Pseudonym (for works in Russian): V. Sirin. Nationality: American. Born: St. Petersburg, Russia, 23 April 1899; emigrated in 1919; became U.S. citizen, 1945. Education: The Prince Tenishev School, St. Petersburg, 1910-17; Trinity College, Cambridge, 1919-22, B.A. (honors) 1922. Family: Married Véra Slonim in 1925; one son. Career: Lived in Berlin, 1922-37, and Paris, 1937-40; moved to the U.S., 1940; instructor in Russian literature and creative writing, Stanford University, California, Summer 1941; lecturer in comparative literature, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, 1941-48; part-time research fellow, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1942-48; professor of comparative literature, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1948-59. Visiting lecturer, Harvard University, Spring 1952. Lived in Montreux, Switzerland, 1961-77. Translated or collaborated in translating his own works into English. Awards: Guggenheim fellowship, 1943, 1953; American Academy grant, 1951, and Award of Merit medal, 1969; Brandeis University Creative Arts award, 1953; National Medal for Literature, 1973. Died: 2 July 1977.
Publications
Collections
Sobranie sochinenii [Works]. 1987—.
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. 1995.
Novels, 1955-1962: Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire, Lolita A Screenplay. 1996.
Short Stories
Vozvrashchenie Chorba: Rasskazy i Stikhi [The Return of Chorb:Stories and Poems]. 1930.
Sogliadatai [The Spy] (novella). 1938; as The Eye, translated by the author and Dmitri Nabokov, 1965.
Nine Stories. 1947.
Vesna v Fial'te i drugie rasskazi [Spring in Fialta and OtherStories]. 1956.
Nabokov's Dozen: A Collection of 13 Stories. 1958.
Nabokov's Quartet. 1966.
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, translated by the author, Dmitri Nabokov, and Simon Karlinsky. 1973.
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, translated by the author and Dmitri Nabokov. 1975.
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories. 1976.
The Enchanter (novella), translated by Dmitri Nabokov. 1986.
Novels
Mashen'ka. 1926; as Mary, translated by the author and MichaelGlenny, 1970.
Korol' Dama Valet. 1928; as King Queen Knave, translated by the author and Dmitri Nabokov, 1968.
Zashchita Luzhina [The Luzhin Defense]. 1930; as The Defense, translated by the author and Michael Scammell, 1964.
Kamera Obskura. 1932; as Camera Obscura, translated by W. Roy, 1936; as Laughter in the Dark, revised and translated by the author, 1938.
Podvig' [The Exploit]. 1933; as Glory, translated by the author and Dmitri Nabokov, 1971.
Otchaianie. 1936; as Despair, translated by the author, 1937; revised edition, 1966.
Priglashenie na Kazn'. 1938; as Invitation to a Beheading, translated by the author and Dmitri Nabokov, 1959; revised edition in Russian, 1975.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. 1941.
Bend Sinister. 1947.
Dar. 1952; as The Gift, translated by the author and MichaelScammell, 1963.
Lolita. 1955; translated into Russian by the author, 1967; as The Annotated Lolita, edited by Alfred Appel, Jr., 1970.
Pnin. 1957.
Pale Fire. 1962.
Ada; or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. 1969.
Transparent Things. 1972.
Look at the Harlequins! 1974.
Plays
Smert' [Death], 1923, Dedushka [Grandad], 1923, Agaspher[Agasfer], 1923, Tragediia Gospodina Morna [The Tragedy of Mr. Morn], 1924, and Polius [The South Pole], 1924, all in Rul' [The Rudder] magazine.
Skital'tsy [The Wanderers], in Grani II [Facets II] magazine, 1923.
Chelovek iz SSSR [The Man from the USSR] (produced 1926). InRul' [The Rudder] magazine, 1927.
Sobytie [The Event] (produced 1938). In Russkie Zapiski, 1938.
Izobretenie Val'sa (produced 1968). In Russkie Zapiski, 1938; translated as The Waltz Invention (produced 1969), 1966.
Lolita: A Screenplay. 1974.
The Man from the USSR and Other Plays, translated by DmitriNabokov. 1984.
Screenplay:
Lolita, 1962.
Poetry
Stikhi [Poems]. 1916.
Dva Puti: Al'manakh [Two Paths: An Almanac]. 1918.
Gornii Put' [The Empyrean Path]. 1923.
Grozd' [The Cluster]. 1923.
Stikhotvoreniia 1929-1951 [Poems]. 1952.
Poems. 1959.
Poems and Problems. 1971.
Stikhi [Poems]. 1979.
Other
Nikolai Gogol. 1944.
Conclusive Evidence: A Memoir. 1951; as Speak, Memory: A Memoir, 1952; revised edition, as Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, 1966; as Now Remember, 1996.
Nabokov's Congeries: An Anthology, edited by Page Stegner.1968; as The Portable Nabokov, 1977.
Strong Opinions (interviews and essays). 1973.
The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence Between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson 1940-1971, edited by Simon Karlinsky. 1979.
Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers. 1980.
Lectures on "Ulysses": A Facsimile of the Manuscript. 1980.
Lectures on Russian Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers. 1981.
Nabokov's Fifth Arc: Nabokov and Others on His Life's Work, edited by J.E. Rivers and Charles Nicol. 1982.
Lectures on Don Quixote, edited by Fredson Bowers. 1983.
Perepiska s sestroi [Correspondence with His Sister]. 1985.
Selected Letters 1940-1977, edited by Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli. 1989.
Editor and Translator, Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin. 4 vols., 1964; revised edition, 4 vols., 1976.
Translator, Nikolka Persik [Colas Breugnon], by Romain Rolland. 1922.
Translator, Ania v Strane Chudes [Alice in Wonderland], by LewisCarroll. 1923.
Translator, Three Russian Poets: Verse Translations from Pushkin, Lermontov and Tyutchev. 1945; as Poems by Pushkin, Lermontov and Tyutchev, 1948.
Translator, with Dmitri Nabokov, A Hero of Our Time, by MikhailLermontov. 1958.
Translator, The Song of Igor's Campaign: An Epic of the Twelfth Century. 1960.
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Bibliography:
Nabokov: Bibliographie des Gesamtwerks by Dieter E. Zimmer, 1963, revised edition, 1964; Nabokov: A Reference Guide by Samuel Schuman, 1979; Nabokov: A Descriptive Bibliography by Michael Juliar, 1986.
Critical Studies:
Escape into Aesthetics: The Art of Nabokov by Page Stegner, 1966; Nabokov: His life in Art: A Critical Narrative, 1967, Nabokov: His Life in Part, 1977, and VN: The Life and Art of Nabokov, 1986, all by Andrew Field; Nabokov: The Man and His Work edited by L. S. Dembo, 1967; Keys to Lolita by Carl R. Proffer, 1968, and A Book of Things about Nabokov edited by Proffer, 1974; Nabokov: Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations, and Tributes edited by Alfred Appel, Jr., and Charles Newman, 1970, and Nabokov's Dark Cinema by Appe1, 1974; Nabokov by Julian Moynahan, 1971; Nabokov's Deceptive World by W. Woodlin Rowe, 1971; Crystal Land: Artifice in Nabokov's English Novels by Julia Bader, 1972; Nabokov's Garden: A Guide to Ada by Bobbie Ann Mason, 1974; Nabokov by Donald E. Morton, 1974; Reading Nabokov by Douglas Fowler, 1974; Nabokov by L. L. Lee, 1976; The Real Life of Nabokov by Alex de Jonge, 1976; Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov's Russian and English Prose by Jane Grayson, 1977; Nabokov: America's Russian Novelist by George Malcolm Hyde, 1977; Fictitious Biographies: Nabokov's English Novels by Herbert Grabes, 1977; Nabokov: The Dimensions of Parody by Dabney Stuart, 1978; Blue Evenings in Berlin: Nabokov's Short Stories of the 1920's by Marina Naumann, 1978; Nabokov: His Life, His Work, His World: A Tribute edited by Peter Quennell, 1979; Nabokov and the Novel by Ellen Pifer, 1980; Nabokov: The Critical Heritage edited by Norman Page, 1982; Nabokov's Novels in English by Lucy Maddox, 1983; The Novels of Nabokov by Laurie Clancy, 1984; Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels by David Rampton, 1984; Critical Essays on Nabokov edited by Phyllis A. Roth, 1984; Problems of Nabokov's Poetics: A Narratological Analysis by Pekka Tammi, 1985; Nabokov: Life, Work, and Criticism by Charles Stanley Ross, 1985; Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Nabokov by D. Barton Johnson, 1985; A Nabokov Who's Who by Christine Rydel, 1986; Nabokov by Michael Wood, 1987; Understanding Nabokov by Stephen Jan Parker, 1987; Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures by Leona Toker, 1989; Nabokov: The Russian Years 1899-1940, 1990, and Nabokov: The American Years, 1991, both by Brian Boyd; A Small Alpine Form: Studies in Nabokov's Short Fiction edited by Charles Nicol and Gennady Barabtarlo, 1993; A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths by Dieter E. Zimmer, 1993; Vladimir Nabokov by David Rampton, 1993; Madness, Death and Disease in the Fiction of Vladimir Nabokov by Nina Allan, 1994; The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction by Michael Wood, 1995; On Nabokov's Poem Pale Fire by Andrew Hoyem, 1997; Delicate Markers: Subtexts in Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading by Gavriel Shapiro, 1998.
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The privileged first son of an aristocratic family, Vladimir Nabokov grew up fluent in Russian, English, and French. His early introduction to the glories of language developed into a lifelong fascination with words and word play. The rich texture of his style and the highly allusive and parodic quality of his prose produce a body of work so recondite that it requires multiple rereading, good dictionaries, and shelves full of reference books in order to appreciate fully its meaning and structure. Though Nabokov's stories are weaker on the whole than his novels, they still serve as excellent examples of his art. The short stories generally appear less interesting than the novels, mainly because they are more straightforward; several of them, however, do reach the high creative level of the longer works.
Nabokov wrote the majority of his stories in his native tongue during his Berlin exile (1922-37), during which time he also wrote his nine Russian novels. The stories first appeared in the émigré periodical press, and a number of them came out in two collections, Vozvrashchenie Chorba (The Return of Chorb) and Sogliadatai (The Eye). Most of this early fiction deals with the complicated, poignant, sad, and often lonely aspects of émigré life. After having arrived in the United States Nabokov wrote in English the novels that secured his fame and led his adopted country to claim him as her own: Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada. Nevertheless, émigré life remains a theme in some of his English short stories ("The Assistant Producer," "That in Aleppo Once," "Conversation Piece, 1945"). Émigré life serves as a metaphor for the more general themes of displacement and dislocation of time and space.
Nabokov's own concerns over such issues as the suffering of the weak at the hands of the cruel, the human reluctance to accept responsibility for one's actions, the nature of individuality and freedom, and the role fate plays in individual lives place him in the great tradition of nineteenth-century Russian literature. These subjects also belie both the critical commonplace that he is merely a literary game player and his own contention that there are no "messages" in his work. Never blatantly didactic, Nabokov's fiction nevertheless rests on a firm moral basis.
Perhaps the most prevalent themes in Nabokov's fiction deal with the nature of art, consciousness, and reality. He also writes about love, sexuality, and madness. But most of all Nabokov teaches his audience how to read literature, especially his own, by concentrating on the details that reveal the patterns of his work. And though Nabokov vehemently denies the presence of symbols in his work, motifs such as his favorite butterflies and moths recur in his fictive universe. These patterns in turn provide his ideal readers with the clues necessary to perceive the created reality of each of his stories and novels.
The characters who inhabit Nabokov's special world generally do not fit into their social milieu. Because they usually do not concern themselves with current affairs or the "eternal questions," some critics accuse them of being solipsistic. Other critics contend that all of Nabokov's heroes are artists and writers. But his heroes come from all walks of life and all levels of intelligence and sensitivity—from the most sensitive poet to the least perceptive Philistine, or poshliak. His secondary characters also make up a wide range of types and function on many levels. Especially in the novels and stories of exile, these characters form the background for the action of the heroes. In addition, they fit into the society alien to the heroes and thereby accentuate their dislocation and displacement.
One of Nabokov's best stories, "A Guide to Berlin" ("Putevoditel' po Berlinu," 1925), does not dwell on the standard sights to which a Baedeker might direct a tourist: railway stations, hotels, restaurants, churches. This guide does not even mention the well-known street Unter den Linden or the landmark situated on Berlin's western end, the Brandenburg Gate. Instead the nameless narrator points out to his nameless companion the harmony of black water pipes covered in snow that unites them to the outer edge of the sidewalk on which they are lying; he then boards a tram and concentrates on the conductor's hands and the images they awake in his consciousness. From the tram he observes people at work and takes us with him into his synesthetic view of the city. His next stop is the zoo, which he describes as an artificial Eden, but an Eden that stimulates his imagination. At the end we see the narrator and his drinking companion in a pub, the details of which he sees in a mirror. This sight causes him to speculate on how he might be a future memory in the mind of a child he is observing in the present. "Guide to Berlin" not only presents us with a way of looking at the city Nabokov called home for many years, it also shows us how to perceive the reality of Nabokov's world by teaching us how to read his fiction. One apprehends the entire picture by concentrating on separate details.
The German city in "The Return of Chorb" becomes a modern day Hades for the protagonist who returns to tell his parents-in-law that his wife has died in a freak accident. Chorb checks into the seedy hotel where he spent his wedding night and later takes a prostitute there, but only sleeps with her quite innocently. When he awakens from a troubled dream, he turns and imagines his late wife is at his side. He screams, and she takes fright and runs out of the room just as Chorb's in-laws are arriving. The details of the story evoke an aura of death: the parents walk along "lifeless streets"; Chorb sees everything in shadows and shades. Everywhere he notices leaves, withering trees, the black masses of the city park, black pavement. He sees a "young lady, as light as a dead leaf." It even "seemed to him that happiness itself had … the smell of dead leaves." Mice scurry and spider webs hang about. But one particular detail takes what could be seen as a typical late autumn scene and transforms the surroundings into Chorb's personal hell. From the hotel window "one could make out … a corner of the opera house, the black shoulder of a stone Orpheus," the man who went to Hades to bring his wife back from the dead—Chorb's very quest.
A view from another hotel window offers the main character of "Cloud, Castle, Lake" ("Oblako, ozero, bashnia," 1937) a glimpse of paradise. The narrator's "representative," Vasili Ivanovich, wins a "pleasuretrip" at an émigré raffle. He tries to give the ticket back, but to no avail. He must travel around Germany with a group of louts who torture him because he scorns their collective activities and simply wishes to be alone to read the Russian poet Tiutchev. While hiking he leaves the group and finds an inn from whose window he could see cloud, castle, and lake (cloud, lake, and tower in the Russian version) "in a motionless and perfect correlation of happiness." He tells the group he wants to stay behind, but they force him to return and badly beat him. Not only does this story express Nabokov's hatred of cruelty, it also serves as a prologue to and source of the title of his novel Priglashenie na Kazn' (Invitation to a Beheading). In addition, many allusions and parodies provide numerous subtexts to one of Nabokov's favorite and finest stories.
Other stories that deserve critical attention include "Spring in Fialta," "Signs and Symbols," "The Potato Elf," and "The Vane Sisters." The remaining stories are not without merit; they simply suffer in comparison with the brilliance of his best short fiction and novels.
—Christine A. Rydel
See the essay on "Signs and Symbols."