..............................For Courage
Inscription on the coat of arms of the Nabokov family
We do not know whose hand it is that holds the sword in the light of the shining stars in the poem Gerb (The Blazon), just as the one who holds a curved sword depicted in the coat of arms of the Nabokov family remains invisible for us. It is probably the timeless element which impersonates the timeless Valour and Glory, as in Fyodor Tyutchev’s poem that might have inspired Nabokov:
Nebesnyi svod, goriashchii slavoi zvezdnoi,
Tainstvenno gliadit iz glubiny,
I my plyviom, pylaiushcheiu bezdnoi
So vsekh storon okruzheny.
(“Kak okean ob’emlet shar zemnoi…” 1830)
The firmament, burning with stellar glory,
Mysteriously looks out from the deep,
And we sail, by the flaming abyss
Surrounded on every side…
(“As the Ocean Encircles the Globe…”)
Slava and Podvig (Fame and Glory in English, respectively) are the titles of Nabokov’s poem and novel. The coat of arms has turned not just into the blazon of exile, but also into a symbol of a spiritual battle for the Word against Its enemies: “I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth” (Rev.2:16).
Was it not the author himself who has stretched this flashing sword down from the bright bottomless sky? “We are the caterpillars of angels” (1923) – was his inspired, if casual, remark in one of his early poems.
“A sword of diamond” is the sword ornamented with celestial stones: “Do not lay up treasures on earth… but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Ìtt.6: 19-20).
“The briny dark” is a name for afflictions and tribulations, and perhaps an allusion to the status of the elected: “You are the salt of the earth” (Ìtt.5: 13).
We cannot insist that there are direct links between the Nabokov poem and the heraldic image, but the symbol of a pulsating sword, chastening or creative, cuts, as it were, through the thin veil between dream and waking life which meet in a point that Nabokov calls tochka iskusstva (“the point of art”) in Drugie berega (in Speak, Memory, 8:3, he speaks of a point that is “intrinsically artistic”).
The Nabokovian. Number 54. Spring 2005