will lead to the dissolution of the joy everyone is feeling. Such is the central tension of the play.
Nabokov’s use of language is of course playful and inventive, though clearly in its infancy here. The translators’ introduction offers insight into the distinct oddities of the characters’ speech mannerisms, which I would not have picked up on. They also speak to the challenges of transliteration, and offer a really cool insight into the process. They discuss Nabokov’s own commentary on the practice of translation and the models he himself created for Pushkin. It was fascinating to me to hear about this as a common practice: translators using authors’ translations of others’ works as models for their own translation practices.
Within Nabokov’s verse, there are some lines that stand out as quotable aphorisms. Tell me this wouldn’t be in place in a Hamlet or Macbeth soliloquy:
What are passions?
Mistakes in translation. What is love?
A rhyme lost in transmission to our discordant
language. (84).
Nabokov’s concern with how language frames our experience emerges clearly. Feelings become translations and rhymes. There’s a mournful quality here, too, that feels to me like Hamlet’s quintessence of dust or Macbeth’s sound and fury signifying nothing.
There’s a troubled connection between joy and sorrow—creation and destruction. Tremens explores the ecstasy of death and destruction. Klian, Ella’s fiancé, gives voice to these tensions in the final stage of the play:
That’s where the horror lies—
not in death, no,—but in the fact that some
sort of whimpering feeling has inhabited
my blood, a mixture of untold jealousy
and shunned desire, and such tenderness
that all sunsets are but puddles of paint
beside it—such is my tenderness! (119-120)
The horror of a “whimpering feeling” and “shunned desire” points to a sensibility guided by joy and happiness, but within that there is an “untold jealousy.” I also like the idea of sunsets being puddles of paint beside Klian’s tenderness. All the same, there’s a conflicted tension between this tenderness and horror.
Before I conclude, I wanted to comment on just one more image from the play. Nabokov always has a knack for a surprising, evocative image and early on Ella tells Ganus that Midia “told [his] fortune by looking at the moon through a glass of wine” (13). Just stunning.
Overall, I can’t say that The Tragedy of Mr. Morn is in my top 5 Nabokov books. Even in the top 10. I’m really glad, though, that I was able to come across a “new” work by one of my old favourites. The play serves as a really interesting entry into Nabokov’s oeuvre that shows an emerging great before he hit his stride.
Happy reading!
Curtain.
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