How the Past Possesses the Present in Signs and Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov

                My love for this short story is matched only by my disbelief at how soon it ends. This may be a short story but never before have I encountered a trinket with such immense density. Trying to discern what influences hide behind this work is like trying to extricate one grain of sand from a mandala. It is certainly easy enough to pick up the piece, but what about the millions upon billions of other pieces one would leave behind? There are simply so many categories one could choose and each would show equally remarkable connections to each other and to the past. Thus, every category must be reviewed in its respect to this story, from the literal perspective to the anagogical one.

                Literally, this story is nothing but a down trodden couple looking back at their past. They remember everything and bring it to play in their present day. Scenes of weariness and age are used to frame the couple which came from so much and has been through even more. Aches of pity spring to the surface as Nabokov describes the fall of these once proud people in their old country. The husband “had been a fairly successful businessman, was now…wholly dependent on his brother…” The wife remembers “…maid they had had in Leipzig…Minsk, the Revolution, Leipzig, Berlin, Leipzig again, a slanting house front…” The child “looked more surprised than most babies…looking away from an eager squirrel, as he would have from any other stranger.” Together they remember “…the year they left Europe…the shame, the pity, the humiliating difficulties of the journey…” There is where they live. The wife’s photo albums bear witness to the realization that nothing in the present is as good as it used to be. It is little wonder the husband cannot sleep and I cannot blame him for that. Nor can I blame the wife for placing the photo album in such high esteem. Life was not kind to this family so why not cling to what they had? However, after three phones calls even the old couple knew that “…living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another…”

                From here the water gets much deeper. An allegorical reading of this story could find any metaphor and translation it wanted to in these words. Under a tree outside the sanitarium, the couple finds a “…tiny unfledged bird…helplessly twitching in a puddle.” What else could this represent other than the fate of the child the parents had just tried to visit? A child who, as a boy, had drawn images of those same avian animals “…with human hands and feet..” to represent himself or his being trying to escape in flight yet failing to grow wings. Yet for all his wishes, the boy remains trapped on the ground and in the dirt reminding one of “…beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer.” Finally, one must remember the lesson of symbols: if something happens once it is accident, if it happens twice it is coincidence, if it happens three times then it is fate. Three phone calls later, fate has found its Icarus.

                The morality of this story inter-plays too heavily with its anagogical end to truly be able to do a separate reading of each. Thus, one sees the biblical references of “Isaac”, “Rebecca” and the “devil” placed alongside images of grief-stricken parents bringing their child a basket of bright fruits. What else can the mother be but the biblical Rebecca trying to protect her child, Isaac, from the devil that tortured him? How could one not see their “humiliating” exodus from Europe and not see the shame of Adam and Eve as they left the Gardens of Eden?

                The past is nothing but a mirror to the present in “Signs and Symbols”. Everything is represented not by itself but in reflection of something entirely different. The couple’s lives are nothing but shadows of what they used to be. While those same shadows whisper evils to their tortured son. Through their eyes, one is forced to bear witness to the immense power of the past: the power to enlighten as well as the power to absolutely destroy. It begs the question, what is the true place of the past in relation to the present? Should it be a shadow, a memory to every moment? Should it be ignored and risk a world of blindness? Perhaps it has to be both or perhaps we can only know the true meaning of the husband’s “ultimate truth” when we live in Nabokov’s world possessed of the past.