The Visit to the Museum by Vladimir Nabokov

 


If you had the misfortune of living a portion of your life in a nightmarish world, perhaps in a certain city or country, or a particular work situation, or, as a child, subjected to physical or emotional abuse, you will have, based on your direct experience, a deeper appreciation for Vladimir Nabokov's The Visit to the Museum.

Right at the outset, the narrator tells us he doesn't like being a party to someone else's affairs. Thus, he makes an inner resolution not to heed a friend's request to investigate a portrait in a museum during his travels to a particular French city.

However, once in the city, so as not to get caught in a violent downpour, the narrator discovers he's on the steps of the city's museum. Detecting the rain is not about to let up, he enters reluctantly, and underscore reluctantly, since he finds even the very notion of sightseeing loathsome. "I paid my franc and, trying not to look at some statues at the entrance (which were as traditional and as insignificant as the first number in a circus program), I entered the main hall." Since Nabokov supremely valued privacy and abhorred public events and exhibits, we can better appreciate his likening the museum's statues to a circus act.

The narrator is not given the opportunity to view the museum on his own; rather, the museum's old custodian with his vinegarish breath shadows him. Again, anybody who values their privacy would find such shadowing odious. However, there is a high point: strolling the museum, passing displays such as a sarcophagus, the narrator actually discovers the portrait mentioned by his friend. True, the portrait is both vile and conventional, but, as the narrator reports, "Frankly I enjoyed the thought that the portrait existed. It is fun to be present at the coming true of a dream, even if it is not one's own."

Considering the violent downpour, an odious shadowing, and an exhibition of dreadful art works preceding his coming upon the portrait, the fact the narrator (who physically resembles Nabokov himself) employs the terms "enjoy" and "fun" to describe his experience adds to the nightmarish quality of the story. As readers, we can can imagine Nabokov's hair standing on end as he depicts the clownish reaction of his narrator.

When asked the price of the portrait, the old custodian tells him that the art is the pride of the city and pride is not for sale. This prompts the narrator to leave the building and speak with the museum's director, a Mr. M. Godard, who turns out to be completely bizarre - he licks his chops like a Russian Wolfhound, throws a sealed letter in a wastebasket and forces caramels into the narrator's hand as they both return to the museum together to investigate the portrait. Again, the narrator permits himself to be whisked along despite these wacky happenings.

Both he and the director enter the building. "All was not well at the museum. From within issued rowdy cries, lewd laughter, and even what seemed like the sound of a scuffle." Indeed, rowdy, lewd, a scuffle - only the beginning. At each step, the narrator encounters an ever deepening nightmare.

A prudent man of refined sensibilities would exit immediately, but the narrator continues on. Why? Perhaps Nabokov is telling us a nightmare of this sort can only unfold if one is fast asleep. Here's an example of the depth of the museum's darkness and horror: "Racing up a staircase, we saw, from the gallery above, a crowd of gray-haired people with umbrellas examining a gigantic mock-up of the universe." Appalling to be sure, with a hint of surrealism from Rene Magritte.

At a certain deep, dark point, the narrator is given some light and a breath of fresh air: "I advanced, and immediately a joyous and unmistakable sensation of reality at last replaced all the unreal trash amid which I had just been dashing to and fro."

The narrator sees the swirl of rooms and hallways of unending exhibits end and settle into a stone sidewalk under a thin layer of slushy snow on a foggy city street . But, but, but . . . after a few moments, the narrator has the shock of recognition: he understands what city and what time - to his horror, he's standing on a snow-covered street in Soviet Russia.

What to make of this story? Perhaps we can view the museum as a collection of our bad memories forming disturbing exhibits we're forced to visit each night in sleep. And if our memories are not only bad but horrific, perhaps we are compelled to travel down unending passageways crammed with hideous exhibits, feeling the press of rowdy crowds, forever terrified as the hallways and corridors twist and turn without end.

And even if the hallways end and we stand on a real street in a real city under a real sky, that's only the beginning. We are face-to-face with our past, forced to undergo unspeakable ordeals and humiliations, required to expend much effort to achieve even the first step in extracting ourselves.