Two Death Notices
Dreamed 1939/6/9 and Oct. 1945 by Vladimir Nabokov, as translated by Gennady Barabtarlo
The Death of Khodasevich
In 1939 Nabokov writes to his wife (from London to Paris):
"This morning I was awoken by an unusually vivid dream: Il'usha (I think it was he) walks in and says that he has been informed by phone call that Khodasevich* has 'ended his earthly existence'--word for word."This was written on June 9; Khodasevich died on the 14th, and even though he had been ill for some time and in a hospital since late May, there was no indication of a rapidly approaching end until the surgery four days after Nabokov had seen him in that dream, hundreds of miles away.
*Vladislav Khodasevich, a Russian poet and friend of Nabokov...
The News of Sergey's Death
On December 8, 1945, he writes to Mark Aldanov, a fellow writer and friend, concerning his brother Sergey: ". . . Just before I received word that he perished**, I had seen him in a terrible dream, lying on the bunk and gasping for air, convulsing in agony." Twenty years later Nabokov would ponder the exciting possibility that time could turn itself inside-out--that the October 1945 letter from his sister, telling him of their brother's death, informed his preceding dream, rather than the more common explanation of the dream forestalling the terrible news.
**In January 1945, in Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg...
SOURCE: Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov (2018), compiled, edited & with commentaries by Gennady Barabtarlo; pp.26-27.
Implications
Sergey died in January 1945, well before Vladimir's dream in October. Barabtarlo is arguing that the dream isn't a reaction to Sergey's death but to the news of it that came soon after. Not clairvoyance about current events but a 'memory' of a future personal shock--a theory proposed by JW Dunne in An Experiment with Time, which Nabokov admired so much he tried to replicate Dunne's dream-experiments.
Dunne himself recounted a similar event--he dreamt that Mt Pelee on Martinique erupted, killing 3000 in St. Pierre at its foot. News soon came confirming this--except a crucial detail. When the paper came, the headline said, correctly, 30000, but in his shock he misread it as 3000! Dunne concluded he'd dreamed not of a remote event in realtime, but of seeing the future headline--including his miscount of the zeroes. He concluded that if you allow ESP of some sort, don't confuse clairvoyance (seeing current events from afar) with foreseeing news coverage. Equally fascinating, but different processes; and easy to mistake in a news-saturated world.
Nabokov's dream, like Dunne's, hints that one's direct personal future may be easier to access than even vital current events--if they're remote. Vladimir didn't dream Sergey died when he actually did, but just before the news would reach Vladimir; just before his personal shock. As if Hamburg, where his brother died, was harder for his dreams to reach than next week.
--Chris Wayan
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