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Ultima Thule

April 9, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Ultima Thule was written in 1939/40 as the first chapter of a novel which was never finished – the second chapter being Solus Rex. It was one of the last pieces Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Russian before switching to write in English, which he continued to do for the next twenty years during his stay in America. It was first published in the emigré journal Novyy Zhornal in New York in 1942, and then appeared in English translation (by Dmitri and Vladimir Nabokov) in the New Yorker in 1973. It was then collected in the volume of stories A Russian Beauty and Other Stories published later the same year.

It is difficult to escape the suspicion that Nabokov embellished the story whilst engaged in the process of translation for the 1973 publication. The style of the piece has many of the features of his late, Rococo mannerism – the persistent use of alliteration, a straining for obscure vocabulary, and a wilful, almost irritating wordplay. There is certainly a case to be made for a scholarly comparison of the original 1942 Russian text with its revised counterpart of thirty years later.

Ultima Thule

Vladimir Nabokov


Ultima Thule – critical commentary

Nabokov published a number of ‘stories’ which were in fact chapters from longer works – such as his novels or his memoir Speak, Memory. This was common publishing practice at the time, and Nabokov was living a financially precarious life as an exile in an almost hand-to-mouth manner.

Ultima Thule is primarily a character study – and a protracted philosophic argument somewhat reminiscent of The Magic Mountain (a comparison which Nabokov would intensely dislike). It also contains fictional elements which are not developed – such as Sineusov’s relationship with his wife, a complex time sequence, and the ambiguous nature of Falter himself, who could be a charlatan or a gifted visionary.

These elements might have been taken up in later parts of the projected novel, and Nabokov comments on them in the introductory notes to A Russian Beauty and Other Stories in which the story appeared:

Perhaps, had I finished my book, readers would not have been left wondering about a few things: was Falter a quack? Was he a true seer? Was he a medium whom the narrator’s dead wife might have been using to come through with the blurry outline of a phrase which her husband did or did not recognise?

These authorial observations are doubly significant. First, from the point of view of the story itself, they reinforce the idea that Falter is a deliberately ambiguous figure. Sineusov describes his former tutor as if he were some sort of preternatural genius – but Falter is a shabby, down at heel character who works in the wine trade and stays in seedy hotels. Following his ‘vision’ he claims to have some transcendental insight into the human condition, but chops logic with Sineusov and gives specious arguments for not revealing the nature of this Universal Truth.

But the remarks also reveal something interesting about Nabokov’s methods and practice as a writer. He is at great pains to claim elsewhere that he composed all his works completely, in his head, then on his famous index cards, before he started writing them.

Following the posthumous publication of The Original of Laura, we now know that this claim is not to be taken at face value. The index cards which were published along with that last unfinished novel reveal that he was making up the story as he went along. And these retrospective observations on Ultima Thule demonstrate the same thing. If Nabokov did not know the answers to those questions his readers might ask, then the story was not complete in his mind when he came to write it.


Ultima Thule – study resources

Ultima Thule The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Amazon UK

Ultima Thule Zembla – the official Vladimir Nabokov web site

Ultima Thule The Paris Review – 1967 interview, with jokes and put-downs

Ultima Thule First editions in English – Bob Nelson’s collection of photographs

Ultima Thule Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Ultima Thule Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Ultima Thule Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, Princeton University Press, 1990.

Ultima Thule Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, Princeton University Press, 1991.

Ultima Thule Laurie Clancy, The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.

Ultima Thule Neil Cornwell, Vladimir Nabokov: Writers and their Work, Northcote House, 2008.

Ultima Thule Jane Grayson, Vladimir Nabokov: An Illustrated Life, Overlook Press, 2005.

Ultima Thule Norman Page, Vladimir Nabokov: Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1997

Ultima Thule David Rampton, Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Ultima Thule Michael Wood, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995.


Ultima Thule – plot summary

The narrator, an artist Gospodin Sineusov is grief-stricken following the death of his wife. He addresses her as if she were alive and recounts their meeting with his former tutor Adam Falter.

Sineusov thinks that Falter is gifted with ‘volitional substance’ and claims that he is an exceptional individual. But some time later Sineusov hears that Falter has had a violent seizure in a hotel on the Riviera, then gone slightly mad. Falter is treated by an Italian psychologist Dr Bonomini, who questions him about the seizure. Falter claims that he revealed to Bonomini the solution to ‘the riddle of the universe’ – but the shock of this revelation killed him (though actually, it was a heart attack).

Whilst his wife is in hospital, Sineusov is commissioned to produce illustrations for a Nordic epic called Ultima Thule. When the epic’s author disappears and his wife dies, Sineusov nevertheless continues to work on the series of drawings as a distraction from his grief. He decides to return to Paris.

Before leaving he asks Falter to reveal what he told the Italian doctor. Falter refuses, and instead they have a cat and mouse philosophic debate about ‘essences’ and ‘being’. Falter insists that he has had a gigantic Truth revealed to him, and Sineusov enters into a guessing game, but Falter eludes all attempts to extract the secret from him.

Sineusov poses questions such as ‘Does God exist?’ and ‘Is there an afterlife?’ But Falter argues that the questions are falsely predicated and evades answering them. He then reflects on human beings and their fear of death – and finally leaves.

Sineusov later receives a bill for 100 francs for the consultation, and is left feeling that he must remain alive so as to preserve the memory of his dead wife.


Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories   Vladimir Nabokov: The Collected Stories – Amazon UK
Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories   Vladimir Nabokov: The Collected Stories – Amazon US


Other work by Vladimir Nabokov

Pale FirePale Fire is a very clever artistic joke. It’s a book in two parts – the first a long poem (quite readable) written by an American poet who we are encouraged to think of as someone like Robert Frost. The second half is a series of footnoted commentaries on the text written by his neighbour, friend, and editor. But as we read on the explanation begins to take over the poem itself, we begin to doubt the reliability – and ultimately the sanity – of the editor, and we end up suspended in a nether-world, half way between life and illusion. It’s a brilliantly funny parody of the scholarly ‘method’ – written around the same time that Nabokov was himself writing an extensive commentary to his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire Buy the book at Amazon UK
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PninPnin is one of his most popular short novels. It deals with the culture clash and catalogue of misunderstandings which occur when a Russian professor of literature arrives on an American university campus. Like many of Nabokov’s novels, the subject matter mirrors his life – but without ever descending into cheap autobiography. This is a witty and tender account of one form of naivete trying to come to terms with another. This particular novel has always been very popular with the general reading public – probably because it does not contain any of the dark and often gruesome humour that pervades much of Nabokov’s other work.
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin Buy the book at Amazon UK
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Collected StoriesCollected Stories Nabokov is also a master of the short story form, and like many writers he tried some of his literary experiments there first, before giving them wider reign in his novels. This collection of sixty-five complete stories is drawn from his entire working life. They range from the early meditations on love, loss, and memory, through to the later technical experiments, with unreliable story-tellers and the games of literary hide-and-seek. All of them are characterised by a stunning command of language, rich imagery, and a powerful lyrical inventiveness.
Vladimir Nabokov - Collected Stories Buy the book at Amazon UK
Vladimir Nabokov - Collected Stories Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2014


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Filed Under: Nabokov - Stories Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The Short Story, Vladimir Nabokov

Vera Mrs Vladimir Nabokov

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a biography of the ultimate amanuensis

Russian literature is rich in examples of famous writers whose wives have acted as unpaid secretaries and copyists. Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevski, and (I suspect) Alexander Solzhenistyn. But Vera Slonim, who married Vladimir Nabokov, took the tradition to unprecedented extremes. They met as Russian exiles in Berlin in 1923 – both dispossessed of fortunes – and she gave up the rest of her life to acting as Nabokov’s secretary, typist, business manager, translator, research assistant, chauffeur, and even standing in for him as a lecturer. Vera: Mrs Vladimir Nabokov is a biography of the wife, but it tells us a lot about the husband too.

Vera Mrs Vladimir NabokovHis output as a writer was large – but as an author still given to writing in pencil on small index cards, then handing them over to her to copytype on an old portable, it’s inconceivable that he would have produced half as much without her self-sacrifice. And it’s a sacrifice she was very willing to make. She promoted and protected his literary reputation throughout his life – and after his death. She did this at the expense of losing friends and making enemies of family alike.

In fact the portrait Stacy Schiff creates is of a clever, proud, but ultimately rather cold and brittle woman who nursed grudges and ‘spoke her mind’ in a way which seemed to be a cover for rudeness and cruelty. If there’s a weakness in her approach as a biographer it’s that she often takes the evidence she gathered from the Nabokovs themselves at face value. She also assumes that scenes from Nabokov’s novels are accurate transcriptions of not only his own life, but even his wife’s life before they met. Both of these are serious methodological weakness.

However, given the unalloyed marital rapture in which they both claimed to live, I was glad to see that she did not skate over Nabokov’s seriously disturbing love-affair with Irina Guadanini – the one event which threatened the idyllic nature of the relationship. Yet in the course of tracing its dramatic denouement she casually reveals several earlier affairs – none of which she had mentioned at all. This is almost like applying the rules of fiction to the genre of biography, where they do not belong.

The big narrative is one of permanent exile – first from Russia to Berlin (the first centre of exile) then to Paris (the second) and finally to the USA, before the world fame of Lolita allowed them to return to Europe. It was eventually for tax reasons that they settled at the Montreux Palace Hotel. They needed a fixed address from which expenses could be claimed.

Throughout this Odyssey, Vera is depicted as a woman who is aristocratic in spirit (though not in fact) who was prepared to sacrifice herself entirely to the needs of her husband – even to the extent of protecting his social reputation when evidence of his sexual peccadilloes and predilections surfaced when teaching young women at Wellsley College. “He liked young girls. Not just little girls” observed one of his dalliances. Vera ended up sitting in on all his lectures, just to keep an eye on him.

She comes across as a curious mixture of hauteur and self-abasement, a Jewish immigrant who nevertheless supported McCarthy in the 1950’s show trials, and a rabid anti-communist who carried a gun in her handbag.

They were a tight-knit double act, who eventually hid behind each other. She wrote letters in his name and on his behalf. He replied to letters in a similar vein – pretending to be her. They had a joint dairy, and they edited their past to present each other in the best possible light. When discrepancies were brought to light, they simply denied them.

Lolita was the turning point in their lives. Nabokov gave up his teaching job, and they became financially comfortable for the first time in their adult lives. And yet in another sense, nothing changed at all. Vera carried on being his full time personal assistant, translating him to the world, and he carried on writing. When he wasn’t producing new novels, he was translating his back catalogue into English and other languages with the help of his wife and his son.

Nabokov was well known for his magisterial pronouncements and his seeming incapacity for the slightest self-doubt. But anyone who has read his work and pronouncements carefully will know that he was given to misleading his readers and omitting the truth (a characteristic Vera shared). In his introduction to Lolita he claims that the first idea for the novel came to him on seeing the painting of a chimpanzee in the Jardin des plantes – when in fact he had already written an entire novella on exactly the same theme in 1939 – The Enchanter. Once again it seems we should ‘trust the tale, not the teller.’

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Stacy Schiff, Vera: Mrs Vladimir Nabokov, London: Macmillan, 1999, pp.456, ISBN: 0330376748


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Vladimir Nabokov an illustrated life

June 20, 2009 by Roy Johnson

potted biography with charming photos and illustrations

This short biographical study offers an introduction to Nabokov’s amazingly varied yet consistent life, and his unrelenting devotion to creativity. It’s written by an expert, and presented in a very attractive manner with archive photographs on almost every page. Even though he came from a rich and privileged background, Nabokov’s life was one which was beset by the tragic events of the age in which he lived. His childhood was idyllic – well educated, and loved by both parents, he was taken to school in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz.

Vladimir Nabokov an illustrated lifeWhen he was only seventeen he inherited a mansion, a country estate, and a fortune . Within three years however he had lost it all in the revolution and he was forced to leave Russia, never to return. In the 1920s he painstakingly established a reputation for himself as a Russian novelist, writing in the first city of emigration, Berlin, and making a living by giving tennis lessons and setting chess problems and crossword puzzles for newspapers.

When the Nazis came to power he hung on as long as possible, but was eventually forced to move to the second choice for Russian emigres – Paris. He realised that he had lost forever the audience he had spent almost twenty years cultivating, and he started writing in French, knowing that he must start all over again.

Then, with only days to spare before the Germans occupied France in 1940 he escaped to the USA and began the entire process over again, writing in English and struggling to make a living by teaching literature in a girls’ college.

Once again he succeeded in adapting himself to his surroundings, but he felt unappreciated in a literary sense – until he threw down the gauntlet by publishing Lolita. This book changed his life.

He was able to give up teaching, and interestingly, for all his fondness for America, one of the first things he did was to return to Europe. He booked into the Palace Hotel in Montreux and lived there for the rest of his life.

Jane Grayson’s account of his life is interspersed with accounts of his major works – The Gift, Pale Fire, Laughter in the Dark, his stories, most of his other novels, and his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which caused such a scholarly controversy when it appeared. I was slightly surprised that she skirted round the over-indulgences of Ada, his last major work.

But it is the photographs and illustrations which make this book such a charming experience. The images of old Russian estates which inspired so much of his work are surrounded by sketches from his notebooks, book jacket designs from the first editions of his work, and photographs which you rarely see elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Jane Grayson, Vladimir Nabokov: an illustrated life, New York: Overlook Press, 2004, pp.146, ISBN 1585676098


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Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories

May 26, 2010 by Roy Johnson

complete shorter works – commentary and annotations

Nabokov began writing shot stories as a young man in early 1920s Berlin, publishing them along with chess problems in Rul’, the emigre Russian newspaper established by his father. He continued to do so in the 1930s whilst establishing his reputation as a novelist, writing under the name Vladimir Sirin. Production slowed down when he emigrated to the USA, and then stopped. in 1950 as his academic work and his international fame as a novelist took up all his time. Nevertheless he published four volumes in all during his own lifetime, totalling fifty stories. Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories brings all those together in one volume and adds as a bonus thirteen extra tales that Nabokov didn’t think worthy of publishing in book form whilst he was alive. He listed these in a handwritten note as ‘Bottom of the Barrel’.

Vladimir Nabokov Collected StoriesNabokov used the short story as a writer’s laboratory, exploring fictional devices and strategies that he then deployed at greater length in his novels. Not that there is anything unfinished or tentative about the results: Almost all his stories are superbly shaped and polished, and the most successful of them rank amongst the greatest modern short stories.

It’s impossible to prove without seeing the original publications, but one can’t help but suspect that many of the stories were revised and re-polished for their first presentation. The whole Nabokov family was complicit in presenting its only wage earner’s work in the best possible light, and Nabokov used the services of both his wife and son as translators and literary assistants. [The recent publication of VN’s manuscript index cards for The Original of Laura demonstrates that the Olympian master was not above committing simple errors of spelling and grammar.]

Nabokov had an amazing range in the tone and subjects of his stories, even whilst retaining his own unmistakable prose style. The tales vary from lyrical evocations of childhood and prose poems which celebrate the surface textures of everyday life, through to narratives of black comedy and a taste for dramatic irony which treads a fine line between beauty and cruelty.

The Eye (almost a short novel, which strangely enough has not been included) is a masterpiece of narrative complexity and deception in which a first person narrator tries to convince us of his wit and popularity, does just the opposite, then resolves to kill himself half way through the story. How can this be? Nabokov contrives this narrative conundrum as another opportunity to show off his powers of subtlety and manipulation of point of view.

Spring in Fialta (which I think qualifies as a novella) is without doubt Nabokov’s most complex and successful achievement. The story of events is almost inconsequential. A narrator encounters an old lover and recalls his previous meetings with her. His memories of their apparently romantic past are wound together with his account of their latest episode in Fialta.

But the main focus of interest is the narrator’s reliability. He tells us one thing, but the facts as narrated suggest the opposite, even though they come to us from his account. Taken at face value, it’s just a romantic memoir: read more carefully, it’s a roccoco study in self-deception and narrative manipulation which might take several readings to fathom.

Nabokov continued his puzzle-making right to the end. One of his last short stories, The Vane Sisters is a tale in which the solution to a puzzle (a message left behind by someone who has died) is actually woven into the story itself. The narrator is unable to see the message, but provides enough information for the reader to do so. These are stories-cum-puzzles which as Nabokov himself claimed ‘can only be attempted once every thousand years’.

This is an excellent compilation of his whole oeuvre as a writer of short stories. It contains all Nabokov’s notes on the bibliographic history and full details of each story from their first publication, and it has an introductory essay by his son Dmitri which throws extra light on the collection as a whole.

Analysis of Nabokov’s 50+ Stories

Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2010


Vladimir Nabokov, Collected Stories, London: Penguin, 2008, pp.333, ISBN: 0141183454


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Vladimir Nabokov criticism

April 30, 2015 by Roy Johnson

annotated bibliography of criticism and comment

Vladimir Nabokov criticism is a bibliography of critical comment on Nabokov and his works, with details of each publication and a brief description of its contents. The details include active web links to Amazon where you can buy the books, often in a variety of formats – new, used, and as Kindle eBooks. The listings are arranged in alphabetical order of author.

The list includes new books and older publications which may now be considered rare. It also includes print-on-demand or Kindle versions of older texts which are much cheaper than the original. Others (including some new books) are often sold off at rock bottom prices. Whilst compiling these listings I bought a copy of Jayne Grayson’s Vladimir Nabokov – Illustrated life for one pound.

Vladimir Nabokov criticism

Nabokov’s Otherworld – Vladimir E. Alexadrov, Princeton University Press, 2014. This book shows that behind his ironic manipulation of narrative and his puzzle-like treatment of detail there lies an aesthetic rooted in his intuition of a transcendent realm and in his consequent redefinition of ‘nature’ and ‘artifice’ as synonyms.

The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov – Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 2014. Reprint of a 1995 collection of articles and critical essays on Nabokov’s work, plus background reading to his life and suggestions for further reading.

Nabokov’s Dark Cinema – Alfred Appel, Oxford University Press, 1975.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years – Brian Boyd, Princeton University Press, 2001. This is the first volume of the definitive biography.

Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years – Brian Boyd, Princeton University Press, 1993. This is the second volume of the definitive biography.

Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery – Brian Boyd, Princeton University Press, 2001. Boyd argues that the book has two narrators, Shade and Charles Kinbote, but reveals that Kinbote had some strange and highly surprising help in writing his sections. In light of this interpretation, Pale Fire now looks distinctly less postmodern – and more interesting than ever.

Stalking Nabokov – Brian Boyd, Columbia University Press, 2013. This collection features essays incorporating material gleaned from Nabokov’s archive as well as new discoveries and formulations.

Nabokov’s ADA: The Place of Consciousness – Brian Boyd, Cybereditions Corporation, 2002. Provides not only the best commentary on Ada, but also a brilliant overview of Nabokov’s metaphysics, and has now been updated with a new preface, four additional chapters and two comprehensive new indexes.

Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita (Readers’ Guides to Essential Criticism) – Christine Clegg, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Examines the critical history of Lolita through a broad range of interpretations.

Nabokov’s Early Fiction : Patterns of Self and Other – Julian Connolly, Cambridge University Press, 1992. This book traces the evolution of Vladimir Nabokov’s prose fiction from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s. It focuses on a crucial subject: the relationship between self and other in its various forms (including character to character, character to author, author to reader).

Nabokov and his Fiction: New Perspectives – Julian W. Connolly, Cambridge University Press, 1999. This volume brings together the work of eleven of the world’s foremost Nabokov scholars, offering perspectives on the writer and his fiction. Their essays cover a broad range of topics and approaches, from close readings of major texts, including Speak, Memory and Pale Fire, to penetrating discussions of the significant relationship between Nabokov’s personal beliefs and experiences and his art.

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Julian W. Connolly (ed), Cambridge University Press, 2005. Topics receiving fresh coverage include Nabokov’s narrative strategies, the evolution of his world-view, and his relationship to the literary and cultural currents of his day. The volume also contains valuable supplementary material such as a chronology of the writer’s life and a guide to further critical reading.

Vladimir Nabokov (Writers & Their Work) – Neil Cornwell, Northcote House Publishers, 2008. A study that examines five of Nabokov’s major novels, plus his short stories and critical writings, situating his work against the ever-expanding mass of Nabokov scholarship.

Nabokov’s Eros and the Poetics of Desire – Maurice Couturier, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. A study which argues that Nabokov presented a whole spectrum of sexual behaviours ranging from standard to perverse, either sterile like bestiality, sexual lethargy or sadism, or poetically creative, like homosexuality, nympholeptcy and incest.

Style is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov – Leyland De la Durantaye, Cornell University Press, 2010. A study focusing on Lolita but also addressing other major works (especially Speak, Memory and Pale Fire), asking whether the work of this writer whom many find cruel contains a moral message and, if so, why that message is so artfully concealed.

Nabokov His Life in Art a Critical Narrative – Andrew Field, Little, Brown & Co, 1967. A combination of biography and exploration of other works by one of the first serious Nabokov scholars – though they later fell into disagreement.

V. N.: Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov – Andrew Field, TBS The Book Service, 1987. Andrew Field was one of the first major critics and biographers of Nabokov, although they later disagreed about his work and its interpretation.

Vladimir Nabokov: Bergsonian and Russian Formalist Influences in His Novels – Michael Glynn, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. This study seeks to counter the critical orthodoxy that conceives of Vladimir Nabokov as a Symbolist writer concerned with a transcendent reality.

Vladimir Nabokov an illustrated life – Jane Grayson, New York: Overlook, 2004. Short biography and introduction to his work, charmingly illustrated with period photos and sketches.

Freud and Nabokov – Geoffrey Green, University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Nabokov’s Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius – Kurt Johnson, McGraw-Hill, 2002. This book, which is part biography, explores the worldwide crisis in biodiversity and the place of butterflies in Nabokov’s fiction.

Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play – Thomas Karshan, Oxford University Press, 2011. This study traces the idea of art as play back to German aesthetics, and shows how Nabokov’s aesthetic outlook was formed by various Russian émigré writers who espoused those aesthetics. It then follows Nabokov’s exploration of play as subject and style through his whole oeuvre.

Reading Vladimir Nabokov: ‘Lolita’ – John Lennard, Humanities ebooks, 2012. Provides convenient overviews of Nabokov’s life and of the novel (including both Kubrick’s and Lyne’s film-adaptations), before considering Lolita as pornography, as lepidoptery, as film noir, and as parody.

Keys to the “Gift”: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel – Yuri Leving, Academic Studies Press, 2011. A new systematization of the main available data on Nabokov’s most complex Russian novel. From notes in Nabokov’s private correspondence to scholarly articles accumulated during the seventy years since the novel’s first appearance in print, this work draws from a broad spectrum of existing material in a succinct and coherent way, as well as providing innovative analyses.

Shades of Laura: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel, the Original of Laura – Yuri Leving, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. A collection of essays which investigate the event of publication and reconstitute the book’s critical reception, reproducing a selection of some of the most salient reviews.

Speak, Nabokov – Michael Maar, Verso, 2010. Using the themes that run through Nabokov’s fiction to illuminate the life that produced them, Maar constructs a compelling psychological and philosophical portrait.

Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice – Paul D. Morris, University of Toronto Press, 2011. Offers a comprehensive reading of Nabokov’s Russian and English poetry, until now a neglected facet of his oeuvre. The study re-evaluates Nabokov s poetry and demonstrates that poetry was in fact central to his identity as an author and was the source of his distinctive authorial lyric voice.

Vladimir Nabokov – Norman Page, London: Routledge, 2013. The Critical Heritage is a collection of reviews and essays that trace the history and development of Nabokov’s critical reputation.

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook – Ellen Pifer, Oxford University Press, 2002. This casebook gathers together an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays. The essays follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader issues and cultural implications, including the novel’s relations to other works of literature and art and the movies adapted from it.

The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov – Andrea Pitzer, Pegasus: Reprint edition, 2014. This book manages to be a number of things all at once – a biography, a primer on revolutionary Russian history, a critical survey of Nabokov’s novels, an act of literary detective work, and a cliffhanger narrative concerning a fateful dinner appointment between literary legends.

Vladimir Nabokov: A Pictorial Biography – Ellendea Proffer (ed), Ardis, 1991.

Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute – Peter Quennell, Littlehampton Book Services, 1979.

Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels – David Rampton, Cambridge University Press, 1984. This study assembles evidence from Nabokov’s own critical writings to show that the relationship of art to human life is central to Nabokov’s work. It pursues this argument through a close reading of novels from different stages of Nabokov’s career.

Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita – Robert Roper, Bloomsbury USA, 2015. Roper mined fresh sources to bring detail to Nabokov’s American journeys, and he traces their significant influence on his work – on two-lane highways and in late-’40s motels and cafés – to understand Nabokov’s seductive familiarity with the American mundane.

Nabokov at Cornell – Gavriel Shapiro, Cornell University Press, 2001. Contains twenty-five chapters by leading experts on Nabokov, ranging widely from Nabokov’s poetry to his prose, from his original fiction to translation and literary scholarship, from literature to visual art and from the humanities to natural science. The book concludes with a reminiscence of the family’s life in Ithaca by Nabokov’s son, Dmitri.

Nabokov’s Shakespeare – Samuel Shuman, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Explores the many and deep ways in which the works of Shakespeare penetrate the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the finest English prose stylists of the twentieth century.

Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov’s Little Girl All Over Again – Graham Vickers, Chicago Review Press, 2008. This study establishes who Lolita really was back in 1958, explores her predecessors of all stripes, and examines the multitude of movies, theatrical shows, literary spin-offs, artifacts, fashion, art, photography, and tabloid excesses that have distorted her identity and stolen her name.

Nabokov and the Art of Painting – Gerard de Vries and Donald Barton Johnson, Amsterdam University Press, 2014. Nabokov’s novels refer to over a hundred paintings, and show a brilliance of colours and light and dark are in a permanent dialogue with each other. Following the introduction describing the many associations Nabokov made between the literary and visual arts, several of his novels are discussed in detail.

Vladimir Nabokov (Critical Lives) – Barbara Wyllie, Reaktion Books, 2010. This book investigates the author’s poetry and prose in both Russian and English, and examines the relationship between Nabokov’s extraordinary erudition and the themes that recur across the span of his works

© Roy Johnson 2015


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Vladimir Nabokov greatest works

September 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Vladimir Nabokov is one of the great twentieth-century writers. He wrote of himself: “I was born in Russia and went to university in England, then lived in Germany for twenty years before emigrating to the United States.” The first half of his oeuvre was written in Russian; then he switched briefly to French, and then permanently to English. He also spent a third period of exile living in Geneva, and translating his earlier works from Russian into English.

Nabokov loves word-play, stories that pose riddles, and games which keep readers guessing. Above all, he loves jokes. He produces witty and intellectual writing – and yet persistently draws our attention to moments of tenderness and neglected sadness in life. It is lyric, poetic writing, in the best sense of these terms.

Beginners should start with some of the short stories or the early novels, before tackling the challenges of his later work. Be prepared for black humour and unashamed tenderness – often on the same page. And be sure to keep a dictionary on hand.

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works -LolitaLolita (1955) is without doubt Nabokov’s masterpiece – a tour de force of fun and games in both character, plot, and linguistic artistry. And yet its overt subject is something now considered quite dangerous – paedophilia. A sophisticated European college professor goes on a sexual joy ride around the USA with his teenage step-daughter. He evades the law, but drives deeper and deeper into a moral Sargasso, and the end is a tragedy for all concerned. There are wonderful evocations of middle America, terrific sub-plots, and language games with deeply embedded clues on every page. You will probably need to read it more than once to work out what is going on, and each reading will reveal further depths.  

Lolita – a tutorial and study guide
Lolita – buy the book at Amazon UK
Lolita – buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - Pale FirePale Fire is a very clever artistic joke. It’s a book in two parts – the first a long poem (quite readable) written by an American poet who we are encouraged to think of as someone like Robert Frost. The second half is a series of footnoted commentaries on the text written by his neighbour, friend, and editor. But as we read on the explanation begins to take over the poem itself, we begin to doubt the reliability – and ultimately the sanity – of the editor, and we end up suspended in a nether-world, half way between life and illusion. It’s a brilliantly funny parody of the scholarly ‘method’ – written around the same time that Nabokov was himself writing an extensive commentary to his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

Pale Fire – a tutorial and study guide
Pale Fire – buy the book at Amazon UK
Pale Fire – buy the book at Amazon US

 

PninPnin is one of his most popular short novels. It deals with the culture clash and catalogue of misunderstandings which occur when a Russian professor of literature arrives on an American university campus. Like many of Nabokov’s novels, the subject matter mirrors his life – but without ever descending into cheap autobiography. This is a witty and tender account of one form of naivete trying to come to terms with another. This particular novel has always been very popular with the general reading public – probably because it does not contain any of the dark and often gruesome humour that pervades much of Nabokov’s other work.  

Pnin – a tutorial and study guide
Pnin – buy the book at Amazon UK
Pnin – buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - Collected StoriesCollected Stories Nabokov is also a master of the short story form, and like many writers he tried some of his literary experiments there first, before giving them wider reign in his novels. This collection of sixty-five complete stories is drawn from his entire working life. They range from the early meditations on love, loss, and memory, through to the later technical experiments, with unreliable story-tellers and the games of literary hide-and-seek. All of them are characterised by a stunning command of language, rich imagery, and a powerful lyrical inventiveness.  

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - Speak MemorySpeak Memory is supposed to be an autobiography, but if you are looking for frank confessions and concrete details, you will be disappointed. Nabokov was almost pathologically private, and he argued consistently that readers should not look into writer’s private lives. This ‘memoir’ covers Nabokov’s first forty years, up to his departure from Europe for America at the outset of World War II. The ostensible subject-matter is his emergence as a writer, his early loves and his marriage, his passion for butterflies and his lost homeland. But what he really offers is a series of meditations on human experience, the passage of time, and how the magic of art is able to transcend and encapsulate both.  

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - DespairDespair – is an early ‘Berlin’ novel which deals with the literary figure of ‘the double’. Chocolate manufacturer Herman Herman (see the point?) is being cuckolded by his vulgar brother-in-law and his sluttish wife. He meets a man who he believes to be his exact double, and plans a fake suicide to escape his torments. Everything goes horribly wrong, in a way which is simultaneously grotesque, amusing, and rather sad. All of this is typical of the way in which Nabokov manages to blend black humour with a lyrical prose style.

Despair – a tutorial and study guide
Despair – buy the book at Amazon UK
Despair – buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - MaryMary (1923) is his first novel, in which he evokes the raptures of youthful pleasures, and the discovery of passion and loss. His lyrical prose records a young Russian exile’s recollections of his first love affair. But the woman in question clearly symbolises his relationship with Russia. Nabokov is also good at a creating a marvellous sense of awe in contemplating the quiet aesthetic pleasures in everyday events and special moments of being.  

Mary – a tutorial and study guide
Mary – buy the book at Amazon UK
Mary – buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - Laughter in the DarkLaughter in the Dark and King, Queen, Knave show a much darker side to his nature, with its focus on adultery and deception. These traits are taken to an uncomfortable extreme in Laughter in the Dark (1932) which plots the downfall of a man who runs off with a young girl who, when he is rendered blind in a car accident, secretly moves her lover in to live under the same roof. The pair of them torment the protagonist in a particularly gruesome fashion – a theme Nabokov was to explore twenty years later in Lolita.

Laughter in the Dark – a tutorial and study guide
Laughter in the Dark – buy the book at Amazon UK
Laughter in the Dark – buy the book at Amazon US

 

Vladimir Nabokov greatest works - The GiftThe Gift (1936) is generally held to be the greatest of his Russian novels. It deals with the ironies and agonies of exile. It is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career. It’s also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write – a book very much like The Gift itself. The novel also includes a deeply felt fictionalisation of the murder of Nabokov’s own father in 1922 whilst he was attempting to stop a political assassination.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: Vladimir Nabokov Tagged With: Despair, King, Knave, Laughter in the Dark, Literary studies, Lolita, Mary, Pale Fire, Pnin, Queen, Speak Memory, The Gift, The novel, The Short Story, Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov life and works

September 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Vladimir Nabokov life and works1899. Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg on April 23 [the same birthday as Shakespeare]. His father was a prominent jurist, liberal politician, and a member of the Duma (Russia’s first parliament). His mother was the daughter of a wealthy aristocratic family.

1900. Nabokov learned English and then French from various governesses. The Nabokov family spoke a mixture of French, English, and Russian in their household.

1904. The first national congress (zemstvo) was held in St Petersburg in November. Its final session took place in the Nabokov home.

1905. ‘Bloody Sunday’ in January when Tsar’s troops fired at demonstration of workers converging on the Winter Palace. There was a general strike throughout Russia in October.

1906. Nabokov’s father was elected to the first state Duma – then banned from politics for signing a manifesto opposing conscription and taxes.

1908. Nabokov’s father served three month sentence in Kresty Prison.

1911. Nabokov began attending the highly regarded Tenishev School – a noted liberal academy. He was driven to school each day in the family Rolls Royce.

1914. Nabokov writes his first poems. First World War begins.

1915. The start of his first love affair, with Valentina Shulgina.

1916. Nabokov privately publishes a collection of poems Stikhi in Petrograd. His uncle dies, leaving him a country house and estate, plus a substantial fortune.

1917. February revolution in Russia. Nabokov’s father was a member of the provisional government. Following the October revolution, the aristocratic Nabokov home comes under attack. The family moves to Crimea in the south.

1919. The family flees into exile from the Crimea on an old Greek ship carrying dried fruit. The family settles provisionally in London.

1919. His father moves the family to Berlin – the first centre of Russian emigration. Nabokov stays behind in England, studying French and Russian literature at Trinity College Cambridge. Some of these experiences appear in his first English-language novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.

1922. His father is murdered while attempting to stop an assassination attempt on the politician Pavel Miliukov. This episode later appears in The Gift. Nabokov translates Alice in Wonderland into Russian. He becomes engaged to Svetlana Siewert in Berlin.

1923. Nabokov moves to Berlin, where he earns a living giving English and tennis lessons, and working as a walk-on extra in films. His engagement is broken off. He publishes poems, reviews, chess problems, and short stories in ‘Rul (The Rudder), a liberal newspaper founded by his father.

1925. Nabokov marries Vera Evseena Slonim.

1926. Publishes Mary, his first novel. It goes unnoticed.

1928. His second novel, King, Queen, Knave appears, and causes the first stirrings of interest and controversy in Russian emigré literary circles.

1929. His third novel, The Luzhin Defense is published serially. He develops a readership in Berlin and Paris – the ‘second’ centre of Russian emigration.

1930. Critical attacks on Nabokov’s writing begin in emigré circles. Publishes a novella The Eye.

1931. Publishes Glory, his fourth novel.

1932. Publishes Kamera Obskura – Laughter in the Dark.

1933. Begins work on The Gift. Hitler comes to power in Germany.

1934. Birth of Dmitri, Nabokov’s only son.

1935. Breaks off work on The Gift to write Invitation to a Beheading which appears serially, giving rise to much debate and controversy.

1936. Publication of Despair. A small circle of writers, critics, and readers begin to place VN’s work alongside other great modern Russian writers. Knowing he is likely to lose connection with his Russian emigre audience, he composes ‘Mademoiselle O’ – in French.

1937. The Gift begins to appear serially. The Nabokov’s move to Paris to escape the threat from Nazism. Nabokov becomes involved with La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, meets Jean Paulhan and James Joyce, and composes in French an essay on Pushkin entitled Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable. He begins an affair with Irina Guadanini.

1938. He writes two plays produced in Russian in Paris: Sobytia (The Event) and Izobretenie Wal’sa (The Waltz Invention). Begins writing The Real Life of Sebastian Knight – in English.

1939. Writes a novella The Enchanter, his first version of the Lolita story (which contradicts the account he gives in the introduction to Lolita).

1940. The Nabokovs leave for the United States on board the Champlain. He begins his lepidopteral studies at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Meets Edmund Wilson, who will introduce him to The New Yorker.

1941. One year appointment in comparative literature at Wellesley College. Publication of his first English novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.

1942. Nabokov named researcher at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Teaches Russian literature three days a week at Wellesley College.

1943. Nabokov receives a Guggenheim Award.

1944. Publication of Nikolai Gogol and Three Russian Poets – translations of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tiutchev. Appointed lecturer at Wellesley College.

1945. Nabokov and his wife Véra become American citizens. His brother Sergey dies in Nazi concentration camp.

1947. Publication of Bend Sinister. Begins planning Lolita.

1948. Nabokov is offered and accepts a professorship of Russian literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

1951. He is a guest lecturer at Harvard. Publication of autobiography Conclusive Evidence.

1953. Second Guggenheim Award and American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Finishes writing Lolita.

1954. Works on Pnin and his monumental translation of Eugene Onegin.

1955. Lolita, refused by four American publishers, is published in Paris by Olympia Press, run by Maurice Girodias, largely a pornographer.

1956. Publication of Vesna v Fial’te – 14 stories in Russian.

1957. Publication of Pnin.

1958. Publication of Dmitri and Vladimir Nabokov’s translation of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, Nabokov’s Dozen (stories), and Lolita in the United States.

1959. Lolita becomes an international best-seller. Nabokov is able to resign from teaching in order to devote himself full time to creative writing. The family move to Switzerland, to be near Dmitri, who is studying opera in Italy.

1960. Publication of Nabokov’s translation of The Song of Igor’s Campaign. He writes a screenplay of Lolita for Stanley Kubrick. Begins Pale Fire.

1961. Moves into a suite of rooms in the Palace Hotel, Montreux – and stays there for the rest of his life.

1962. Publication of Pale Fire. The release of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Lolita, starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, and Sue Lyon. Nabokov makes the cover of Newsweek.

1964. Publication of his mammoth translation with commentary of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin – which becomes the subject of protracted controversy between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson.

1967. Publication of Speak, Memory. Publication of the first important critical works on Nabokov: Page Stegner’s Escape into Aesthetics and Andrew Field’s Nabokov, His Life in Art.

1969. Publication of Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Nabokov makes the cover of Time magazine.

1972. Publication of Transparent Things.

1973. Publication of A Russian Beauty and Other Stories – 13 stories, some translated from the Russian, some written directly in English. Publication of Strong Opinions – interviews, criticism, essays, letters. Rift with his biographer Andrew Field.

1974. Publication of Lolita: A Screenplay, which was not used by Kubrick for the film. Publication of Look at the Harlequins.

1975. Publication of Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories – 14 stories, some from the Russian, some written in English.

1976. Publication of Details of a Sunset and Other Stories – 13 stories, translated from the Russian.

1977. Nabokov dies July 2 in Lausanne. He is buried in Clarens, beneath a tombstone that reads ‘Vladimir Nabokov, écrivain.’

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: Vladimir Nabokov Tagged With: Biography, Literary studies, The novel, The Short Story, Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov more short stories

July 18, 2012 by Roy Johnson

Vladimir Nabokov more short stories

a critical study of Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories

In 1995 Dmitri Nabokov (the novelist’s son and translator) was preparing a collection of his father’s complete short stories for publication by Alfred A.Knopf in New York. He was able to include a number of early works which had not been available previously in English translation. Vladimir Nabokov had considered the idea of issuing his earlier unpublished or uncollected stories during his own lifetime, and he left behind a list of seven tales to which he gave the tongue-in-cheek title Bottom of the Barrel. His son eventually added some items that had been forgotten or lost. In the end, twelve additional stories were prepared for addition to those already available. The additional stories are listed below.

The earliest of these stories were written whilst Nabokov was still a student at Cambridge University, where he completed his education whilst the rest of the Nabokov family went to live in Germany. Many of these tales were published in the Russian émigré newspaper Rul’ (The Rudder) which his father had established in 1919 in Berlin – the ‘first’ centre of Russian emigration (Paris being the second).

I have not tried to insert these extra stories chronologically into the fifty stories already analysed in this online collection, so as not to disrupt their sequence and the continuity of argument in what was written some years ago. Instead, they will appear on this page with links, and on their main home page in alphabetical order.

> The Wood Sprite (1921)

> Russian Spoken Here (1923)

> Sounds (1923)

> Wingstroke (1924)

> Gods (1924)

> The Seaport (1924)

> Revenge (1924)

> Benificence (1924)

> La Veneziana (1924)

> The Dragon (1924)

> The Fight (1925)

> The Razor (1926)

> Solus Rex (1940)

> Ultima Thule (1942)

> Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster (1950)

© Roy Johnson 2012


Vladimir Nabokov links

Vladimir Nabokov more short stories Vladimir Nabokov – life and works

Vladimir Nabokov more short stories Nabokov’s Complete Short Stories – critical analyses

Vladimir Nabokov more short stories Vladimir Nabokov: an illustrated life


Filed Under: Nabokov - Stories Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The Short Story, Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov web links

December 10, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Vladimir Nabokov web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

Vladimir Nabokov - portrait

Vladimir Nabokov web links Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews, tutorials, study guides, videos, web links, and essays on the Complete Short Stories.

Vladimir Nabokov web links Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, list of major works, bibliography, and web links

Vladimir Nabokov web links Lolita USA
A ‘geographical scrutiny’ of Humbert and Lolita’s journey across America. Essay and photographic study by Dieter E. Zimmer.

Vladimir Nabokov - first editions Vladimir Nabokov Writings – First Appearance
An illustrated collection of first editions in English. Photographs with bibliographical notes compiled by Bob Nelson

Vladimir Nabokov at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plot, box office, trivia, continuity errors, and quiz.

Red button Zembla
Biography, timeline, photographs, eTexts, sound clips, butterflies, literary criticism, online journal, scholarly essays, and an online annotated version of Ada – housed at Pennsylkvania State University Library.

Red button Nabokov Museum
A major collection housed in Nabokov’s old family home (now a museum) in St. Petersburg. – biography, photos, family home, videos in English and Russian.


Vladimir Nabokov Cambridge CompanionThe Cambridge Companion to Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov held the unique distinction of being one of the most important writers of the twentieth century in two separate languages, Russian and English. This volume offers a concise and informative introduction into the author’s fascinating creative world. Specially commissioned essays by distinguished scholars illuminate numerous facets of the writer’s legacy, from his early contributions as a poet and short-story writer to his dazzling achievements as one of the most original novelists of the twentieth century. Topics receiving fresh coverage include Nabokov’s narrative strategies, the evolution of his world-view, and his relationship to the literary and cultural currents of his day. The volume also contains valuable supplementary material such as a chronology of the writer’s life and a guide to further critical reading.
Cambridge Companion to Nabokov Buy the book here

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on Vladimir Nabokov
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Filed Under: Vladimir Nabokov Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The novel, Vladimir Nabokov

Wingstroke

July 16, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, web links

Wingstroke was written in October 1923 and was first published in the Russian emigré periodical Russkoye Ekho for January 1924. It is quite possible that the story is unfinished, since Nabokov mentioned in a letter to his mother that he had written a continuation to the tale. The story also has numbered sections, which suggests that it is a fragment of what was planned as a longer work.

Wingstroke

Vladimir Nabokov


Wingstroke – critical commentary

Young men in states of existential anxiety are quite common in Nabokov’s early fiction. One thinks of the 1924 story, A Matter of Chance (1924) – and indeed they persist as late as the novella The Eye (1930) and his novel Despair (1936). This is not counting the inspired madmen who continue through to Humbert Humbert in Lolita (1955) and Charles Kinbote in Pale Fire (1962).

The protagonist Kern has a rational source for his state of unease: his wife has betrayed him with another man, then killed herself on discovering her lover was a rogue and a thief. But there are also hints that Kern might be unwell. He is repeatedly beset by pains in his chest and presentiments of death.

In fact there are several pre-echoes of death throughout the story. Isabel explains to Kern her exhilaration at skiing dangerously at night, pre-figuring exactly what does happen to her, only a few pages later:.

“It was extraordinary. I hurtled down the slopes in the dark. I flew off the bumps. Right up into the stars.”
”You might have killed yourself,” said Kern.

Shortly afterwards Kern feels that ‘He had the sensation that he had glanced into death.’ There are far too many symbolic references for a simple short story, and another reason to believe that what exists of Wingstroke is a fragment of what was originally conceived as a longer work.

There is also the problem of what is presumably an unintended suggestion. Whilst Kern is grappling with his desire for Isabel he is picked up by the character Monfiori, who is clearly a homosexual Monfiori warns Kern against Isabel: “She’s a woman. And I, you see, have other tastes.” He is quite open about his intentions, telling Kern:

“I search everywhere for the likes of you – in expensive hotels, on trains, in seaside resorts, at night on the quays of big cities.”

Yet at the conclusion to the story, as the two males return to the hotel following Isabel’s fatal accident on the ski slope, Kern makes a very suggestive invitation to Monfiori:

”I am going upstairs to my room now … Upstairs … If you wish to accompany me”

By all the conventions of fictional development and narrative logic, this can only be interpreted as a suggestion that Kern is accepting Monfiori’s gay advances.

Nabokov has a number of homosexual characters in his fiction, but they only ever feature as figures of derision. It is very unlikely (and it would be unique in his oeuvre) if he were suggesting that Kern is escaping from disappointment over his wife’s death and his fascination regarding Isabel – into the arms of a short man with red hair and ‘pointed ears, packed with canary-coloured dust, with reddish fluff on their tips’. This is simply not Nabokov’s style at all.


Study resources

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Amazon UK

Zembla – the official Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – Interview

First editions in English – Bob Nelson’s collection

Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, Princeton University Press, 1990.

Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, Princeton University Press, 1991.

Laurie Clancy, The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.

Neil Cornwell, Vladimir Nabokov: Writers and their Work, Northcote House, 2008.

Jane Grayson, Vladimir Nabokov: An Illustrated Life, Overlook Press, 2005.

Norman Page, Vladimir Nabokov: Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1997

David Rampton, Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Michael Wood, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995.


Wingstroke – plot summary

1   Kern is a thirty-five year old man staying in a Zermatt hotel during the winter skiing season. He is in an emotionally depressed state since his wife of seven years has fallen in love with someone else, then when he turned out to be a thief and a liar, has killed herself by taking poison. Kern is attracted to Isabel, a glamorous English fellow guest in the hotel. He dances with her, then finds it difficult to get to sleep afterwards, because she is in the next room, is playing a guitar, and has a noisy dog.

2   Next day she denies having made any noise. Kern is invited to the bar by the homosexual Monfiori who advises him to forget Isabel. The two men consume lots of cocktails, and Kern tell Monfiori that he is planning to kill himself next day. Monfiori says he wants to watch.

Kern goes up to his room quite drunk, then remembers that Isabel is next door. When he goes to her room she rushes out, and Kern is confronted by what he perceives as a dishevelled Angel who has come in through the window, but is clearly the dog that has followed Isabel to the hotel. He stuffs the dog into a wardrobe, collects Isabel, and goes back to his room where he tries to write an important letter announcing his suicide.

3   Next day he cannot find the letter, but still plans to shoot himself at lunch time. He goes to watch the ski jumping event where Isabel is competing. But on her jump, she falls from mid air and is killed. Kern returns to the hotel and invites Monfiori to join him in his room.


Other work by Vladimir Nabokov

PninPnin is one of his most popular short novels. It deals with the culture clash and catalogue of misunderstandings which occur when a Russian professor of literature arrives on an American university campus. Like many of Nabokov’s novels, the subject matter mirrors his life – but without ever descending into cheap autobiography. This is a witty and tender account of one form of naivete trying to come to terms with another. This particular novel has always been very popular with the general reading public – probably because it does not contain any of the dark and often gruesome humour that pervades much of Nabokov’s other work.
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin Buy the book at Amazon UK
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Collected StoriesCollected Stories Nabokov is also a master of the short story form, and like many writers he tried some of his literary experiments there first, before giving them wider reign in his novels. This collection of sixty-five complete stories is drawn from his entire working life. They range from the early meditations on love, loss, and memory, through to the later technical experiments, with unreliable story-tellers and the games of literary hide-and-seek. All of them are characterised by a stunning command of language, rich imagery, and a powerful lyrical inventiveness.
Vladimir Nabokov - Collected Stories Buy the book at Amazon UK
Vladimir Nabokov - Collected Stories Buy the book at Amazon US


Vladimir Nabokov links

Red button Vladimir Nabokov – life and works

Red button Nabokov’s Complete Short Stories – critical analyses

Red button Vladimir Nabokov: an illustrated life

© Roy Johnson 2017


Filed Under: Nabokov - Stories Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The Short Story, Vladimir Nabokov

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