Nabokov’s Toska
In a different register it may be nothing more than monotony, a kind of dry, tedious numbness, a sense of having lived through the same days and nights before, of having seen the same things before. In a different register still it may be merely the feeling of having done with something, of having reached a complete end to a stage of life. At still another register it may be an aching loneliness for something not there, a sadness without a source, a yearning for something whose absence is palpable. In extreme cases it may be nothing but riotous joy, such as occurs when a son or daughter returns home or is received into family life. This last, at its best, is Toska in its purest and most radiant form.
In a different vibration, it may be the subconscious jockeying for position in the hierarchy of sensation, the battle for soul-control. Journeying lower it is; apathy, lethargy, indifference. In a chaotic vein it is antinomianism, anarchy.
In a different key it may be the physical longing for something yet to be born, the anticipation of fulfillment. In a still different key it may be a vain expectation of someone or something already absent, despair or foolish hope. Toska is a collective noun and consists of these various shades.
All these different manifestations of toska correspond to various grades or types of philosophical experience. So long as the grade is fairly mild or even nonexistent, philosophic argument will be effective. So long as the grade remains relatively weak or absent, philosophic critique, either moral or theological, will do the trick. But there are gradations beyond which the level of Toska becomes extremely dangerous. It is precisely in these instances that philosophical argument becomes powerless. It falls short of being a cure. The philosophers who, all their lives, put the greatest stress on arguments had their own way of dealing with the Toska, or so it appears. They figured that, even if they could not entirely dispel Toska, they could at least undermine it so that the occasional acute attack of Toska would not prove fatal.
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