Direct and Indirect Violence in Nabokov's Cloud, Castle, Lake

Vladimir Nabokov's story "Cloud, Castle, Lake" is about the assault on true feelings, true happiness, by the forced and artificial vision of happiness advocated by totalitarian regimes. Although the story is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany and Nazism, it is also about totalitarianism, more generally; there are a few references to the Soviet Union. In his preface to his novel Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov says that he saw both the Bolshevik and Nazi regimes "in terms of one dull beastly farce" (p. 5).

The story also reflects Nabokov's prejudice against Germans. (In VN, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov, the biographer Andrew Field refers to "Cloud, Castle, Lake" as "one of [Nabokov's] very sharp satires on the German character" [p. 157].)

Nabokov is satirizing the Nazi ideal of happiness, and totalitarian ideals of happiness, by contrasting them with real happiness, and showing how Vasiliy Ivanovich, the protagonist, is tortured when he finds it. Vasiliy Ivanovich's happiness is individual and spontaneous; it is not exactly what anyone else feels, and it cannot be commanded, produced on demand, but is elusive, sudden, and comes when it "wants" to. The false Nazi happiness is expected of everyone, all the time; everyone is expected to feel the same things as everyone else, with no variation, and all at the same time; the only variations in mood are to be felt on demand, by everyone together. The people are supposed to respond to the special stimulator's stimulations; that the Bureau of Pleasantrips finds it necessary to send one demonstrates the artificiality of the false happiness, their enthusiasm, their pleasure, the entire trip, everything except Vasiliy Ivanovich's feelings and desires.