Vladimir Nabokov’s Lecture on “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is

discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain

unkindled. “To take upon us the mystery of things”—what King Lear so wistfully says

for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art

seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol’s “The Greatcoat,” or more

correctly “The Carrick”); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka’s “The

Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to “so what.” We can take the

story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the

other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in

answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is

the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the

simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter,

the world dies with the individual. If Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” strikes anyone as

something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined

the ranks of good and great readers.

I want to discuss fantasy and reality, and their mutual relationship. If we consider the

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” story as an allegory—the struggle between Good and Evil

within every man—then this allegory is tasteless and childish. To the type of mind that

would see an allegory here, its shadow play would also postulate physical happenings

which common sense knows to be impossible; but actually in the setting of the story, as

viewed by a commonsensical mind, nothing at first sight seems to run counter to general

human experience. I want to suggest, however, that a second look shows that the setting

of the story does run counter to general human experience, and that Utterson and the

other men around Jekyll are, in a sense, as fantastic as Mr. Hyde. Unless we see them in

a fantastic light, there is no enchantment. And if the enchanter leaves and the storyteller

and the teacher remain alone together, they make poor company.

The story of Jekyll and Hyde is beautifully constructed, but it is an old one. Its moral is

preposterous since neither good nor evil is actually depicted: on the whole, they are taken

for granted, and the struggle goes on between two empty outlines. The enchantment lies

in the art of Stevenson’s fancywork; but I want to suggest that since art and thought,

manner and matter, are inseparable, there must be something of the same kind about the

structure of the story, too. Let us be cautious, however. I still think that there is a flaw in

the artistic realization of the story—if we consider form and content separately—a flaw

which is missing in Gogol’s “The Carrick” and in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” The

fantastic side of the setting—Utterson, Enfield, Poole, Lanyon, and their London—is not

of the same quality as the fantastic side of Jekyll’s hydization. There is a crack in the

picture, a lack of unity.

“The Carrick,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “The Metamorphosis”: all three are

commonly called fantasies. From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a

fantasy insofar as it reflects the unique world of a unique individual. But when people

call these three stories fantasies, they merely imply that the stories depart in their subject

matter from what is commonly called reality. Let us therefore examine what reality is, in

order to discover in what manner and to what extent so-called fantasies depart from socalled

reality.

Let us take three types of men walking through the same landscape. Number One is a

city man on a well-deserved vacation. Number Two is a professional botanist. Number

Three is a local farmer. Number One, the city man, is what is called a realistic,

commonsensical, matter-of- fact type: he sees trees as trees and knows from his map that