Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents: Vladimir Nabokov and Victor Pelevin’s The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

Abstract

For the Russian postmodernists of 1990s–2000s, Nabokov was per-haps the most influential author among those whose works were “repatriated” to post-Soviet Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nabokov became a symbol of writerly success as someone who had won recognition both in Russia and the USA and had succeeded as an author in both languages. Moreover, one of his languages, English, was growing in popularity among post-Soviet Russians, who yearned for their country to reenter the international arena. For Victor Pelevin, who strives for acknowledgment in Russia and abroad, Nabokov became a role model. As one of the most prominent representatives of Russian Postmodernism, Pelevin could not but engage with the Western discourses that inspired it. In post-Soviet Russia, psychoanalysis was one of those discourses, enjoying renewed popularity because of the information explosion of the 1990s. However, for Pelevin, Freud’s theories cannot exist outside the context of Nabokov’s aggression, nor can they exist outside the Postmodern refutation of authoritarian metanarratives. That is why Pelevin’s characteristic attempt in The Sacred Book of the Werewolf to embody a given Western theory in literature acquires Nabokovian undertones. This article looks at the novel as the materialization of certain psychoanalytic concepts with reference to Nabokov's interpretation of these concepts as limiting for both the creative process and one’s personal life. It also considers Pelevin’s signature proto-Buddhist themes. The Nabokovian context presents itself mainly in the form of references to Lolita. The Buddhist subtext turns the novel into a characteristically Pelevinian soteriological fable with social commentary.