Final Paper: Unconsciousness, Consciousness and Reality in Transparent Things

To be conscious is to plainly exist, yet be aware-- to be unconscious is the converse. Reality is neither; rather, it is the totality of actuality- the presence of truth, analyzation. In Transparent Things, Vladimir Nabokov dimly weaves readers through three measures of cerebral life via Hugh Person. Person, the narrator and Nabokov intertwine consciousness, unconsciousness and reality, leaving only vague recognition each is muddled together, yet all are transparently defined.
Hugh Person suffers from lack of sleep. Insomnia itself blurs the lines between an individual’s reality, consciousness and unconsciousness- the brain seeks to understand without having prior adequate maintenance: rest. The first clue to understanding his illness arises at the beginning of the novel. Readers learn that his “night is always a giant” (494) and he “hated [the] common grave of sleep” he had to share with his father in the hotel. Sleep seems the enemy, something Person has to fight because it convinces him to part with reality. In his unconscious state, even as a boy, “he had walked in his sleep many times” (500), which left him unsettled. His unconscious took over his consciousness, thusly turning the unforeseen into reality, which conflicted poor Hugh. His mind begged him to remain conscious because he “did not care to behave like a ghost” (501). Despite the fact that he is only conscious in the barest sense, reality does exist whilst he sleepwalks- something he cannot come to terms with.
[It is interesting to note that although Person had trouble bringing his unconscious dream-state into his reality at night, he had no trouble reversing the two. Person was quite fond of day-dreaming and did so through his writing and other situations, namely with women. After meeting Armade on the train he wrote his apparent conversation in a dreamy, illusory tone: “Ask me what I can do, not what I do, lovely girl, lovely wake of the sun through semitransparent black fabric” (506). He drifts into more unconscious day-dreaming during his reality of writing by claiming he told Armade he “can levitate one inch high and keep it up for ten seconds, but cannot climb an apple tree [and is] an all-around genius” (506-507).
Person again loses the reality of a situation in day-dream when he meets Julia, Armade and Percy at a sidewalk café. Interlaced between dialogue of the foursome’s conversation are the random inserts of Person’s observations and illusions. As Armade discusses linguistics, Person notes that, “Julia had grown even prettier,” and he wondered if he should “now see her in dreams,” followed by wonders of “how fast dreams catch up with new fashions” (519).
To Person, unconsciousness and reality are truly separate sects, yet can only be intertwined when it is on his own volition and reality is still in reach.]
To cope with his insomnia, Hugh found a way to blur the three cerebral states that conflict him nightly. Tennis was his sport of choice and “Hugh treasured his stroke mentally for years…its chief use had been a means of putting himself to sleep” (529). Because his dreams were the terrors that destroyed him in the night, he used what he loved to “slam his way through one game after another” (529) in dreams instead. This method was Hugh’s way to deal with the unconscious through his joyous reality. However, once marrying Armade, he “gave up that specific remedy for insomnia” (529), indicating a failure of utilizing means to manage his illness. The further into his marriage, the more the night unconsciousness plagued him. Although he “might vie with the best lunatics in regard to the recurrence of certain nightmare themes” (529), those “had nothing to do…with anything he had experienced in conscious life” (530).
Because Hugh was in a “quasi-insane” (527) state when he slept, he eventually managed to dream his own, as well as his lover’s, death. The dreams began surfacing as Person “trying to stop or divert a trickle of grain or fine gravel from a rift in the texture of space…finally blocked by masses of rubbish”- a feat he deemed “death” (530). After this dream, “he had not seen his analyst” (530), although prophesying he “might burn” (531). The clues to his nightmares in his reality went unnoticed.
One night, a bit un-routinely, Person was more than able to fall asleep, and, as per usual, dreamt a nightmare. This time, in his unconscious state, “it was explained to him that in strangling an adult one of two methods was commonly used” (544), as Person drifted further. However, immediately upon waking and returning to reality, “he wondered what his wife was doing there, prone on the floor…then he stared as his bashful claws” (545). Person’s prophesy of his unconscious state now blurred the lines of reality and dream, and he was a murderer.
As the novel intensifies, the already blurred “lines” of the conscious, unconscious and reality all begin to intersect sentence-by-sentence. Even in the beginning one can sense the blur. Upon arriving at resort, Hugh views a postcard in English that reads, “Lying Lawn,” and “a fraudulent perspective had enlarged the lawn to monstrous proportions” (490). To the unconscious person, the post card would have appeared ordinary, but the conscious Person is aware, creating the reality of the post card for the reader.
Another blur (or blend) occurs when Julia and Person have sex for the first and only time. Hugh’s New York flat happened to be Julia’s former boyfriend’s residence, which she uncomfortably noted. Yet, caught up in the unconscious intensity, Julia still managed to have sex with Person there; “no sooner, however, had the poking and panting run their customary course and more drink, than the image of bronzed and white-buttocked Jimmy Major again replaced bony reality” (512). Through Julia’s unconscious sexual motions, she allowed the reality of her past in Person’s flat to escape her, even though it was still very real. After the night was over, “she canceled their next assignation…and went off to Europe” (512), shamefully consumed by the reality of their brief affair.
Armade was another source of Person’s apparent blurring of his three states. Person’s revisit of Witt was sponsored by dead Armade’s appearance to him in his unconscious dreams “in the settings…of Swiss mountains and Italian lakes” (555). Her manifestations to him in America, while he dreamt, led him to seek her out in reality- in another country. Although conscious that she was dead and gone, Person could not resist her, confusing his own reality.
Armade is a creature of creating a ghastly version of reality for all involved, both death and alive. She haunts Person while she is dead- forcing him to question his state of mind, knowing it will drive him to his death. While alive, she chooses to belittle Hugh, imagining he is not a part of her more important day-to-day reality. By ignoring Person when he advises her sleep depravation with his method of “imagining skimming on skis down a very smooth slope” (540), Armade pretends he is not even apart of her life, implying that she is able to choose her own reality and what she wants to be conscious of. Within this spiteful choosing, Armade consciously pieces together her own version of the reality of their relationship.
The apparent narrator of the story creates an outside, more distracting reality for the reader. Chiming in like the reading of a screenplay, the narrator consistently reinforces that reality does not exist within the pages of Transparent Things because it is merely a story. Beginning on the first page, the narrator introduces the premise of the story and then says, “More in a moment” (489), as though its assistance is a guide for the reader. This assistance of the narrator begs the question of its purpose in the text; one reason being that it’s present to convey the reality that the story has been manufactured for entertainment in the reader’s life, and the other bringing attention to the reader’s unconscious, mindless indulgence in the ability to lose oneself in the story at hand.
Still, the presence of the narrator lingers on throughout- even extending ownership to readers. Without fail, the narrator calls Hugh Person “our Person” (mentioned on, but not limited to, pages 508 and 523), allowing readers to have a part, or share, in the novel. With this extension, readers drift in and out, mixing reality with tale and their own consciousness or perception of story happenings. The narrator subtlety directs readers through the journey that is the story, asking the audience to “let us illustrate our difficulties” (491), setting scenes like a play, “we now see a torn piece of La Stampa and an empty wine bottle” (512) in Hugh’s apartment, and by reminding us, as another scene-setter, that “we have to bring in focus the Main Street of Witt” (518) where Hugh walks. The more responsibility the narrator lends to the reader, the more the story manifests itself in the reader’s reality, without realization.
Lastly, the narrator attempts to intercept any confusion readers may experience. Upon discussing Mr. R’s book with him, Person assures Mr. R that his publisher “is waiting for [his] manuscript with utmost impatience,” but then is cut off by the narrator at, “by the way—” (509). The interception is meant as commentary to generate better understanding, but instead confuses readers more. The narrator believes “there ought to exist some rhetorical term for that twist of nonlogic” (509), clarifying that what Hugh and Mr. R are discussing is convoluted, and everything proceeding will probably be, too. The interruption only complicates reader’s consciousness while following on the journey, and begins to demonstrate mistrust for the narrator. It is within these passages that readers realize the narrator must be another character that has insight into Person’s conversations.
As if the narrator’s presence is not baffling enough for the subjects of reality, consciousness and unconsciousness, Nabokov himself provides a third perspective on the way readers should be reading his work. Being an enthusiast of the details within the parentheses, Nabokov uses the punctuation as a way to provide hints for further insight into his madness. The parentheses begin to take on a story of their own, paralleling the central theme of the story: transparency. The brackets signify reality- being the small, detailed ornaments of the larger story at hand. On page 490, describing the receptionist Hugh is speaking with, Nabokov uses the brackets to detail “(blond bun, pretty neck)”, then mentions, “Monsieur Kronig had left to become manager…of the Fantastic in Blur (or so it sounded)”, bringing Nabokovian reality to the conscious, yet fictional conversation of Hugh Person. The parenthesized, obsolete details shine through as light, as the definition of transparency resounds.
Nabokov also mocks his experiences in the publishing world by explaining Mr. R’s: “The question of the title-Tralatitions-,” he begins, “was another kettle of fish. Readers did not realize that two types of title existed. One type was the title found by the dumb author or the clever publisher after the book had been written” (538), he explains humorously, transparently drawing on his own experience and adding another layer of “reality”. However, “the other kind,” explains to conscious readers the reason for his use of Transparent Things, “the title that was born with the book, the title to which the author had grown so accustomed to during the years of accumulating the written pages that it had become part of each and all” (538). Suddenly the reality of Nabokov’s control becomes apparent to the unconscious audience, realizing Transparent Things had to go through all the stages of a writing process and publishing process to make it into the story it is.
Finally, Nabokov describes the way Hugh Person reads, as though imparting wisdom on the way to read, and not read, his work: “Hugh read with interest and concentration, but through the translucidity of the textual flow he still was correcting proof as some of us try to do” (541). Nabokov’s character’s reading process ridicules readers that ignore content and search for misprints. As Nabokov continues on, “[Person’s] eye and his spine (the true reader’s main organ) collaborat[ed] rather than occlud[ed] each other” (541), he implies that the readers he enjoys are those with “spines”—or courage, audacity and confidence. This implication brings yet another reality into the equation for unassuming and unconscious readers: to read and understand Nabokov is to have a spine.
Transparent Things is full of layers of reality, unconsciousness, consciousness and their intersections. Through Hugh Person, the narrator and Nabokov, the blending of the three create a transparency seemingly elusive at first, but intricately well-defined by the end. The involvement of the reader through the narrator and Nabokov gives the novel a level of unconscious involvement in the story’s reality, as well as the weaving of three states Hugh Person encounters throughout. Without the dedication of reality and consciousness and its opposite, obsolete detail would not be able to shine through as to the reader as light.