Between us and Artistic Appreciation: Nabokov and the Problem of Distortion (original) (raw)
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2001
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2015
Vladimir Nabokov’s fourth novel, The Eye, is consistently characterized as his most obscure work. Despite comparatively slim critical attention, the work marked a seminal moment in Nabokov’s literary career, as it initiated his experimentation with perceptual distortions such as mirroring, mimicry, optics, and doubling all through the frame of unreliable narration. Going beyond conventionally untrustworthy narration, Nabokov presents an authorial consciousness that manipulates the narratory point of view through incredibly detailed encryptions, requiring the imaginative participation of readers in unmasking Nabokov’s second, “real” authorial plot. Although Nabokov openly dismissed the moral foregrounding associated with the doppelgänger motif, the thesis will explore the ways in which Nabokov frequently utilizes myriads of false doubles to create an imprint of artifice, which the reader must sift through in order to grasp the authorial “texture” beneath the overt text. Utilizing The...
Nabokov’s Critics: a Review Article
Several insights should by now be clear to all students of Nabokov who have assimilated the critical literature of the past twenty years: that he is a Romantic who views this world as a parody of the otherworld, causing his works to abound in doublings, mirrorings, and inversions; that the glimmerings of another existence beyond our own may occasionally be discerned in nature, in fate's workings, in art; and that the puzzles and rich referentiality of Nabokov's texts to other literature are designed to send the reader on a quest for the transcendent.
Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures
Slavic and East European Journal, 1990
a fe llowship that allowed me to broaden my critical perspective. A number of people have read chapters of the manuscript, and I thank them for their suggestions and constructive criticism. In partic ular, I thank Mrs. Vera Nabokov (for comments on the essay that eventually became Chapter 2),
Nabokov's Details: Making Sense of Irrational Standards
2012
Vladimir Nabokov’s passion for detail is well-known, central to our very idea of the “Nabokovian.” Yet Nabokov’s most important claims for detail pose a challenge for the reader who would take them seriously. Startlingly extreme and deliberately counterintuitive -Nabokov called them his “irrational standards” -these claims push the very limits of reason and belief. Nabokov’s critics have tended to treat his more extravagant claims for detail -including his assertion that the “capacity to wonder at trifles” is the highest form of consciousness there is -as just a manner of speaking, a form of italics, a bit of wishful thinking, a mandarin’s glib performance, or an aesthete’s flight of fancy. !is dissertation, by contrast, asserts that Nabokov meant what he said, and sets out to understand what he meant. Nabokov’s passion for detail, I argue, represents more than a stylistic preference or prescription for good noticing. Rather, it reflects and advocates for a special way of being in t...
Introduction: the many faces of Vladimir Nabokov
2005
Vladimir Nabokov was acutely aware of the image that readers and critics held of him. Deriding the notion that he was a “frivolous firebird,” he predicted that the day would come when someone would declare him to be a “rigid moralist kicking sin” and “assigning power to tenderness, talent, and pride” (SO, 193). Not only did Nabokov’s prediction come true, but critics continue to discover new facets of the writer’s legacy to highlight and explore. As a result, it has become clear that the man and his work evince enormous complexity. The facile labels applied to Nabokov early in his career – the “cool aesthete,” “impassive gamester” – have been replaced by other labels (if not “rigid moralist,” then “highly ethical” writer, metaphysician, philosopher). Yet all of these labels are proving to be simply one-dimensional; the full depth of Nabokov’s talent has yet to be plumbed. Indeed, in recent years, new aspects of Nabokov’s formidable intellectual legacy, such as his research as a lepi...
NABOKOV’S DUELS WITH LITERATURE
In her essay “Nabokov’s Duels with Literature”, Violeta Stojmenovic traces the duel motif in two of Nabokov’s early stories (“Podlets” and “Lebeda”), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Ada, or Ardor, analyzing its transformation from a literary into a meta-literary and meta-narrative motif. While in Nabokov’s stories from the 1930s the motif gave the narrator occasion to concentrate on the internal world of his characters and on issues of (in)authenticity, in the novels, the duels are presented as symbolic encounters between remote moments in time and, eventually, as a model for the relationship of human consciousness with time. The different duels in Nabokov’s oeuvre, in step with the changes in his work and relations toward literary and cultural traditions, draw this motif out of a culturally recognizable context. It loses its referential function and serves as a nostalgic and metatextual commentary, as well as a means of shifting from representation of specific cultural phenomena to representations of representations.
The Sinister Space of Vladimir Nabokov’s Fictional World
Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary and Language Studies, vol. 1: Space in Cultural and Literary Studies, 2010
In Vladimir Nabokov’s works we find a peculiar relationship between space and time which often becomes the main source of his heroes’ anxiety. While taking the spatial dimension for granted, the characters fail to identify their chief tormentor and are therefore perpetually lost in the surroundings that only seem familiar, only appear benign. The space is as irrevocable, unrecoverable as time – it refuses to stay still, perpetually changing, in order to trap, undermine, torture the human beings who, without realizing it, sway with the perpetual secret motion of the world. The space in Nabokov’s novels has a memory, while the time seeks and finds embodiment in a number of ordinary things, foolishly ignored by the human beings who handle them. Nabokov’s chronotope makes us realize that time and space are interchangeable, indefinable. This paper will highlight the ways in which the sinister workings of the space/time model and control the existence of Nabokov’s heroes.