‘Stream of consciousness’ technique: Bergsonian interpretation of psychology in the prose by V. Nabokov
Известия Саратовского университета. Новая серия: Серия Филология, Журналистика March 17, 2022 A. Berezhnov , Denis
Nabokov's criticism of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique stems from his belief that thinking is extraverbal and cannot be fully captured in words. He argued that Joyce wrongly materialized the inner life's uninterrupted continuum into rigid verbal form, and instead advocated for a synthetic technique that dissolves word material into a fluid flow of meaning. This approach aligns with Bergson's intuitive philosophy, which views consciousness as an indivisible melody rather than an artistic montage of mental states. Nabokov's late prose, particularly in The Gift, implements Bergson's principle of duration at the deepest level of speech, portraying consciousness as elusive and indefinable, graspable only through intuition.