Tag archives for V.Nabokov
Nabokov by Peter Shaw
In response to Nabokov's Way (November 3, 1966) To the Editors: Enright seems to think that he has discovered the perversity in Lolita, for he speaks of the (let's face…
Bend Sinister. New York, 1947
The first novel he composed in the United States, Bend Sinister is Nabokov's most overtly anti-fascist, anti-communist novel. He had envisioned it as early as 1942 under the title "The…
Look at the Harlequins! New York, 1974
Still largely overlooked in critical circles, Look at the Harlequins! recounts the autobiography of Vadim Vadimych N., whose life and work seem to parody the biography a wayward scholar might…
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff is a one of the best books that I have ever read. It was written in 1999 and received a Pullitzer prize and,…
Russian Stories
By 1939, Nabokov had changed his language of composition permanently to English, although he still indulged in occasional Russian poetry and frequent translations, and had amassed nearly fifty Russian stories.…
Reading Nabokov by Brian Boyd, Reply by Robert M. Adams
In response to The Wizard of Lake Cayuga (January 30, 1992) To the Editors: Robert Adams reviews the biographical side of my Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years with great sympathy…
Reading Nabokov, James, Austen, Fitzgerald
Azar Nafisi's memoir once again demonstrates the power of ideas in literature in an oppressive regime (think "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seanstress"). Nafisi is a western educated professor of…
American Stories
In sheer volume, Nabokov's American stories were dwarfed by his Russian output. Between the completion of his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, in 1939, and…
Nabokov carried tradition of gentleman naturalist into mid-century
Although writer Vladimir Nabokov often used a hand lens for his taxonomic study of butterflies, historian Daniel Alexandrov may be the first to treat Nabokov himself as a "lens," specifically…
Lolita. Paris, 1955
In 1953, having nearly completed this "enormous, mysterious, heartbreaking novel" after "five years of monstrous misgivings and diabolical labors," Nabokov declared that it "has had no precedent in literature." He…
The New Yorker
Nabokov's first contribution to The New Yorker was "Literary Dinner," a poem that appeared on April 11, 1942. It was followed in June by a poem, "The Refrigerator Awakes," composed…
The Cinematography of Nabokov
Developments in technology frequently have profound effects upon literature, and not merely in the sense that technological hardware appears in fictional works. Even the structure and style of literary work…
Early Life and Poems
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, into the "great classless intelligentsia" of old St. Petersburg. His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov (V. D. Nabokov), a titled aristocrat, was…
Conclusive Evidence. New York, 1951
Speak, Memory. New York, 1967 In 1946, Nabokov wrote to Doubleday that he was planning "a new kind of autobiography, or rather a new hybrid between that and a novel."…
Nabokov as Translator
An examination of his changing doctrine of translation Because human beings speak many thousands of mutually unintelligible languages, translation of materials from the languages in which they were originally written…
Crimea and Cambridge
Fearing that his two oldest sons - Vladimir, age eighteen, and Sergei, seventeen - would be drafted into the Red Army, V. D. Nabokov sent them from St. Petersburg to…
Lepidopterological Papers, 1941-53
"From the age of seven, everything I felt in connection with a rectangle of framed sunlight was dominated by a single passion," Nabokov wrote in Speak, Memory. Butterfly collecting was…
how to read nabokov & not go nuts
Before heading into Pnin and Ada and beyond, I just thought I'd share what I've learned about the actual mechanics of reading Nabokov, which isn't at all tricky or particularly…
Berlin and Early Translations
In August 1920, the Nabokov family moved to Berlin, where Vladimir would compose all eight of his Russian novels. London had proved much too expensive, and the Berlin economy was…
Lectures on Russian Literature
Nabokov had secured his May 1940 exit from Paris with the promise of a summer stint teaching creative writing - primarily drama - and Russian literature the following year at…