REPRESENTATION OF SUFFERING IN SELECTED WORKS BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV (original) (raw)

2009

A reader's guide to Nabokov's Lolita / Julian W. Connolly. p. cm. -(Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history) Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nabokov and the Russian Tradition: Americanizing the Pravednitsa in Laugther in the Dark and Lolita

This essay focuses on probing the complexities of Dostoevsky’s influence on Nabokov through the consideration of female characters in Laughter in the Dark and Lolita. The discussion centers on the development of characters and on the issue of the apotheosis of the Russian woman, which Nabokov inherits from Dostoevsky, as both are members of the ‘lesser tradition’ in Russian literature. Through the discussion of key concepts such as poshlost and the figure of pravednisa, the essay articulates the main intertextual similarities and differences between the writers, positing that Nabokov developed the stock female characters through adding dimensionality through them and giving them status as people in their own right, something that Dostoevsky did not aspire to in his Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment, despite his focus on morality. The discussion is focused mainly on mothers and children by way of exploring the central issue of cancelled children and mothers in both Laughter in the Dark and Lolita. I argue that despite Nabokov’s protestations against his precursor, Dostoevsky had a tangible impact on his works that informed the former’s portrayal of his heroines. Nabokov took the tradition further, however, by transporting and transplanting these figures into an American milieu, which imbues the notion of poshlost and the pravednitsa figure with new meanings, as the women have the possibility to encounter American consumerism of the mid-20th century.

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...

Transitions in Nabokov Studies

Literature Compass, 2010

This article maps recent transitions in Nabokov Studies and places them in the context of the history of the field as it has developed since the 1960s. While many critics have allowed Nabokov's own injunctions and "strong opinions" to establish the parameters of their research, various scholars over the last decade have shown a willingness to transgress the rules of Nabokovian reading. From historicist approaches to Lolita as a holocaust novel, to controversial questions concerning ethics and ideology, I survey the best work on the author and suggest ways in which Nabokov Studies might develop in the future. In the past many of the most radical readings of Nabokov have focused on Lolita, but the posthumous publication of The Original of Laura now invites renewed focus on the late fiction, while there remains the necessity of exploring Nabokov's place within the contexts of modernism and of world literature.

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov

2005

held the unique distinction of being one of the most important writers of the twentieth century in two separate languages, Russian and English. Known for his verbal mastery and bold plots, Nabokov fashioned a literary legacy that continues to grow in significance. This volume offers a concise and informative introduction to 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 shortstory 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 worldview, 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.

“Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and the Shaping of Lolita.”

In: Lolita: Critical Insights, edited by Rachel Stauffer, pp. 27-44. Ipswich, Mass.: Grey House Publishing/Salem Press, 2016

Lolita is well known as Nabokov’s most “American” novel, cementing his success as an American writer, paving the road to international fame, and famously highlighting the thorough knowledge of American culture that he acquired during years of residence in the United States. The author himself further accentuated his connection to the U.S. in subsequent interviews and autobiographical writings, downplaying the multiple layers of Russian culture that helped to shape his novel. Indeed, the extent to which this most American of novels sinks its roots deep into Russian literary tradition often escapes readers’ notice. Nonetheless, even while reinventing himself as an American writer, Nabokov continued to re-elaborate elements from the Russian texts that he knew well, echoing and often parodying antecedent images, bits of plot, literary personages, and narrative structures; the densely allusive Lolita, which has been described as postmodern for its numerous references to and sustained parallels with prior literary texts, is a case in point. This chapter outlines Lolita’s fundamental connection to several classic works from nineteenth-century Russian literature by outlining some of the multiple intertextual connections between that novel and its classic predecessors, specifically those authors and works whose themes, paradigms, and personages are relatively well-known – over and above their resonance in Lolita – and are especially likely to be familiar to students. It illuminates a part of Nabokov’s own cultural background, makes Pushkin, Gogol’, Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy more clearly relevant for readers of Lolita, and engages students of the Russian nineteenth-century classics with issues of that tradition’s continuity into the next century. As will become clear, the dubious psychological state of Lolita’s protagonist, his perverse sexual desires, the techniques by which his character and crimes are revealed to the reader, and also the entanglement of identity involving author, authorial persona, and other literary personages may all be linked to Russian antecedents.

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.