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袛邪褉
芦袛邪褉禄 (1938) 鈥� 锌芯褋谢械写薪懈泄 褉褍褋褋泻懈泄 褉芯屑邪薪 袙谢邪写懈屑懈褉邪 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁邪, 泻芯褌芯褉褘泄 屑芯卸械褌 斜褘褌褜 锌芯 锌褉邪胁褍 薪邪蟹胁邪薪 胁械褉褕懈薪芯泄 褉褍褋褋泻芯褟蟹褘褔薪芯谐芯 锌械褉懈芯写邪 械谐芯 褌胁芯褉褔械褋褌胁邪 懈 芯写薪懈屑 懈蟹 褕械写械胁褉芯胁 褉褍褋褋泻芯泄 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉褘 啸啸 胁械泻邪. 袩芯胁械褋褌胁褍褟 芯 褌胁芯褉褔械褋泻芯屑 褋褌邪薪芯胁谢械薪懈懈 屑芯谢芯写芯谐芯 锌懈褋邪褌械谢褟褝屑懈谐褉邪薪褌邪 肖械写芯褉邪 袚芯写褍薪芯胁邪-效械褉写褘薪褑械胁邪, 褝褌邪 谐谢褍斜芯泻芯 邪胁褌芯斜懈芯谐褉邪褎懈褔薪邪褟 泻薪懈谐邪 泻邪褋邪械褌褋褟 胁邪卸薪械泄褕懈褏 薪邪斜芯泻芯胁褋泻懈褏 褌械屑: 褋褍写械斜 褉褍褋褋泻芯泄 褋谢芯胁械褋薪芯褋褌懈, 蟹邪谐邪写泻懈 懈褋褌懈薪薪芯谐芯 写邪褉邪, 懈写械懈 谢懈褔薪芯谐芯 斜械褋褋屑械褉褌懈褟, 写芯褋褌懈卸懈屑芯谐芯 锌芯褋褉械写褋褌胁芯屑 胁芯褋锌芯屑懈薪邪薪懈泄, 谢褞斜胁懈 懈 懈褋泻褍褋褋褌胁邪. 袙 薪邪褋褌芯褟褖械屑 懈蟹写邪薪懈懈 褌械泻褋褌 褉芯屑邪薪邪 锌褍斜谢懈泻褍械褌褋褟 胁屑械褋褌械 褋 邪胁褌芯褉褋泻懈屑 锌褉械写懈褋谢芯胁懈械屑 泻 械谐芯 锌芯蟹写薪械泄褕械屑褍 邪薪谐谢懈泄褋泻芯屑褍 锌械褉械胁芯写褍.
267 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1937
461 people are currently reading
9,639 people want to read
About the author
Vladimir Nabokov
827听books14.4k听followersRussian:
袙谢邪写懈屑懈褉 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁
.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery, and had a big interest in chess problems.
Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intricate wordplay and descriptive detail that characterized all his works.
Lolita was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels; Pale Fire (1962) was ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951), was listed eighth on the publisher's list of the 20th century's greatest nonfiction. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery, and had a big interest in chess problems.
Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intricate wordplay and descriptive detail that characterized all his works.
Lolita was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels; Pale Fire (1962) was ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951), was listed eighth on the publisher's list of the 20th century's greatest nonfiction. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 358 reviews
October 20, 2021
The Gift is Vladimir Nabokov鈥檚 best novel written in Russian 鈥� dense, voluminous, multifaceted, multilayered, multilevel, nostalgic, linguistically splendid and most beautiful.
While reading The Gift I fell under its spell and relived all the hero鈥檚 emotional experiences: the gift of youth, the gift of love, the gift of talent, the gift of poetry鈥�
Poems are like butterflies 鈥� they bring summer, flutter all around and charm.
Then, when I fell under the spell of butterflies, something unfolded in my soul and I relived all my father鈥檚 journeys, as if I myself had made them: in my dreams I saw the winding road, the caravan, the many-hued mountains, and envied my father madly, agonizingly, to the point of tears 鈥� hot and violent tears that would suddenly gush out of me at table as we discussed his letters from the road or even at the simple mention of a far, far place.
While reading The Gift I fell under its spell and relived all the hero鈥檚 emotional experiences: the gift of youth, the gift of love, the gift of talent, the gift of poetry鈥�
Poems are like butterflies 鈥� they bring summer, flutter all around and charm.
Read
December 6, 2019
Half way through this novel, we come on a scene where Russian writer Nikolay Chernyshevsky smudges his old boots with ink to hide the scuff marks, and freshens up his bootlaces at the same time by dipping them into the ink pot. Then he carelessly drops one of the ink-soaked laces onto a page he'd just written.
It鈥檚 difficult to imagine that scene in an age when we rarely see an ink bottle, never mind dip anything into it. The ink we use today is safely sealed in cartridges, and more often destined for electronic printers than for any kind of writing instrument. However, this little scene made me wonder what would happen if an inky bootlace fell on a page of Nabokov's writing. I imagined a snake of ink blots sliding across the text causing some words to disappear completely, others to be partially obliterated, their shape emerging from the blackness like phantoms. Still others would be transformed into new words by the deletion of a beginning syllable, a middle one or an ending.
And then I wondered how the text would read after the accident.
Like something in code?
Like something that has been censored?
Like something only partially formed, something that has not yet emerged from a chrysalis state?
Or like a text read in a dream..
, the last novel Nabokov wrote in Russian, and the most exciting of his I鈥檝e read, offers all those variations, and much, much more.
Fyodor Godunov, poet and writer, is the first-person narrator of the book. But like a knight who has moved sideways and fallen of the edge of a chessboard, Fyodor seems to be outside the world of the main story, watching himself, the other knight as it were, still active on the squares of the storyboard, and referred to in the third person.
The early chapters of his narrative read like a dream in every sense of that phrase; Fyodor takes time out from describing daily life in Berlin in the 1920s - the chessboard of the main story - to look back at a time before the time of the story, a time that seems very remote and only visible as if through a moir茅 curtain. With a painter's eye for the effects of dissolving light and shimmering shade, he recreates a secondary narrative, the smoky outlines of that time before time, the childhood spent in a country that doesn't exist anymore but to which he holds the keys: Russia before the revolution. Fyodor mislays keys many times in the course of the book but he is certain that he will never mislay the keys to his Russia because he carries his homeland inside himself.
Ought one not to reject any longing for one鈥檚 homeland, for any homeland besides that which is with me, within me, which is stuck like silver sand of the sea to the skin of my soles, lives in my eyes, my blood, gives depth and distance to the background of life鈥檚 every hope? Some day, interrupting my writing, I will look through the window and see a Russian autumn.
To return to the framework of Fyodor鈥檚 Berlin story, there emerges within it a third entirely different but equally interesting narrative. Through a circuitous set of circumstances involving various interesting coincidences, Fyodor finds himself researching and writing a memoir of the Russian revolutionary writer-poet, Nicolay Chernyshevski (1828-1889) whose novels influenced many political activists including Lenin. But just as insects learn to mimic their surroundings in order to fool their enemies, Fyodor鈥檚 memoir is only the mimicry of a memoir. Though adequately factual and suitably literary, it is in reality a satire aimed at all the writer-revolutionaries like Chernyshevsky whose clumsy inky boots had trampled all over the literary legacy of Russia built so carefully by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Bely and many more.
Not surprisingly, the editors and critics among the Russian emigr茅 community in Berlin turn out to be very sharp-eyed predators who are not fooled by such a pseudo memoir (which the reader gets to read in its entirety in chapter four of ); they are not prepared to accept that the satire might contain truth, even if only an artistic one. Fyodor鈥檚 Chernyshevsky memoir is more or less blotted out, deleted, forgotten. (In a case of life imitating art, when Nabokov succeeded in having published in serial form in a Paris emigr茅 magazine in 1937, it appeared without Chapter Four. The Chernyshevski chapter had once again been censored, deleted, wiped out, just as had happened in its fictional existence. It didn鈥檛 finally appear in print until the 1952 edition of ).
Within the Russian doll that is lies a fourth story: Fyodor鈥檚 personal struggle to be a composer of something more lasting than literary or political satire. Before tackling the Chervyshevski memoir, he had already been searching for his own literary destiny; was he a poet, or a dramatist, or perhaps a novelist? Eventually, like Proust's narrator, he begins to figure out what it is he really wants to write about and how he wants to write it. Reading between the lines, and in spite of false trails and coded wording, the reader realises that itself is the chrysalis of the book Fyodor will one day write.
鈥︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌︹赌�
If I've given more information than I usually do about the plot of this book, it was to emphasize the structure which I think is really brilliant. But rest assured, there are a few more Russian dolls wrapped up inside ; Fyodor's Berlin life is full of character and incident, and provides a valuable record of the world of the Russian emigr茅 community in Berlin in the 1920s.
March 20, 2024
Of the many Nabokov novels I have read so far, The Gift might not rank as one of my favourites, but it's probably the most ambitious. For a start, it reads like two books in one, as the narrative is about, and in part, by Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the young Russian 茅migr茅 aristocrat living in Berlin who is at the centre of Nabokov's novel. In its ambiguities, its poetry, its typical Nabokov wordplay, and its originality, The Gift can be seen as a metaphor for Russian literature, that greatest of mother Russia鈥檚 gifts to the world, and a kind of literary road map to the rest of Nabokov鈥檚 work.
Moving from fiction to more or less fact, The story begins by looking at Fyodor鈥檚 poems, before Pushkin gets noted in Fyodor鈥檚 literary progress which contains his attempt to describe his father鈥檚 zoological explorations. We then shift to a chapter on Gogol, and then Fyodor鈥檚 biography of 19th-century Russian philosopher Nikolay Chernyshevsky titled a spiral within a sonnet, which is an entirely different narrative structure from the enveloping novel. All this going on inside his work is played out alongside his life outside of writing, and combines all the preceding themes and represents the book Fyodor dreams of writing someday: The Gift. Which to both Nabokov and Fyodor, is an indictment of everything wayward and ignoble about the old Russia that the new Soviet Russia inherited and enlarged.
The Gift is a homage and a parody not only to old Russian masters such as Gogol, Pushkin and Tolstoy, but also of lesser-known provincial writers. Nabokov in the past has carried with him a malice towards certain other Russian writers, but there is none of that here, and one of Nabokov鈥檚 greatest accomplishments as a writer is the way he respectfully parodies the great traditions that inspire him. Like all writers, Fyodor is fascinated despite himself by such grotesque details; but like all good writers, including his creator, he has compassion to match his perspicacity. Indeed, in the course of the novel Fyodor鈥檚 feelings for others, notably his fianc茅e, Zina, deepen and mature. There is a striking tenderness in his courtship of Zina that comes across as more affectionate and innocent than the sardonic, jittery and silly love affairs elsewhere in Nabokov鈥檚 work. Maybe because it was strongly based on Nabokov鈥檚 own courtship of his wife V茅ra, as so much else in the novel is firmly based on those 茅migr茅 years, The Gift should be regarded as Nabokov鈥檚 most autobiographical novel.
Russian 茅migr茅 life comes back to life with a greater, deeper, more poignant accuracy here than in any other of Nabokov鈥檚 novels, and Fyodor himself grows up before our very eyes, changing from self-indulgent idler, to a man of many letters, with a novelistic, or Nabokovian, eye for masterly writing. There was so much to like about this, however, as Nab set the bar pretty high regarding the rest of his work, this wouldn't even get into my top five, but it does deserve a solid 4/5.
November 3, 2015
I don't think I know enough about Russian literature to properly get this book, but it did have some great moments. One in particular that I'm often reminded of whenever people on either side of the religion/skepticism debate start saying that things are "obvious". A character is in the middle of an atheist rant. "There's no God!" he exclaims. "It's as obvious as the fact that it's raining right now!" Then Nabokov's camera moves back, and you see that the person upstairs has in fact been watering the flowers on his balcony.
I loved this scene, but I'd be very wary about interpreting it to mean that Nabokov was religious. Just like the non-existence of God: it may be true, but it's not obvious.
November 14, 2009
The Gift finds among its peers works such as In Search of Lost Time and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Dedalus' scenes in Ulysses (does the root of every novel since inexorably stretch back to Ulysses? I see it everywhere). It even feels like a sequel to Speak, Memory, though Nabokov is careful to dissociate himself from Godunov-Cherdyntsev. Yet the book is woven with Pushkin and Gogol and lepidoptera, musings on chess and time, the deceptive and imitative qualities of the natural world, and the essence of fate and consciousness, all Nabokov's pet subjects. Godunov-Cherdyntsev resides in the same Berlin where Nabokov resided in the same time period (the lee between the world wars), associates with similar coevals as Nabokov kept company with in his Berlin years, and the literary progression of the poet becoming the prose stylist extraordinaire seems to mirror a rather familiar reflection. All in all, it feels like Nabokov's most personal work, outside of the autobiography. It is also a retort to all of those who criticize Nabokov for being all style and no substance, or those who claim his characters are inhuman or that he doesn't understand people or have compassion for them. Martin Amis, in his introduction to Lolita, called him "the laureate of cruelty". Certainly Lolita is a cruelly amusing work, and certainly he has created monsters. But if I can restrain from overstatement: The Gift is overwhelmingly hopeful and rapturous about life. It is an examination of and tribute to the design of fate, an embrace of the idea that the chaos of our lives is simply "the reverse side of a magnificent fabric", and if we strain our eyes out of time and look across the breadth of our memory, we will see the precise workings of a hidden design, even in the obstructions that have checked us along the way. Thus the form of the book takes on a series of biographies, playing out the mechanisms of a succession of lives and probing them for the shadow of the delicate hand of fate. Yasha's life, Fyodor's father's life, Chernyshevski's life (there is much to be said, essays worth to be said, of the duality in his recollection of his father's wanderings and his Life of Chernyshevski), his own life from an idyllic childhood to exile in a foreign city and falling in love with Zina; Nabokov through Godunov-Cherdyntsev transcribes many destinies in the service of splaying providence out on a dissecting table. In this way, Nabovok is skewing the idea that "life imitates art", expressing life as a work of art, that if we look closely we can see the individual brush strokes that together created our masterpiece. The Life of Chernyshevski (given as a whole text within the novel), Godunov-Cherdyntsev's skewering of Russia's "men of the sixties", the materialists whose ideas led to the banal artistic credo of Social Realism and in many ways directly to the Bolsheviks, is, to me, some of Nabokov's most interesting and strong writing. It takes the circular structure of The Gift itself, and is an inversion of Godunov-Cherdyntsev's philosophy and the entire novel.
Great books don't need the ornament of reviews, and this is a great book. As such it should just be read, again and again. The Gift is something like what Fyodor himself at some point offhandedly thinks of writing, "a practical handbook: How to Be Happy".
Great books don't need the ornament of reviews, and this is a great book. As such it should just be read, again and again. The Gift is something like what Fyodor himself at some point offhandedly thinks of writing, "a practical handbook: How to Be Happy".
December 29, 2021
CRITIQUE ["WORKIN' ON MYSTERIES WITHOUT ANY CLUES"]:
Random Collection Of Consonants
As soon as I started "The Gift", I realised that it was so long since I'd read any serious Russian literature (my reading life started with Gogol and Turgenev, followed shortly after by Laurence Sterne), that I was no longer used to the random collection of consonants that constituted most Russian surnames.
The two principal surnames in "The Gift" are Cherdyntsev and Chernyshevski. Once you look closely at their structure and verbalise them, they're quite different, and easily differentiated.
The second feature that facilitated my reading of the novel was the fact that there were five chapters of almost identical length.
Soon the end of each chapter became a signpost and a measure of distance travelled, that gave me a sense of progress as I made my way through the novel.
1.1 Russian 脡migr茅s in Berlin
The first chapter (like most of the novel, apart from chapter 4) is set in the Russian 茅migr茅 community in Berlin in the 1920's. It's not always clear whether the characters are exiles from late Tsarist Russia, or refugees from revolutionary Russia.
However, the ones we meet (authors, poets, critics, and journalists) all belong to political and literary circles, who meet in halls and salons to discuss, critique and bicker over books,pamphlets and periodicals that they've written or read. They all have strong opinions (not always positive) about works that come to their attention, even if they've been written by a friend. Friends' books seem to garner the most unrestrained criticism.
That said, literature is not just a rest or break from real life, it's a vital part of life in its own right. You are nothing if you aren't reading or writing. Literature is a measure of your engagement in life.
1.2 Some Bizarre Love Triangle
The centre of attention in the first chapter is Yasha Chernyshevski, a poet who is supposedly the great-grandson of the famous 1860's writer, philosopher and author of the novel, "What is to Be Done?", Yasha commits suicide when caught in a bizarre love triangle (鈥渁 triangle inscribed in a circle鈥�). It's hinted that he is the only one who honoured his promise in a triangular suicide pact:
The narrator is another poet, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, who has just published his first volume of poems, to little critical attention or appreciation.
It seems that poetry, for Fyodor, is just a first step in his writing career, one day to be followed by a biography and/or a novel (potentially, a fictionalisation of the "events" we are reading about in Nabokov's novel).
Many in the circle are keen to give Fyodor advice on his next step.
Another poet suggests: "Look, you ought to write a little book in the form of a biographie romanc茅e about our great man of the sixties鈥ikolay Chernyshevski was indeed a heroic soul."
Yasha's grief-stricken mother wants Fyodor to write a novel about her son (whom he resembles physically). Fyodor is reluctant, never having been that close to Yasha when they were at university:
2. The Expeditions of Fyodor's Father
In chapter 2, assuming Fyodor is the writer/narrator (he leaps between first and third person throughout), Fyodor's first writing focuses on his father's life story, including his interest in butterflies:
It's this sort of detail that has given rise to speculation that the novel is partly autobiographical. However, it's probably more correct to say that Nabokov consistently farmed his (and his family's) life for literary detail:
3. Zina Mertz - "Girl Made to Measure"
The autobiographical detail seems to continue into chapter 3, which, in addition to containing a love interest by the name of Zina Mertz (possibly based on Vera?), refers several times to the game of chess and knight moves.
Fyodor and Zina are very close:
Zina is also extremely supportive of Fyodor's writing career (having been one of the few people to purchase a copy of his first book of poems):
Zina believes Fyodor has a gift.
4. "The Life of Chernyshevski"
Despite Fyodor's apparent reservations, chapter 4 contains a biographical essay about the life and works of Nikolay Chernyshevski, which is presumably the work that Fyodor is supposed to have written. We can also assume that chapter 1 is his story about Yasha.
This juxtaposition of fiction and non-fiction is a precursor to the poem and fictional criticism in "Pale Fire".
Fyodor is as devoted to the world of fiction as he is patriotic to his homeland and its literature:
5. Love and "Wars of Words"
In chapter 5, Fyodor describes his writing goals in terms of the infinite:
Like "Finnegans Wake", the end of "The Gift" circles back to the beginning of the novel.
In this chapter, we also see the reviews of Fyodor's essay. It was not sufficiently laudatory of Chernyshevski to gain positive reviews, and some of them are positively damning. Those who did not go to war engaged in "wars of words".
Nevertheless, Zina remains loyal to Fyodor:
To which, Fyodor responds:
Zina pleads for more:
"On the Whole It Does Not Matter"
Nabokov's exemplary, quinary, "kind of" novel belongs firmly in the modernist tradition, though he was averse to using the term himself, and many post-modernists would soon borrow his methods (including imitation, juxtaposition, and mockery).
VERSE:
Farewell Owed to Pushkin
[by Vladimir Nabokov]
"Good-bye, my book! Like mortal eyes,
imagined ones must close some day.
Onegin from his knees will rise
鈥� but his creator strolls away.
And yet the ear cannot right now
part with the music and allow
the tale to fade; the chords of fate
itself continue to vibrate;
and no obstruction for the sage
exists where I have to put The End:
the shadows of my world extend
beyond the skyline of the page,
blue as tomorrow鈥檚 morning haze
鈥� nor does this terminate the phrase."
HOMAGE:
Some Bizarre Triangular Suicide Pact
As Quentin Tarantino intuited in it must be more difficult than you think to stage a triangular suicide pact or shoot out.
Imagine, to start with, that X (a male)) is in love with Y (a female), Y is in love with Z (a male), and Z is in love with X. But none of the couples is happy (if two people are happy, then the third must be unhappy), and the three, who are all good friends, resolve to end their lives by suicide. It must happen all the time. If not here, then in Russia.
Assuming they only had one revolver between them, it's unlikely that, even with the ultimate goal of happiness (or absence of unhappiness) in mind, all three lovers could or would commit suicide simultaneously.
It's more likely that there would be at least one murder required. Thus, one plausible outcome is a suicide, a murder, and a suicide. Another might be a murder, a murder and a suicide. A suicide seems to be necessary for the survivor of the first two deaths.
One more conjecture: all three lovers decide to wear gloves, so that no fingerprints are left on the single revolver they plan to use.
So, let's start with Z shooting himself. This leaves X and Y alive. So, imagine that Y works up the courage to shoot X. Now, X and Z are dead, and Y must commit suicide, to fulfill their pact.
What if Y reneges on their vow to commit suicide? Especially while they are surrounded by the bloody mess of the two dead lovers. Wouldn't this experience have quenched their appetite for death?
Y is more fragile than ever, and in need of sympathetic and understanding love.
Imagine, further, that you are F, and that unbeknown to any of the other three (X, Y or Z), you were in love with Y. This would, finally, leave you, F, to pursue your love of Y, without a rival. Even though, Y is a murderer, having been responsible for (and technically guilty of) the death by murder of X.
Fortunately, each death has involved the same revolver, and it's not possible to prosecute Y for any of the deaths, because everybody has worn gloves. So there is no criminal judicial obstacle in the way of F and Y establishing a relationship, and living happily ever after.
What could possibly go wrong?
I wonder whether the Coen Brothers might have any ideas.
SOUNDTRACK:
Random Collection Of Consonants
As soon as I started "The Gift", I realised that it was so long since I'd read any serious Russian literature (my reading life started with Gogol and Turgenev, followed shortly after by Laurence Sterne), that I was no longer used to the random collection of consonants that constituted most Russian surnames.
The two principal surnames in "The Gift" are Cherdyntsev and Chernyshevski. Once you look closely at their structure and verbalise them, they're quite different, and easily differentiated.
The second feature that facilitated my reading of the novel was the fact that there were five chapters of almost identical length.
Soon the end of each chapter became a signpost and a measure of distance travelled, that gave me a sense of progress as I made my way through the novel.
1.1 Russian 脡migr茅s in Berlin
The first chapter (like most of the novel, apart from chapter 4) is set in the Russian 茅migr茅 community in Berlin in the 1920's. It's not always clear whether the characters are exiles from late Tsarist Russia, or refugees from revolutionary Russia.
However, the ones we meet (authors, poets, critics, and journalists) all belong to political and literary circles, who meet in halls and salons to discuss, critique and bicker over books,pamphlets and periodicals that they've written or read. They all have strong opinions (not always positive) about works that come to their attention, even if they've been written by a friend. Friends' books seem to garner the most unrestrained criticism.
That said, literature is not just a rest or break from real life, it's a vital part of life in its own right. You are nothing if you aren't reading or writing. Literature is a measure of your engagement in life.
1.2 Some Bizarre Love Triangle
The centre of attention in the first chapter is Yasha Chernyshevski, a poet who is supposedly the great-grandson of the famous 1860's writer, philosopher and author of the novel, "What is to Be Done?", Yasha commits suicide when caught in a bizarre love triangle (鈥渁 triangle inscribed in a circle鈥�). It's hinted that he is the only one who honoured his promise in a triangular suicide pact:
"He said he would shoot himself by right of seniority鈥nd this simple remark rendered unnecessary the stroke of drawn lots鈥�"
The narrator is another poet, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, who has just published his first volume of poems, to little critical attention or appreciation.
It seems that poetry, for Fyodor, is just a first step in his writing career, one day to be followed by a biography and/or a novel (potentially, a fictionalisation of the "events" we are reading about in Nabokov's novel).
Many in the circle are keen to give Fyodor advice on his next step.
Another poet suggests: "Look, you ought to write a little book in the form of a biographie romanc茅e about our great man of the sixties鈥ikolay Chernyshevski was indeed a heroic soul."
Yasha's grief-stricken mother wants Fyodor to write a novel about her son (whom he resembles physically). Fyodor is reluctant, never having been that close to Yasha when they were at university:
"Everything that to his mother was filled with enchantment only repelled me. As a poet he was, in my opinion, very feeble: he did not create, he merely dabbled in poetry, just as thousands of intelligent youths of his type did; but if they did not meet with some kind of more or less heroic death鈥�, they subsequently abandoned literature altogether鈥�"
"I had no desire at all to write about the great man of the sixties and even less to write about Yasha, as his mother persistently counselled for her part (so that, taken together, here was an order for a complete history of their family)."
"鈥 was both amused and irritated by these efforts of theirs to channel my muse鈥�"
2. The Expeditions of Fyodor's Father
In chapter 2, assuming Fyodor is the writer/narrator (he leaps between first and third person throughout), Fyodor's first writing focuses on his father's life story, including his interest in butterflies:
"A love of lepidoptera was inculcated into him by his German tutor. By the way: what has happened to those originals who used to teach natural history to Russian children - green net, tin box on a sling, hat stuck with pinned butterflies, long, learned nose, candid eyes behind spectacles...?"
It's this sort of detail that has given rise to speculation that the novel is partly autobiographical. However, it's probably more correct to say that Nabokov consistently farmed his (and his family's) life for literary detail:
"...he might go off on his journeys not so much to seek something as to flee something, and...on returning, he would realise that it was still with him, inside him, unriddable, inexhaustible."
3. Zina Mertz - "Girl Made to Measure"
The autobiographical detail seems to continue into chapter 3, which, in addition to containing a love interest by the name of Zina Mertz (possibly based on Vera?), refers several times to the game of chess and knight moves.
Fyodor and Zina are very close:
"鈥ot only was Zina cleverly and elegantly made to measure for him by a very painstaking fate, but both of them, forming a single shadow, were made to the measure of something not quite comprehensible, but wonderful and benevolent and continuously surrounding them."
"Despite the complexity of her mind, a most convincing simplicity was natural to her, so that she could permit herself much that others would be unable to get away with, and the very speed of their coming together seemed to Fyodor completely natural in the sharp light of her directness."
Zina is also extremely supportive of Fyodor's writing career (having been one of the few people to purchase a copy of his first book of poems):
"Oh, I have a thousand plans for you. I have such a clear feeling that one day you鈥檒l really lash out. Write something huge to make everyone gasp."
Zina believes Fyodor has a gift.
4. "The Life of Chernyshevski"
Despite Fyodor's apparent reservations, chapter 4 contains a biographical essay about the life and works of Nikolay Chernyshevski, which is presumably the work that Fyodor is supposed to have written. We can also assume that chapter 1 is his story about Yasha.
This juxtaposition of fiction and non-fiction is a precursor to the poem and fictional criticism in "Pale Fire".
Fyodor is as devoted to the world of fiction as he is patriotic to his homeland and its literature:
"Love only what is fanciful and rare;
What from the distance of a dream steals through;
What knaves condemn to death and fools can鈥檛 bear.
To fiction be as to your country true."
5. Love and "Wars of Words"
In chapter 5, Fyodor describes his writing goals in terms of the infinite:
"Definition is always finite, but I keep straining for the faraway. I search beyond the barricades (of words, of senses, of the world) for infinity, where all, all the lines meet."
Like "Finnegans Wake", the end of "The Gift" circles back to the beginning of the novel.
In this chapter, we also see the reviews of Fyodor's essay. It was not sufficiently laudatory of Chernyshevski to gain positive reviews, and some of them are positively damning. Those who did not go to war engaged in "wars of words".
Nevertheless, Zina remains loyal to Fyodor:
"I like it all immensely. I think you'll be such a writer as has never been before and Russia will simply pine for you - when she comes to her senses too late...But do you love me?"
To which, Fyodor responds:
"What I am saying is in fact a kind of declaration of love."
Zina pleads for more:
"A 'kind of' is not enough. You know at times I shall probably be wildly unhappy with you. But on the whole it does not matter, I'm ready to face it."
"On the Whole It Does Not Matter"
Nabokov's exemplary, quinary, "kind of" novel belongs firmly in the modernist tradition, though he was averse to using the term himself, and many post-modernists would soon borrow his methods (including imitation, juxtaposition, and mockery).
VERSE:
Farewell Owed to Pushkin
[by Vladimir Nabokov]
"Good-bye, my book! Like mortal eyes,
imagined ones must close some day.
Onegin from his knees will rise
鈥� but his creator strolls away.
And yet the ear cannot right now
part with the music and allow
the tale to fade; the chords of fate
itself continue to vibrate;
and no obstruction for the sage
exists where I have to put The End:
the shadows of my world extend
beyond the skyline of the page,
blue as tomorrow鈥檚 morning haze
鈥� nor does this terminate the phrase."
HOMAGE:
Some Bizarre Triangular Suicide Pact
As Quentin Tarantino intuited in it must be more difficult than you think to stage a triangular suicide pact or shoot out.
Imagine, to start with, that X (a male)) is in love with Y (a female), Y is in love with Z (a male), and Z is in love with X. But none of the couples is happy (if two people are happy, then the third must be unhappy), and the three, who are all good friends, resolve to end their lives by suicide. It must happen all the time. If not here, then in Russia.
Assuming they only had one revolver between them, it's unlikely that, even with the ultimate goal of happiness (or absence of unhappiness) in mind, all three lovers could or would commit suicide simultaneously.
It's more likely that there would be at least one murder required. Thus, one plausible outcome is a suicide, a murder, and a suicide. Another might be a murder, a murder and a suicide. A suicide seems to be necessary for the survivor of the first two deaths.
One more conjecture: all three lovers decide to wear gloves, so that no fingerprints are left on the single revolver they plan to use.
So, let's start with Z shooting himself. This leaves X and Y alive. So, imagine that Y works up the courage to shoot X. Now, X and Z are dead, and Y must commit suicide, to fulfill their pact.
What if Y reneges on their vow to commit suicide? Especially while they are surrounded by the bloody mess of the two dead lovers. Wouldn't this experience have quenched their appetite for death?
Y is more fragile than ever, and in need of sympathetic and understanding love.
Imagine, further, that you are F, and that unbeknown to any of the other three (X, Y or Z), you were in love with Y. This would, finally, leave you, F, to pursue your love of Y, without a rival. Even though, Y is a murderer, having been responsible for (and technically guilty of) the death by murder of X.
Fortunately, each death has involved the same revolver, and it's not possible to prosecute Y for any of the deaths, because everybody has worn gloves. So there is no criminal judicial obstacle in the way of F and Y establishing a relationship, and living happily ever after.
What could possibly go wrong?
I wonder whether the Coen Brothers might have any ideas.
SOUNDTRACK:
November 30, 2015
鈥淗ave you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and are now leaving forever. This already dead inventory will not be resurrected in one's memory...鈥�鈥� Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift
A very Proust-inspired (memory, love, dreams, art) Nabokov. The last of his Russian novels, 'the Gift' is a complex and rich K眉nstlerroman and is one of those novels that makes me wish I spent more time in college studying Russian simply so I could catch the nuanced differences between the Chapters where Nabokov is mimicking Pushkin, Gogol, and other Russian novelists.
Nabokov always amazes me with his ability to provoke, entertain and awe his readers. There are some novelists where it is clear they are writing for a certain audience. Nabokov seems content just to write novels that entertain an audience of one (VN). If someone else gets his books, well, it is all just a sugary and mischievous bonus, but overall ... he'd prefer to be left alone to categorize and pin his rare butterflies and metric variations.
A very Proust-inspired (memory, love, dreams, art) Nabokov. The last of his Russian novels, 'the Gift' is a complex and rich K眉nstlerroman and is one of those novels that makes me wish I spent more time in college studying Russian simply so I could catch the nuanced differences between the Chapters where Nabokov is mimicking Pushkin, Gogol, and other Russian novelists.
Nabokov always amazes me with his ability to provoke, entertain and awe his readers. There are some novelists where it is clear they are writing for a certain audience. Nabokov seems content just to write novels that entertain an audience of one (VN). If someone else gets his books, well, it is all just a sugary and mischievous bonus, but overall ... he'd prefer to be left alone to categorize and pin his rare butterflies and metric variations.
September 17, 2018
Inch矛nati al dio immaginario, onora ci貌 che entra senza porte dalla periferia del sogno, il raro, il dono che la plebe manda a morte.
Un libro talvolta richiede molta fatica, quella che mi ci 猫 voluta per superare l鈥檈stenuante quarto capitolo: una feroce parodia che il protagonista Fedor Konstantinovic scrive sul poeta rivoluzionario Cernysevskij, tanto osannato da Lenin.
Nabokov si immaginava che io non avessi una approfondita conoscenza della letteratura russa. Secondo me quindi esplode in altre pagine tutta la bellezza di questo romanzo con una struttura circolare, incentrato sull鈥檃ssenza del padre e sulla nostalgia della patria, sull鈥檃spirazione a colmare questi vuoti e su un destino che, benevolo per una volta tanto, decide giocosamente di dare a due giovani pi霉 di una possibilit脿 di incontrarsi nella Berlino degli anni Venti.
Ho trovato la bellezza nelle parole con cui viene descritta la storia tra Fedor e Zina e nel modo con cui Nabokov ci rivela 鈥� per gradi, dopo una serie di allusioni - qual 猫 la ragazza di Fedor, tra i personaggi che di sfuggita abbiamo precedentemente gi脿 conosciuto.
Agli appuntamenti segreti, di sera, lei avanzava a piccoli passi, la punta di un piede contro il tallone dell鈥檃ltro, come se camminasse su una fune.
Poich茅 gli sembrava assolutamente impossibile avere una parte qualsiasi nella sua anima e nella sua vita, soffriva quando scopriva in lei qualcosa di particolarmente incantevole, e provava un gioioso sollievo quando invece trovava qualche imperfezione nella sua bellezza.
La bellezza sta nelle cose. La pioggia divent貌 diluvio e spazz貌 l鈥檃sfalto, che ora sembrava cosparso di piccole candele saltellanti.
Fedor, per diventare un bravo scrittore, aspira alla molteplicit脿 di livelli di pensiero, in modo da entrare nella testa delle persone che conosce, come nel caso degli ultimi attimi di vita di un altro esule russo, Aleksandr.
鈥淐he stupidaggini. Ma certo, dopo non c鈥櫭� nulla.鈥� Sospir貌, stette per un attimo ad ascoltare il gocciolio e il tamburellio fuori dalla finestra e poi ripet茅 con estrema chiarezza: 鈥淣on c鈥櫭� nulla. E鈥� chiaro come il fatto che sta piovendo鈥�. E fuori, intanto, il sole primaverile giocava sulle tegole dei tetti, il cielo era pensieroso e sgombro di nubi, e l鈥檌nquilina del piano di sopra innaffiava le piante del balcone, e l鈥檃cqua giocciolava tamburellando.
Ironia che ritorna, mescolata al dolore, anche nelle precedenti descrizioni dei grotteschi incontri culturali degli esuli russi, a casa di Alexandr. Da poco gli 猫 morto il figlio Jasa, suicida. Da allora non si 猫 pi霉 ripreso, vede ancora il fantasma del figlio, un fantasma che pu貌 essere pi霉 reale di questi inconsistenti esuli. Come succede al momento dei saluti.
E a questo punto tutti cominciarono pian piano a impallidire, a ondeggiare nel moto involontario delle masse di nebbia, a dissolversi; i loro contorni assumevano le linee sinuose di un 8 e poi si scioglievano nell鈥檃ria, ma qua e l脿 brillavano ancora dei puntini luminosi: una scintilla di cordialit脿 in un occhio, il luccichio di un braccialetto; dopo di che tutto scomparve, e nel salotto pieno di fumo, immerso in un silenzio totale, entr貌 Jasa, con le pantofole ai piedi, convinto che il padre fosse gi脿 andato a letto; alla luce di rosse lanterne, intanto, invisibili folletti riparavano con magici suoni la nera pavimentazione all鈥檃ngolo della piazza.
Un libro talvolta richiede molta fatica, quella che mi ci 猫 voluta per superare l鈥檈stenuante quarto capitolo: una feroce parodia che il protagonista Fedor Konstantinovic scrive sul poeta rivoluzionario Cernysevskij, tanto osannato da Lenin.
Nabokov si immaginava che io non avessi una approfondita conoscenza della letteratura russa. Secondo me quindi esplode in altre pagine tutta la bellezza di questo romanzo con una struttura circolare, incentrato sull鈥檃ssenza del padre e sulla nostalgia della patria, sull鈥檃spirazione a colmare questi vuoti e su un destino che, benevolo per una volta tanto, decide giocosamente di dare a due giovani pi霉 di una possibilit脿 di incontrarsi nella Berlino degli anni Venti.
Ho trovato la bellezza nelle parole con cui viene descritta la storia tra Fedor e Zina e nel modo con cui Nabokov ci rivela 鈥� per gradi, dopo una serie di allusioni - qual 猫 la ragazza di Fedor, tra i personaggi che di sfuggita abbiamo precedentemente gi脿 conosciuto.
Agli appuntamenti segreti, di sera, lei avanzava a piccoli passi, la punta di un piede contro il tallone dell鈥檃ltro, come se camminasse su una fune.
Poich茅 gli sembrava assolutamente impossibile avere una parte qualsiasi nella sua anima e nella sua vita, soffriva quando scopriva in lei qualcosa di particolarmente incantevole, e provava un gioioso sollievo quando invece trovava qualche imperfezione nella sua bellezza.
La bellezza sta nelle cose. La pioggia divent貌 diluvio e spazz貌 l鈥檃sfalto, che ora sembrava cosparso di piccole candele saltellanti.
Fedor, per diventare un bravo scrittore, aspira alla molteplicit脿 di livelli di pensiero, in modo da entrare nella testa delle persone che conosce, come nel caso degli ultimi attimi di vita di un altro esule russo, Aleksandr.
鈥淐he stupidaggini. Ma certo, dopo non c鈥櫭� nulla.鈥� Sospir貌, stette per un attimo ad ascoltare il gocciolio e il tamburellio fuori dalla finestra e poi ripet茅 con estrema chiarezza: 鈥淣on c鈥櫭� nulla. E鈥� chiaro come il fatto che sta piovendo鈥�. E fuori, intanto, il sole primaverile giocava sulle tegole dei tetti, il cielo era pensieroso e sgombro di nubi, e l鈥檌nquilina del piano di sopra innaffiava le piante del balcone, e l鈥檃cqua giocciolava tamburellando.
Ironia che ritorna, mescolata al dolore, anche nelle precedenti descrizioni dei grotteschi incontri culturali degli esuli russi, a casa di Alexandr. Da poco gli 猫 morto il figlio Jasa, suicida. Da allora non si 猫 pi霉 ripreso, vede ancora il fantasma del figlio, un fantasma che pu貌 essere pi霉 reale di questi inconsistenti esuli. Come succede al momento dei saluti.
E a questo punto tutti cominciarono pian piano a impallidire, a ondeggiare nel moto involontario delle masse di nebbia, a dissolversi; i loro contorni assumevano le linee sinuose di un 8 e poi si scioglievano nell鈥檃ria, ma qua e l脿 brillavano ancora dei puntini luminosi: una scintilla di cordialit脿 in un occhio, il luccichio di un braccialetto; dopo di che tutto scomparve, e nel salotto pieno di fumo, immerso in un silenzio totale, entr貌 Jasa, con le pantofole ai piedi, convinto che il padre fosse gi脿 andato a letto; alla luce di rosse lanterne, intanto, invisibili folletti riparavano con magici suoni la nera pavimentazione all鈥檃ngolo della piazza.
February 1, 2023
Reading 'The Gift' was an unforgettable mind-blowing experience.
I haven't read some of Nabokov's works yet, so to me 'The Gift' is the most impressive work among the ones I have. To me Nabokov is the Writer par excellence. Although the beauty, sophistication and complexity of his prose might be lost in translation, some translators do a really good job.
鈥淭hus it transpired that even Berlin could be mysterious. Within the linden's bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush envelops us. Across the curb one's passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus. The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows. Look at that street--it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear to me to put in dreams your trust, and to believe in fantasy alone, and never let your soul in prison rust, nor stretch your arm and say: a wall of stone.鈥�
I haven't read some of Nabokov's works yet, so to me 'The Gift' is the most impressive work among the ones I have. To me Nabokov is the Writer par excellence. Although the beauty, sophistication and complexity of his prose might be lost in translation, some translators do a really good job.
鈥淭hus it transpired that even Berlin could be mysterious. Within the linden's bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush envelops us. Across the curb one's passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus. The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows. Look at that street--it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear to me to put in dreams your trust, and to believe in fantasy alone, and never let your soul in prison rust, nor stretch your arm and say: a wall of stone.鈥�
May 15, 2023
Marcel Proust 猫 presente in questo romanzo non viene citato ma c'猫... Le protagoniste del romanzo sono due la letteratura russa e Zina... Fedor pensa di scrivere il romanzo che noi leggiamo alla fine del romanzo.
il pallone perduto e infine ritrovato, il dialogo non fatto e infine quello fatto, il romanzo non pubblicato e infine il romanzo pubblicato
PS pure noi abbiamo il nostro Nabokov... si chiama Giorgio Manganelli non Umberto Eco ma Giorgio Manganelli
il pallone perduto e infine ritrovato, il dialogo non fatto e infine quello fatto, il romanzo non pubblicato e infine il romanzo pubblicato
PS pure noi abbiamo il nostro Nabokov... si chiama Giorgio Manganelli non Umberto Eco ma Giorgio Manganelli
March 28, 2018
N茫o 茅 um livro f谩cil e as raz玫es para tal s茫o v谩rias 鈥� a estrutura 茅 multilinear e descont铆nua; a forma 茅 po茅tica e de vocabul谩rio rico mas escrito como torrente descritiva; e o contexto exigido 茅 n茫o s贸 enorme como distante da maioria dos leitores contempor芒neos. N茫o acontece muito, ou quase nada, em 鈥淥 Dom鈥�, muita nostalgia relatada por emigrantes russos fixados num espa莽o que 茅 a cidade de Berlim nos anos 1920, e que tal como o espa莽o de Dublin, em 鈥淯lisses鈥� (1922) de Joyce, serve a Nabokov para agregar a estrutura fragmentada. Tudo parece sustentar-se num processo de regress茫o afetiva e na sua descri莽茫o por recurso a uma estil铆stica de embelezamento m谩ximo, completamente colada a Proust. Digamos que Nabokov, dotado de enorme virtuosismo, resolveu criar uma obra capaz de homenagear dois dos seus autores favoritos, mas a homenagem n茫o se fica por aqui j谩 que o tema do livro 茅 nada menos que a Literatura Russa do s茅culo XIX, ou seja, a homenagem estende-se a Puchkin, Gogol, Tch茅khov, Turgeniev, Tchernichevski entre muitos outros. Deste modo, para se poder iniciar algum envolvimento com a leitura desta obra conv茅m conhecer algo destes autores, assim como deter algum conhecimento sobre o antes e o depois da Revolu莽茫o Russa de 1917.
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[Publicado no VI, com imagens e links, em ]
N茫o conhecia todos os enunciados, faltava-me Puchkin e Tchernichevski, e por isso s茫o os livros que se seguem, embora sejam dois autores em p贸los opostos, ou seja, se Puchkin 茅 o grande pai das letras russas, Tchernichevski 茅 n茫o s贸 desconhecido fora da R煤ssia, como 茅 aqui totalmente ridicularizado. Mas deixarei o meu coment谩rio sobre o cap铆tulo inteiro que se lhe dedica para quando acabar de ler o livro de Tchernichevski, que entretanto j谩 comecei e em poucas p谩ginas deu para quase compreender Nabokov. Digo quase porque tenho de confessar que me custou ler Nabokov, um dos meus autores de refer锚ncia, num discurso de critica ad hominem. Ali谩s, n茫o 茅 por acaso que o cap铆tulo n茫o foi publicado aquando da primeira edi莽茫o da obra em 1938. Ainda que perceba a qualidade muito baixa de Tchernichevski, s贸 consigo compreender esta rea莽茫o de Nabokov pelo car谩ter pol铆tico que o livro de Tchernichevski adquiriu, ou porque o pr贸prio Nabokov exerce uma cr铆tica constante mesmo a si pr贸prio como podemos ver no seguinte di谩logo (Nabokov n茫o gostava de Dostoi茅vski e era admirador de Flaubert):
鈥渆u tenho gostos diferentes, h谩bitos diferentes; o seu Fet, por exemplo, n茫o posso suport谩-lo, e por outro lado sou um ardente admirador do autor de O Duplo e de Os Possessos, a quem voc锚 parece disposto a faltar ao鈥� H谩 muito em si que n茫o gosto, o seu estilo de S茫o Petersburgo, a sua tara gaulesa, o seu neo-voltaireanismo e o fraco por Flaubert鈥︹€� (p.342)
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As fotografias de Nabokov recordam-me sempre Hitchcock mas tamb茅m a personalidade que ambos pareciam possuir 鈥� de estarem sempre prontos a pregar uma partida a algu茅m!
Existe um enredo amoroso no livro a que Nabokov faz refer锚ncia no pref谩cio, diga-se semi-explicativo da obra, mas 茅 um romance imensamente subtil, ainda que venha dar, em parte, resposta ao t铆tulo. A ess锚ncia do livro assenta no processo descritivo do mundo aos olhos de um jovem autor russo, recentemente emigrado para Berlim, 脿 procura de se afirmar enquanto escritor, e nesse sentido, apesar de Nabokov dizer nesse pref谩cio que n茫o 茅 Fyodor, 茅 ele quem ali vemos representado. Mais uma aproxima莽茫o a Proust, que descreve o mundo atrav茅s dos olhos de Marcel sem nunca dar conta de qualquer liga莽茫o com este. Ali谩s, na primeira parte o tom 茅 bastante pr贸ximo do livro autobiogr谩fico de Nabokov, 鈥淔ala Mem贸ria鈥�, que s贸 viria a escrever anos mais tarde. E j谩 agora, a meio do livro acontece algo no m铆nimo estranho, ou talvez n茫o, que 茅 uma descri莽茫o breve do enredo de 鈥淟olita鈥� (1955), seguida de uma refer锚ncia do protagonista que me obrigou a parar e ir verificar datas, dizendo 鈥溍� estranho, pare莽o lembrar-me dos meus trabalhos futuros鈥�. Ou seja, o romance existia muitos anos antes na cabe莽a de Nabokov.
Para se poder entender este texto, j谩 disse que conhecer os autores acima 茅 relevante mas 茅 tamb茅m relevante lerem mais sobre a obra 鈥� a sua data de cria莽茫o, a vida de Nabokov, a sua fuga da R煤ssia, a pol铆tica do pa铆s 鈥� e para tal recomendo vivamente o livro de Yuri Leving 鈥淜eys to the Gift: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov's Novel鈥�. Leving criou um comp锚ndio das m煤ltiplas abordagens poss铆veis 脿 interpreta莽茫o mas n茫o 茅 preciso lerem tudo, basta que leiam as entradas que mais vos interessarem. As chaves apresentadas por Leving v茫o desde a cria莽茫o e publica莽茫o da obra ao contexto hist贸rico do pa铆s e da literatura, passando pela an谩lise da estrutura 鈥� altamente detalhada nos seus constituintes de t铆tulo, enredo, narrativa, cen谩rio, personagens, tema 鈥� ou do estilo, forma e m茅todo, ou ainda da rece莽茫o cr铆tica nas diferentes 茅pocas, e muito mais. Digo que n茫o 茅 preciso ler tudo, porque o texto de Nabokov est谩 t茫o carregado de s铆mbolos e subtextos que tentar compreender tudo est谩 apenas ao alcance de um labor intenso, fazendo deste uma boa obra para a realiza莽茫o de trabalhos acad茅micos no campo da literatura.
Deixo uma breve explica莽茫o estrutural. O livro come莽a com um cap铆tulo de contextualiza莽茫o da vida de Fyodor em Berlim, que aos poucos nos vai dando conta da sua vida passada em S茫o Petersburgo, dos amigos deixados e dos novos entretanto criados. Nesta primeira fase Fyodor s贸 escreve poemas. No segundo cap铆tulo Fyodor recorda o pai, que tal como o pai de Nabokov morreu quando este tinha cerca de 25 anos, o cap铆tulo 茅 intenso e belo, e segundo os cr铆ticos segue o estilo de Puchkin. No terceiro cap铆tulo temos uma mudan莽a de espa莽o e o encontro com a amada, a escrita 茅 menos embelezada mas mais escorreita, o estilo mudou novamente porque agora 茅 Gogol que Nabokov nos d谩. O quarto 茅 o tal cap铆tulo banido, n茫o segue propriamente Tchernichevski, j谩 que a abordagem 茅 profundamente sat铆rica, mas 茅 completamente diferente de tudo o que veio antes e vir谩 no 煤ltimo. Por fim, voltamos ao nosso her贸i Fyodor e a Zina, com o mundo a desejar recompor-se e a querer criar espa莽o para que o esp铆rito do artista possa florescer.
O livro termina mais uma vez homenageando Proust, j谩 que 茅 dado a entender que o livro que lemos ser谩 o que Fyodor escreveu, e tal como em Proust, cria-se uma urg锚ncia por voltar ao in铆cio e reiniciar a leitura, reler tudo com um novo olhar, capaz de ler mais dentro das m煤ltiplas camadas que protegem o sentir de Nabokov em 鈥淥 Dom鈥�, j谩 que 茅 inevit谩vel sentirmos ao longo de toda a leitura que muito do que vamos lendo 茅-nos vedado, n茫o s贸 por falta de refer锚ncias, mas tamb茅m porque o pr贸prio texto trabalha num modo auto-referencial muito joyciano.
Sobre a profundidade da an谩lise da psicologia humana, algo caro a Nabokov, um estudioso da psicologia e muito cr铆tico da fantochada de Freud, veja-se o seguinte descrito do que responde Fyodor a um potencial cr铆tico do seu livro:
鈥淎o princ铆pio queria escrever-lhe uma carta a agradecer, sabe, com uma refer锚ncia comovente ao meu pouco m茅rito e assim por diante, mas depois pensei que dessa forma iria introduzir um odor humano intoler谩vel no dom铆nio da liberdade de opini茫o. E al茅m disso, se escrevi um bom livro, era a mim que devia agradecer e n茫o a si, tal como voc锚 deve agradecer a si pr贸prio e n茫o a mim por compreender o que 茅 bom, n茫o 茅 verdade? Se nos pomos com v茅nias um ao outro, ent茫o, logo que um pare, o outro sentir-se-谩 magoado e ir-se-谩 embora vexado.鈥� (p.339)
No final questiono-me se o t铆tulo portugu锚s 茅 o melhor, mas por mais que procure, as interpreta莽玫es s茫o tantas que n茫o 茅 poss铆vel dizer muito, a n茫o ser talvez que o t铆tulo em ingl锚s d谩-se melhor 脿s m煤ltiplas leituras. No ingl锚s (鈥淭he Gift鈥�) pode significar Dom mas pode significar tamb茅m Prenda, e se o nosso t铆tulo atira imediatamente ao virtuosismo do escritor, o ingl锚s permite ainda apontar para a homenagem 脿 Literatura Russa, funcionando este livro como uma prenda de Nabokov em modo de despedida, j谩 que este seria o seu 煤ltimo livro escrito em russo.
Publicado no VI, com imagens e links, em
(Dei 5 estrelas, embora o prazer da minha leitura, tendo apenas em conta o livro em si, chegue apenas 脿s 4. Terei de o ler uma segunda vez, depois de realizar mais algumas leituras, para poder entrar mais dentro do livro e assim chegar a uma absor莽茫o mais completa do todo.)
[Imagem]
[Publicado no VI, com imagens e links, em ]
N茫o conhecia todos os enunciados, faltava-me Puchkin e Tchernichevski, e por isso s茫o os livros que se seguem, embora sejam dois autores em p贸los opostos, ou seja, se Puchkin 茅 o grande pai das letras russas, Tchernichevski 茅 n茫o s贸 desconhecido fora da R煤ssia, como 茅 aqui totalmente ridicularizado. Mas deixarei o meu coment谩rio sobre o cap铆tulo inteiro que se lhe dedica para quando acabar de ler o livro de Tchernichevski, que entretanto j谩 comecei e em poucas p谩ginas deu para quase compreender Nabokov. Digo quase porque tenho de confessar que me custou ler Nabokov, um dos meus autores de refer锚ncia, num discurso de critica ad hominem. Ali谩s, n茫o 茅 por acaso que o cap铆tulo n茫o foi publicado aquando da primeira edi莽茫o da obra em 1938. Ainda que perceba a qualidade muito baixa de Tchernichevski, s贸 consigo compreender esta rea莽茫o de Nabokov pelo car谩ter pol铆tico que o livro de Tchernichevski adquiriu, ou porque o pr贸prio Nabokov exerce uma cr铆tica constante mesmo a si pr贸prio como podemos ver no seguinte di谩logo (Nabokov n茫o gostava de Dostoi茅vski e era admirador de Flaubert):
鈥渆u tenho gostos diferentes, h谩bitos diferentes; o seu Fet, por exemplo, n茫o posso suport谩-lo, e por outro lado sou um ardente admirador do autor de O Duplo e de Os Possessos, a quem voc锚 parece disposto a faltar ao鈥� H谩 muito em si que n茫o gosto, o seu estilo de S茫o Petersburgo, a sua tara gaulesa, o seu neo-voltaireanismo e o fraco por Flaubert鈥︹€� (p.342)
[Imagem]
As fotografias de Nabokov recordam-me sempre Hitchcock mas tamb茅m a personalidade que ambos pareciam possuir 鈥� de estarem sempre prontos a pregar uma partida a algu茅m!
Existe um enredo amoroso no livro a que Nabokov faz refer锚ncia no pref谩cio, diga-se semi-explicativo da obra, mas 茅 um romance imensamente subtil, ainda que venha dar, em parte, resposta ao t铆tulo. A ess锚ncia do livro assenta no processo descritivo do mundo aos olhos de um jovem autor russo, recentemente emigrado para Berlim, 脿 procura de se afirmar enquanto escritor, e nesse sentido, apesar de Nabokov dizer nesse pref谩cio que n茫o 茅 Fyodor, 茅 ele quem ali vemos representado. Mais uma aproxima莽茫o a Proust, que descreve o mundo atrav茅s dos olhos de Marcel sem nunca dar conta de qualquer liga莽茫o com este. Ali谩s, na primeira parte o tom 茅 bastante pr贸ximo do livro autobiogr谩fico de Nabokov, 鈥淔ala Mem贸ria鈥�, que s贸 viria a escrever anos mais tarde. E j谩 agora, a meio do livro acontece algo no m铆nimo estranho, ou talvez n茫o, que 茅 uma descri莽茫o breve do enredo de 鈥淟olita鈥� (1955), seguida de uma refer锚ncia do protagonista que me obrigou a parar e ir verificar datas, dizendo 鈥溍� estranho, pare莽o lembrar-me dos meus trabalhos futuros鈥�. Ou seja, o romance existia muitos anos antes na cabe莽a de Nabokov.
Para se poder entender este texto, j谩 disse que conhecer os autores acima 茅 relevante mas 茅 tamb茅m relevante lerem mais sobre a obra 鈥� a sua data de cria莽茫o, a vida de Nabokov, a sua fuga da R煤ssia, a pol铆tica do pa铆s 鈥� e para tal recomendo vivamente o livro de Yuri Leving 鈥淜eys to the Gift: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov's Novel鈥�. Leving criou um comp锚ndio das m煤ltiplas abordagens poss铆veis 脿 interpreta莽茫o mas n茫o 茅 preciso lerem tudo, basta que leiam as entradas que mais vos interessarem. As chaves apresentadas por Leving v茫o desde a cria莽茫o e publica莽茫o da obra ao contexto hist贸rico do pa铆s e da literatura, passando pela an谩lise da estrutura 鈥� altamente detalhada nos seus constituintes de t铆tulo, enredo, narrativa, cen谩rio, personagens, tema 鈥� ou do estilo, forma e m茅todo, ou ainda da rece莽茫o cr铆tica nas diferentes 茅pocas, e muito mais. Digo que n茫o 茅 preciso ler tudo, porque o texto de Nabokov est谩 t茫o carregado de s铆mbolos e subtextos que tentar compreender tudo est谩 apenas ao alcance de um labor intenso, fazendo deste uma boa obra para a realiza莽茫o de trabalhos acad茅micos no campo da literatura.
Deixo uma breve explica莽茫o estrutural. O livro come莽a com um cap铆tulo de contextualiza莽茫o da vida de Fyodor em Berlim, que aos poucos nos vai dando conta da sua vida passada em S茫o Petersburgo, dos amigos deixados e dos novos entretanto criados. Nesta primeira fase Fyodor s贸 escreve poemas. No segundo cap铆tulo Fyodor recorda o pai, que tal como o pai de Nabokov morreu quando este tinha cerca de 25 anos, o cap铆tulo 茅 intenso e belo, e segundo os cr铆ticos segue o estilo de Puchkin. No terceiro cap铆tulo temos uma mudan莽a de espa莽o e o encontro com a amada, a escrita 茅 menos embelezada mas mais escorreita, o estilo mudou novamente porque agora 茅 Gogol que Nabokov nos d谩. O quarto 茅 o tal cap铆tulo banido, n茫o segue propriamente Tchernichevski, j谩 que a abordagem 茅 profundamente sat铆rica, mas 茅 completamente diferente de tudo o que veio antes e vir谩 no 煤ltimo. Por fim, voltamos ao nosso her贸i Fyodor e a Zina, com o mundo a desejar recompor-se e a querer criar espa莽o para que o esp铆rito do artista possa florescer.
O livro termina mais uma vez homenageando Proust, j谩 que 茅 dado a entender que o livro que lemos ser谩 o que Fyodor escreveu, e tal como em Proust, cria-se uma urg锚ncia por voltar ao in铆cio e reiniciar a leitura, reler tudo com um novo olhar, capaz de ler mais dentro das m煤ltiplas camadas que protegem o sentir de Nabokov em 鈥淥 Dom鈥�, j谩 que 茅 inevit谩vel sentirmos ao longo de toda a leitura que muito do que vamos lendo 茅-nos vedado, n茫o s贸 por falta de refer锚ncias, mas tamb茅m porque o pr贸prio texto trabalha num modo auto-referencial muito joyciano.
Sobre a profundidade da an谩lise da psicologia humana, algo caro a Nabokov, um estudioso da psicologia e muito cr铆tico da fantochada de Freud, veja-se o seguinte descrito do que responde Fyodor a um potencial cr铆tico do seu livro:
鈥淎o princ铆pio queria escrever-lhe uma carta a agradecer, sabe, com uma refer锚ncia comovente ao meu pouco m茅rito e assim por diante, mas depois pensei que dessa forma iria introduzir um odor humano intoler谩vel no dom铆nio da liberdade de opini茫o. E al茅m disso, se escrevi um bom livro, era a mim que devia agradecer e n茫o a si, tal como voc锚 deve agradecer a si pr贸prio e n茫o a mim por compreender o que 茅 bom, n茫o 茅 verdade? Se nos pomos com v茅nias um ao outro, ent茫o, logo que um pare, o outro sentir-se-谩 magoado e ir-se-谩 embora vexado.鈥� (p.339)
No final questiono-me se o t铆tulo portugu锚s 茅 o melhor, mas por mais que procure, as interpreta莽玫es s茫o tantas que n茫o 茅 poss铆vel dizer muito, a n茫o ser talvez que o t铆tulo em ingl锚s d谩-se melhor 脿s m煤ltiplas leituras. No ingl锚s (鈥淭he Gift鈥�) pode significar Dom mas pode significar tamb茅m Prenda, e se o nosso t铆tulo atira imediatamente ao virtuosismo do escritor, o ingl锚s permite ainda apontar para a homenagem 脿 Literatura Russa, funcionando este livro como uma prenda de Nabokov em modo de despedida, j谩 que este seria o seu 煤ltimo livro escrito em russo.
Publicado no VI, com imagens e links, em
(Dei 5 estrelas, embora o prazer da minha leitura, tendo apenas em conta o livro em si, chegue apenas 脿s 4. Terei de o ler uma segunda vez, depois de realizar mais algumas leituras, para poder entrar mais dentro do livro e assim chegar a uma absor莽茫o mais completa do todo.)
July 13, 2020
The beginning and end of this book are great. The middle section went over my head鈥攊t is crammed full of insufficiently explained details about classical Russian authors, what they have written and their respective styles. One must be an expert on Russian literature to fully grasp that which is inferred. The writing here is elliptical, abstruse, as far from clear as one can get. The middle section is almost impossible to make sense of. This section is a book within a book. Thereafter follows a similarly complicated analysis, a literary critique of the 鈥渂ook within the book鈥� we have just struggled through.
I have now described the bad sections, the sections which were for me annoying because they were unnecessarily confusing. These sections were worthy of only one star.
Now I get to explain what I have liked, what I totally adore in this book. Simply put, I love Nabokov鈥檚 prose--in the good parts, not in the bad. The way he describes people and places and events speaks to me. His manner of writing sparkles. He puts together words in unusual ways. He speaks in colors. His synesthesia influences how he writes. He throws in details that consistently pique my interest or make me smile. You must think about what he says鈥攍ittle is said outright. This is exactly the kind of writing I like.
This s a book of metafiction. The central protagonist, Fyodor, an aspiring author, is a Russian 茅migr茅 living in Berlin. Despite what the 1962 foreword to the book states, the story told is about Nabokov. Consider the book semi-autobiographical. Fyodor test-tries different ideas for books and different writing styles. He writes of his childhood, growing up alongside his sister in St. Petersburg. He writes of his father鈥攈is travels in Siberia, in China, in Yalta. These parts are stunning. Magnificent! In Berlin we meet those of the Russian 茅migr茅 community. He has a clandestine love affair with his landlord鈥檚 stepdaughter. We learn why the affair must be kept secret. Then Fyodor writes what I call 鈥渢hat terrible book鈥�, for which he gets mixed reviews. We learn of what happens with Fyodor and his girlfriend. At the end he writes this book, the book we have in our hands. This book fills the requirements for a book of metafiction to a T!
The audiobook is narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. I have given the narration three stars because although he speaks clearly and it is never hard to follow, I would have preferred a slower tempo. The French words spoken are poorly pronounced.
I have averaged out the one and the five star sections, giving the book three stars.
This book was the last book Nabokov wrote in Russian. He has checked and OKed the translation. For the most part, it was written when he was living in Berlin.
*
* 5 stars
* 5 stars
* 5 stars
* 4 stars
* 3 stars
* 2 stars
* 1 star
* 1 star
* TBR
* TBR
* TBR
* TBR
* TBR
I have now described the bad sections, the sections which were for me annoying because they were unnecessarily confusing. These sections were worthy of only one star.
Now I get to explain what I have liked, what I totally adore in this book. Simply put, I love Nabokov鈥檚 prose--in the good parts, not in the bad. The way he describes people and places and events speaks to me. His manner of writing sparkles. He puts together words in unusual ways. He speaks in colors. His synesthesia influences how he writes. He throws in details that consistently pique my interest or make me smile. You must think about what he says鈥攍ittle is said outright. This is exactly the kind of writing I like.
This s a book of metafiction. The central protagonist, Fyodor, an aspiring author, is a Russian 茅migr茅 living in Berlin. Despite what the 1962 foreword to the book states, the story told is about Nabokov. Consider the book semi-autobiographical. Fyodor test-tries different ideas for books and different writing styles. He writes of his childhood, growing up alongside his sister in St. Petersburg. He writes of his father鈥攈is travels in Siberia, in China, in Yalta. These parts are stunning. Magnificent! In Berlin we meet those of the Russian 茅migr茅 community. He has a clandestine love affair with his landlord鈥檚 stepdaughter. We learn why the affair must be kept secret. Then Fyodor writes what I call 鈥渢hat terrible book鈥�, for which he gets mixed reviews. We learn of what happens with Fyodor and his girlfriend. At the end he writes this book, the book we have in our hands. This book fills the requirements for a book of metafiction to a T!
The audiobook is narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. I have given the narration three stars because although he speaks clearly and it is never hard to follow, I would have preferred a slower tempo. The French words spoken are poorly pronounced.
I have averaged out the one and the five star sections, giving the book three stars.
This book was the last book Nabokov wrote in Russian. He has checked and OKed the translation. For the most part, it was written when he was living in Berlin.
*
* 5 stars
* 5 stars
* 5 stars
* 4 stars
* 3 stars
* 2 stars
* 1 star
* 1 star
* TBR
* TBR
* TBR
* TBR
* TBR
May 26, 2019
My goodness-gracious, this book is one hell of a monster.
It is the ultimate Russian nesting doll of and about art, memory, satire, and "Art". If I wasn't already a huge fan of Nabokov, I probably would have thrown this book across the room.
Nabokov wrote this novel as a tribute to his native language and is the last, and undeniably brilliant, of that period. It is a prime example of a supremely self-satisfied intellectual engorgement. Beautiful turns of phrase, rich and belligerent in its knowledge of the Russian Greats, it waves itself under the noses of anyone who might dare to understand it.
Look. I know my fair share of the greats of Russian Literature, but aside from my Dostoyevski, I'm like a babe in the woods against my Pushkin and Gogol. Coming up against The Gift makes me flail like a flensed man hung from a gibbet. Or like the remaining skin of a man. In Siberia. If I wasn't a dedicated fan of the writer and his gorgeous prose, the brilliant structure, the way he nested his prose within prose within prose and went ALL META on me in a way that made my head spin, I probably would have cut off his self-satisfied intellectual engorgement and thrown it out the window of a moving car.
I both loved and hated this book. I wanted to DNF it because I couldn't follow so much of it. I didn't know enough of any of the poets of the period, let alone a sufficient number of the greats, to know whether Nabokov was MAKING THEM UP OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH a-la . I guess I could look it up, but frankly, I'm happy I'm done and I want to move on. :)
It's definitely going to be right up your alley if you A: love Russian literature, B: love to hear about writers crafting their magnum opuses, C: are tolerant of monstrous egotists. :)
It is the ultimate Russian nesting doll of and about art, memory, satire, and "Art". If I wasn't already a huge fan of Nabokov, I probably would have thrown this book across the room.
Nabokov wrote this novel as a tribute to his native language and is the last, and undeniably brilliant, of that period. It is a prime example of a supremely self-satisfied intellectual engorgement. Beautiful turns of phrase, rich and belligerent in its knowledge of the Russian Greats, it waves itself under the noses of anyone who might dare to understand it.
Look. I know my fair share of the greats of Russian Literature, but aside from my Dostoyevski, I'm like a babe in the woods against my Pushkin and Gogol. Coming up against The Gift makes me flail like a flensed man hung from a gibbet. Or like the remaining skin of a man. In Siberia. If I wasn't a dedicated fan of the writer and his gorgeous prose, the brilliant structure, the way he nested his prose within prose within prose and went ALL META on me in a way that made my head spin, I probably would have cut off his self-satisfied intellectual engorgement and thrown it out the window of a moving car.
I both loved and hated this book. I wanted to DNF it because I couldn't follow so much of it. I didn't know enough of any of the poets of the period, let alone a sufficient number of the greats, to know whether Nabokov was MAKING THEM UP OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH a-la . I guess I could look it up, but frankly, I'm happy I'm done and I want to move on. :)
It's definitely going to be right up your alley if you A: love Russian literature, B: love to hear about writers crafting their magnum opuses, C: are tolerant of monstrous egotists. :)
March 9, 2016
"Dar" recenzija prezentuje kao svojevrsni Bildungsroman i fiktivnu autobiografiju mladoga ruskog pesnika koji 啪ivi u Berlinu 1920-ih godina i kre膰e se u krugu ruskih emigranata koji su napustili Rusiju nakon revolucije i gra膽anskog rata.
Zapravo, re膷 je o demonstraciji knji啪evne sile ovog pisca. 膶as prvo, 膷as tre膰e lice, 膷as poezija, 膷as proza, gomila istorije ruske knji啪evnosti, kritike i aluzija. I Leptiri, leptiri, leptiri.
Kad bolje razmislim, nema bitnijeg dela koje sam pro膷itala, a da ga on ovde nije pomenuo, direktno ili indirektno (a mogu da pretpostavim koliko je onoga 拧to ne vidim).
艩to bi mladi rekli - rokanje!
Upozorenje za one koji tra啪e akciju i fascinaciju: ni u tragovima.
Zapravo, re膷 je o demonstraciji knji啪evne sile ovog pisca. 膶as prvo, 膷as tre膰e lice, 膷as poezija, 膷as proza, gomila istorije ruske knji啪evnosti, kritike i aluzija. I Leptiri, leptiri, leptiri.
Kad bolje razmislim, nema bitnijeg dela koje sam pro膷itala, a da ga on ovde nije pomenuo, direktno ili indirektno (a mogu da pretpostavim koliko je onoga 拧to ne vidim).
艩to bi mladi rekli - rokanje!
Upozorenje za one koji tra啪e akciju i fascinaciju: ni u tragovima.
September 10, 2018
yetenek, nabokov鈥檜n son ve bir莽ok de臒erlendirmeye g枚re en iyi rus莽a roman谋. i莽eri臒iyle yazar谋n berlin鈥檇eki s眉rg眉n/g枚莽menlik g眉nlerine ve yazarl谋臒谋n谋n olu艧ma s眉recine 谋艧谋k tutarken, bi莽imiyle de, 枚zg眉n/s谋ra d谋艧谋 olmay谋 ba艧ar谋yor. daha net ifade etmek gerekirse: i莽inde bir 艧iir kitab谋/艧iir-edebiyat ele艧tirisi, bir geli艧im ve a艧k hikayesi, bir 莽erni艧evski biyografisi ve ayr谋ca bir t眉r roman i莽inde roman bar谋nd谋r谋yor yetenek ve t眉m bunlarla birlikte otobiyografik bir temele dayan谋yor. nabokov鈥檜n romanc谋l谋kta neden ve nas谋l ayr谋 bir yerde durdu臒unu, daha do臒rusu duraca臒谋n谋, edebiyat tarihinde kendine neden e艧siz bir yer edinece臒ini g枚steriyor. nabokov鈥檜n yazarl谋k hikayesi sanki yetenek roman谋n谋n devam谋 gibi ilerleyecek, yazar-kahraman谋m谋z geli艧imini anadilini terk edip bir ba艧ka dilde yeniden var olarak tamamlayacak. belki yetenek de o zaman, lolita鈥檇an, solgun ate艧鈥檛en, ada ya da arzu鈥檇an sonra bak谋ld谋臒谋nda yerini, anlam谋n谋, de臒erini bulacak.
March 17, 2022
The last, longest, and greatest of Nabokov's Russian novels, a project that in some form occupied him for much of the 1930s (published in 1938, Nabokov "ordered its bricks" in 1933), is frequently compared to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but I think it's better, and more ambitious (a rival for Ulysses actually). Nabokov focuses not so much on Fyodor's childhood and youth (although they are powerfully present in the first chapter) as much as on his growth and expansion as a quickly maturing writer, and on his impassioned relation to Russian literary tradition--more interesting processes, and much harder to render dramatically. This novel's ingenuity is unbounded. It communicates the essence of Nabokov's art, and displays his total mastery.
Shelved as 'dropped'
January 8, 2021Read the first part. Nabokov at his most intolerably arch, self-regarding, pore-clogging, and fustian.
December 9, 2019
鈥淚 want to keep everything as it were on the very brink of parody. You know those idiotic 鈥渂iographies les romancees鈥� where Byron is cooly slipped a dream extracted from one of his own poems? And there must be on the other hand an abyss of seriousness, and I must make my way along the narrow ridge between my own truth and a caricature of it. And most essentially there must be a single uninterrupted progression of thought. I must peel my apple in a single strip, without removing the knife鈥�. So tells Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the protagonist of the 鈥淕ift鈥� to his lover about his forthcoming novella. In my view, this is a pretty accurate summary what is 鈥淭he Gift鈥� as whole actually. But he definitely saved my time and effort in coming up with something half as elegant as this phrase.
Probably, it is not surprising in this case to find such an accurate description of the novel within the novel. Nabokov always plays games with his readers. 鈥淭he Gift鈥� is metafictional in its core. It contains numerous long and short, intertwined and stand alone narratives and poems. The young Fyodor, an emigre and former Russian aristocrat finds himself in Weimar Berlin where he tries to polish his gift as an inspiring writer. The book consists of five parts, and three of those parts are finished and not quite pieces of work by Fyodor. It starts with his poems, follows with his unfinished investigation into the work and fate of his father, the natural scientist and the traveller (of course, plenty of butterflies are in there). It culminates in an study or a short biography of Chernyshevsky, the Russian writer and revolutionary thinker of a sort who was the one of the founders of Social Democratic movement. The rest of the book is Fyodor鈥檚 life, thoughts about literature and surroundings, and the mystery of the process of creation.
The concepts of a biography and a parody stitches this novel into the whole as a strong thread. Fyodor refers to a parody for the Chernyshevsky鈥檚 piece only. But I could not help but think that it applies to the novel as whole. Specifically, in two earlier pieces by Fyodor, Nabokov parodies an attempt by the young author to develop his craft and his skills of self-criticism. The verses of the first part I found particularly underwhelming. It was jolly good when Nabokov used his well known skill of painting with memory in the bits of prose, but those memories, even beautifully written, did not raise any response in me either. They were dear to Fyodor, but too banal and without appeal to me. The really successful witty bits were those when Fyodor was thinking about potential reviews of his work and was in imaginary conversations with his opponents.The second part about his father was plain boring. That is if you are not into butterflies like me. Again, I hope it was partly the author鈥檚 intention to show that effort was going nowhere with Fyodor. But it was a hard work to read.
Now, fortunately, we are coming to the stuff I liked. In the foreword, Nabokov is saying that the main 鈥渉eroine is not Zina (Fyodor鈥檚 girlfriend), but Russian literature.鈥�. And it is truly the case. Through Fyodor鈥檚 thoughts, Nabokov takes the readers into the excursion through the contemporary Russian literature and criticism starting from Pushkin and ending with Bely and the others. As always with Nabokov, he does not hold punches for those who he does not like (which is the majority). But the comments are always witty and incorporated well into the text. To give just one example, Dostoyevsky 鈥渞eminds a room with an electrical light switched on during the daytime.鈥�
Apart from the main 3 texts produced by Fyodor, there are many more incorporated into the texture of the novel: the extracts from newspapers, real and not, the book reviews, numerous poems and studies. Nabokov, as Joyce never uses the quotation marks. So it is impossible to trace directly what comes from other sources and what he devices specifically for this book. But it is a part of the game. Unless they are metafictional reviews, many of these texts are biographical - memories of Fyodor鈥檚 childhood, the story of Fyodor alter ego, Yasha, the travels of his father. Apparently, it was an era of biographical novels in a style Zweig and others in Europe and Tynyanov in Russia. In these novels, the author put himself into the shoes of the main character and associated strongly with him. These authors took a licence to imagine their characters and create their fictional portraits adding imaginary details to their lives. Fyodor (and presumably Nabokov) hated this. On the other hand, Fyodor was fascinated what happened to the Russian literature in the 60s of 19th century when it went downhill. Therefore Fyodor decided to create a biography of Chernyshevsky solely by compilation of existing sources. The idea was not to add fictional or psychological insights, but only comment on the existing diaries by Chernyshevsky and the documents created by his contemporaries. As a result, Fyodor came up with a spiteful, comic and slightly absurd compilation which portrays Chernyshevsky as an accident prone, not very profound, but courageous person who was just a toy in the hands of his fate. This portrait was very different from the generally accepted one. Respectively, in real life Nabokov鈥檚 publishers refused to accept this part. Though Fyodor, his character, was more successful. Again in this part especially, Nabokov does not attribute any writing, but almost all the text has been traced by Nabokov鈥檚 followers back to the sources. Amazing how a skilful writer with an agenda can create a narrative out of facts of someone else life and how vulnerable practically anyone could be in his skilful hands. However, Fyodor does not manage to answer his main question: he does not manage to explain how such an 鈥渕ediocre鈥� personality has influenced the revolutionary movement in Russia to such an extent.
In spite of sometimes being infuriated with Nabokov鈥檚 snobbery (characteristically related to the 鈥渘atives鈥�- Germans and his literary enemies), in spite of being bored by the verses of the first part, I enjoyed this novel as a whole. There were two main sources of joy for me. The first one is seeing the world through Fyodor鈥檚 eyes, to be a witness of his fight to create and grasping with his gift. Nabokov is very good in 鈥渟eeing鈥� the multitude of our reality and he knows this. For example, in one scene, Fyodor thinks what he would want to teach the others. And his example is simultaneous appreciation of someone鈥檚 character, the detail of a scene and a reminisce of his own past. I think, later it was called 鈥渃osmic synchronisation in prose鈥�.
Another joy was a sheer intellectual one - to understand the structure of this beast and to hunt for many little clues and references to other authors he left in the text. For example, in the foreword to English edition he says: 鈥淚 wonder how far the imagination of the reader would follow the young lovers after they鈥檝e been dismissed.鈥� Well, the matter is that So yes, one has to come up with the imaginative solution for this one. And the harder one which I am still not sure about. A gifted poet, another character of the novel says: 鈥� real writer should ignore all readers but one, that of the future reader, who in his turn is merely the author reflected in time.鈥� In fact, in Russian it is even more strong. Literally it is 鈥渞eal writer would spite on the readers鈥� which would be more correctly translated 鈥渞eal writer does not give a damn about the readers.鈥� But this is not my puzzle. I know this about Nabokov. The puzzle is what does he mean by 鈥渢he future reader is the author reflected in time鈥�? I have a few ideas but I keep puzzling.
And the structure is the total aesthetic pleasure by itself. He hints again talking about Chernyshevsky bit that he wants 鈥渃omposing his biography in a shape of a ring, closed with the clasp of apocryphal sonnet (so the result would be not the form of a book, which is in its finiteness is opposed to the circular nature of everything鈥檚 existence, but a continuously curving, and this infinite, sentence).鈥� And of course he does it with 鈥淭he Gift鈥�. In the early part Fyodor sees the picture of a naked woman holding her own portrait. In the last part, Fyodor is talking about a new novel he wants to write about his life which is obviously a reference to the one I鈥檝e just finished.
协褌芯 锌芯褋谢械写薪懈泄 褉芯屑邪薪 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁邪 薪邪锌懈褋邪薪薪褘泄 锌芯-褉褍褋褋泻懈. 袠 蟹写械褋褜 斜褘谢懈 胁械褖懈, 泻芯褌芯褉褘械 屑薪械 锌芯薪褉邪胁懈谢懈褋褜. 袧芯 胁褋械 褉邪胁薪芯 褟 锌褉械写锌芯褔懈褌邪褞 械谐芯 褉芯屑邪薪褘 锌芯-邪薪谐谢懈泄褋泻懈. 袨褋芯斜械薪薪芯 鈥溞懶恍敌葱窖嬓� 芯谐芯薪褜鈥�. 孝邪屑 - 褌芯褌 卸械 薪邪斜芯褉 懈写械泄, 薪芯 胁褋械 褋写械谢邪薪芯 谐芯褉邪蟹写芯 斜芯谢械械 懈蟹褟褖薪芯. 袟写械褋褜 芯褔械薪褜 屑薪芯谐芯 褋邪屑芯谢褞斜芯胁邪薪懈褟 懈 锌褉褟屑芯 褌邪泻懈 芯褌泻褉褘褌芯谐芯 褋薪芯斜懈蟹屑邪, 褔褌芯 薪邪写芯械写邪械褌. 袝褋褌褜 泻芯薪械褔薪芯 谐械薪懈邪谢褜薪褘械 屑械褋褌邪. 袧芯 械褋褌褜 懈 褔械褉械褋褔褍褉. 袧邪锌褉懈屑械褉 褋褌懈褏懈 胁 锌械褉胁芯泄 褔邪褋褌懈 斜邪薪邪谢褜薪褘 写芯 薪械谢褜蟹褟. 袠谢懈 褋泻芯谢褜泻芯 锌褉懈谢邪谐邪褌械谢褜薪褘褏 薪邪锌褉懈屑械褉 屑褘 懈屑械械屑 胁 褝褌芯泄 褎褉邪蟹械 芦袠, 懈写褟 褔械褉械蟹 屑芯谐懈谢褜薪芯-褉芯褋泻芯褕薪褘泄 褋邪写, 屑懈屑芯 卸懈褉薪褘褏 泻谢褍屑斜, 谐写械 胁 斜谢邪卸械薪薪芯屑 褍褋锌械薪懈懈 褑胁械谢懈 斜邪褋懈褋褌芯-斜邪谐褉褟薪褘械 谐械芯褉谐懈薪褘禄. 携 谢懈褔薪芯 锌褉芯写懈褉邪谢邪褋褜 褔械褉械蟹 "斜邪褋懈褋褌褘械 谐械芯褉谐懈薪褘". 袧芯 胁 褑械谢芯屑, 懈薪褌械褉械褋薪芯 斜褘谢芯 锌褉芯褔懈褌邪褌褜 懈 芯泻褍薪褍褌褜褋褟 胁 锌芯谢械屑懈泻褍 褌芯谐芯 锌械褉懈芯写邪, 锌芯褋屑芯褌褉械褌褜, 泻褌芯 薪邪 薪械谐芯 锌芯胁谢懈褟谢, 懈 泻邪泻 芯薪 胁谢懈褟械褌 薪邪 褋谢械写褍褞褖懈械 锌芯泻芯谢械薪懈褟 锌懈褋邪褌械谢械泄.
Probably, it is not surprising in this case to find such an accurate description of the novel within the novel. Nabokov always plays games with his readers. 鈥淭he Gift鈥� is metafictional in its core. It contains numerous long and short, intertwined and stand alone narratives and poems. The young Fyodor, an emigre and former Russian aristocrat finds himself in Weimar Berlin where he tries to polish his gift as an inspiring writer. The book consists of five parts, and three of those parts are finished and not quite pieces of work by Fyodor. It starts with his poems, follows with his unfinished investigation into the work and fate of his father, the natural scientist and the traveller (of course, plenty of butterflies are in there). It culminates in an study or a short biography of Chernyshevsky, the Russian writer and revolutionary thinker of a sort who was the one of the founders of Social Democratic movement. The rest of the book is Fyodor鈥檚 life, thoughts about literature and surroundings, and the mystery of the process of creation.
The concepts of a biography and a parody stitches this novel into the whole as a strong thread. Fyodor refers to a parody for the Chernyshevsky鈥檚 piece only. But I could not help but think that it applies to the novel as whole. Specifically, in two earlier pieces by Fyodor, Nabokov parodies an attempt by the young author to develop his craft and his skills of self-criticism. The verses of the first part I found particularly underwhelming. It was jolly good when Nabokov used his well known skill of painting with memory in the bits of prose, but those memories, even beautifully written, did not raise any response in me either. They were dear to Fyodor, but too banal and without appeal to me. The really successful witty bits were those when Fyodor was thinking about potential reviews of his work and was in imaginary conversations with his opponents.The second part about his father was plain boring. That is if you are not into butterflies like me. Again, I hope it was partly the author鈥檚 intention to show that effort was going nowhere with Fyodor. But it was a hard work to read.
Now, fortunately, we are coming to the stuff I liked. In the foreword, Nabokov is saying that the main 鈥渉eroine is not Zina (Fyodor鈥檚 girlfriend), but Russian literature.鈥�. And it is truly the case. Through Fyodor鈥檚 thoughts, Nabokov takes the readers into the excursion through the contemporary Russian literature and criticism starting from Pushkin and ending with Bely and the others. As always with Nabokov, he does not hold punches for those who he does not like (which is the majority). But the comments are always witty and incorporated well into the text. To give just one example, Dostoyevsky 鈥渞eminds a room with an electrical light switched on during the daytime.鈥�
Apart from the main 3 texts produced by Fyodor, there are many more incorporated into the texture of the novel: the extracts from newspapers, real and not, the book reviews, numerous poems and studies. Nabokov, as Joyce never uses the quotation marks. So it is impossible to trace directly what comes from other sources and what he devices specifically for this book. But it is a part of the game. Unless they are metafictional reviews, many of these texts are biographical - memories of Fyodor鈥檚 childhood, the story of Fyodor alter ego, Yasha, the travels of his father. Apparently, it was an era of biographical novels in a style Zweig and others in Europe and Tynyanov in Russia. In these novels, the author put himself into the shoes of the main character and associated strongly with him. These authors took a licence to imagine their characters and create their fictional portraits adding imaginary details to their lives. Fyodor (and presumably Nabokov) hated this. On the other hand, Fyodor was fascinated what happened to the Russian literature in the 60s of 19th century when it went downhill. Therefore Fyodor decided to create a biography of Chernyshevsky solely by compilation of existing sources. The idea was not to add fictional or psychological insights, but only comment on the existing diaries by Chernyshevsky and the documents created by his contemporaries. As a result, Fyodor came up with a spiteful, comic and slightly absurd compilation which portrays Chernyshevsky as an accident prone, not very profound, but courageous person who was just a toy in the hands of his fate. This portrait was very different from the generally accepted one. Respectively, in real life Nabokov鈥檚 publishers refused to accept this part. Though Fyodor, his character, was more successful. Again in this part especially, Nabokov does not attribute any writing, but almost all the text has been traced by Nabokov鈥檚 followers back to the sources. Amazing how a skilful writer with an agenda can create a narrative out of facts of someone else life and how vulnerable practically anyone could be in his skilful hands. However, Fyodor does not manage to answer his main question: he does not manage to explain how such an 鈥渕ediocre鈥� personality has influenced the revolutionary movement in Russia to such an extent.
In spite of sometimes being infuriated with Nabokov鈥檚 snobbery (characteristically related to the 鈥渘atives鈥�- Germans and his literary enemies), in spite of being bored by the verses of the first part, I enjoyed this novel as a whole. There were two main sources of joy for me. The first one is seeing the world through Fyodor鈥檚 eyes, to be a witness of his fight to create and grasping with his gift. Nabokov is very good in 鈥渟eeing鈥� the multitude of our reality and he knows this. For example, in one scene, Fyodor thinks what he would want to teach the others. And his example is simultaneous appreciation of someone鈥檚 character, the detail of a scene and a reminisce of his own past. I think, later it was called 鈥渃osmic synchronisation in prose鈥�.
Another joy was a sheer intellectual one - to understand the structure of this beast and to hunt for many little clues and references to other authors he left in the text. For example, in the foreword to English edition he says: 鈥淚 wonder how far the imagination of the reader would follow the young lovers after they鈥檝e been dismissed.鈥� Well, the matter is that So yes, one has to come up with the imaginative solution for this one. And the harder one which I am still not sure about. A gifted poet, another character of the novel says: 鈥� real writer should ignore all readers but one, that of the future reader, who in his turn is merely the author reflected in time.鈥� In fact, in Russian it is even more strong. Literally it is 鈥渞eal writer would spite on the readers鈥� which would be more correctly translated 鈥渞eal writer does not give a damn about the readers.鈥� But this is not my puzzle. I know this about Nabokov. The puzzle is what does he mean by 鈥渢he future reader is the author reflected in time鈥�? I have a few ideas but I keep puzzling.
And the structure is the total aesthetic pleasure by itself. He hints again talking about Chernyshevsky bit that he wants 鈥渃omposing his biography in a shape of a ring, closed with the clasp of apocryphal sonnet (so the result would be not the form of a book, which is in its finiteness is opposed to the circular nature of everything鈥檚 existence, but a continuously curving, and this infinite, sentence).鈥� And of course he does it with 鈥淭he Gift鈥�. In the early part Fyodor sees the picture of a naked woman holding her own portrait. In the last part, Fyodor is talking about a new novel he wants to write about his life which is obviously a reference to the one I鈥檝e just finished.
协褌芯 锌芯褋谢械写薪懈泄 褉芯屑邪薪 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁邪 薪邪锌懈褋邪薪薪褘泄 锌芯-褉褍褋褋泻懈. 袠 蟹写械褋褜 斜褘谢懈 胁械褖懈, 泻芯褌芯褉褘械 屑薪械 锌芯薪褉邪胁懈谢懈褋褜. 袧芯 胁褋械 褉邪胁薪芯 褟 锌褉械写锌芯褔懈褌邪褞 械谐芯 褉芯屑邪薪褘 锌芯-邪薪谐谢懈泄褋泻懈. 袨褋芯斜械薪薪芯 鈥溞懶恍敌葱窖嬓� 芯谐芯薪褜鈥�. 孝邪屑 - 褌芯褌 卸械 薪邪斜芯褉 懈写械泄, 薪芯 胁褋械 褋写械谢邪薪芯 谐芯褉邪蟹写芯 斜芯谢械械 懈蟹褟褖薪芯. 袟写械褋褜 芯褔械薪褜 屑薪芯谐芯 褋邪屑芯谢褞斜芯胁邪薪懈褟 懈 锌褉褟屑芯 褌邪泻懈 芯褌泻褉褘褌芯谐芯 褋薪芯斜懈蟹屑邪, 褔褌芯 薪邪写芯械写邪械褌. 袝褋褌褜 泻芯薪械褔薪芯 谐械薪懈邪谢褜薪褘械 屑械褋褌邪. 袧芯 械褋褌褜 懈 褔械褉械褋褔褍褉. 袧邪锌褉懈屑械褉 褋褌懈褏懈 胁 锌械褉胁芯泄 褔邪褋褌懈 斜邪薪邪谢褜薪褘 写芯 薪械谢褜蟹褟. 袠谢懈 褋泻芯谢褜泻芯 锌褉懈谢邪谐邪褌械谢褜薪褘褏 薪邪锌褉懈屑械褉 屑褘 懈屑械械屑 胁 褝褌芯泄 褎褉邪蟹械 芦袠, 懈写褟 褔械褉械蟹 屑芯谐懈谢褜薪芯-褉芯褋泻芯褕薪褘泄 褋邪写, 屑懈屑芯 卸懈褉薪褘褏 泻谢褍屑斜, 谐写械 胁 斜谢邪卸械薪薪芯屑 褍褋锌械薪懈懈 褑胁械谢懈 斜邪褋懈褋褌芯-斜邪谐褉褟薪褘械 谐械芯褉谐懈薪褘禄. 携 谢懈褔薪芯 锌褉芯写懈褉邪谢邪褋褜 褔械褉械蟹 "斜邪褋懈褋褌褘械 谐械芯褉谐懈薪褘". 袧芯 胁 褑械谢芯屑, 懈薪褌械褉械褋薪芯 斜褘谢芯 锌褉芯褔懈褌邪褌褜 懈 芯泻褍薪褍褌褜褋褟 胁 锌芯谢械屑懈泻褍 褌芯谐芯 锌械褉懈芯写邪, 锌芯褋屑芯褌褉械褌褜, 泻褌芯 薪邪 薪械谐芯 锌芯胁谢懈褟谢, 懈 泻邪泻 芯薪 胁谢懈褟械褌 薪邪 褋谢械写褍褞褖懈械 锌芯泻芯谢械薪懈褟 锌懈褋邪褌械谢械泄.
June 8, 2022
Nabokov in Berlin, 1930's
This is slow, but good stuff. As I work through Nabokov鈥榮 novels, this was easily the weighty-est so far. There is a lot in here, like everything - poetry, Pushkin, Gogol, a complete biography of Chernyshevsky (!), literary commentary, critics, death, love, language, commentary on Nazi Germany - all here. It was also his last Russian language novel.
The novel is about a young Russian 茅migr茅 author who just published his first book in Germany, a book of Russian poetry that sells a few dozen copies. He works as a language tutor, mostly for Germans learning English, which gives him just enough money, when he's responsible, to rent a room. As our book progresses, he interacts with literary 茅migr茅s in Berlin, meets a girl, Zina, who loves his book of poetry and falls for him and helps him write a biography Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. What? You haven't heard of Chernyshevsky? He was part of the Russia intellectual community in the 1860's, an era of reform in Russian, and when all that great Russian literature was appearing. Chernyshevsky was a proto-Communist, noted by Marx, and highly regarded by Lenin. Despite his caution, he was arrested, given a mock execution and sent to life-long exile in different parts of Siberia. Our protagonist is maybe less than reverential of his subject, making for some curious reading (the entire biography of Chernyshevsky is contained within), and ruffling many features throughout the fictional 茅migr茅 community. His sales go up.
But this is just the surface. This book itself becomes an introspective look at misunderstood poetry, and at language, a love letter to certain era and mentality in a lost Russia, and a love story - all this with parallels to Nabokov's own life, even if he strongly denies the resemblance in his introduction. The opening chapter, a long musing on poetry, is some work for the reader to hack through. But then he switches to the narrator's lost father, a disconnected obsessive butterfly collector. This is also slow, but beautifully written and rewarding as his admiration pores out. Later the love story makes for simply great reading. Nabokov, in his translation introduction, claims a heavy influence from the Russian greats. He calls one chapter "a surge toward Pushkin", another a "shift to Gogol", and he claims the book's "heroine is not Zina, but Russian Literature." (with a capital 'L').
When one his favorite older 茅migr茅 acquaintances dies, Nabokov goes uncharacteristically almost spiritual talking about death and life. On death:
"Fear gives birth to sacred awe, sacred awe erects a sacrificial altar, its smoke ascends to the sky, there assumes the shape of wings, and bowing fear addresses a prayer to it. Religion has the same relationship to man鈥榮 heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game."And on life:
"...the unfortunate image of a 鈥渞oad鈥� to which the human mind has become accustomed (life is a kind of journey) is a stupid allusion: we are not going anywhere, we are sitting at home. The other world surrounds us always and is not at all at the end of some pilgrimage. In our earthly house, windows are replaced by mirrors; the door, until a given time, is closed; but air comes through the cracks."
This book mostly closes the chapter on Nabokov's Russian literary output, and it seems to know that, as it practically seems to take everything he neglected to put into his previous novels and collect it all in place here, a document of writer's life to this point (if not his protagonist's). Highly recommended for Nabokov enthusiasts, but for others I can only recommend this to the brave and those willing to hack through the slow stuff to find the beauty within. But it really does reward. I enjoyed this.
-----------------------------------------------
62. The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov
Translation: from Russian, by Michael Scammell, with the author, 1963
published: 1937
format: 391-page paperback
acquired: June
read: Nov 25 鈥� Dec 23
time reading: 17 hr 45 min, 2.9 min/page
rating: 4陆
locations: Berlin
about the author: 1899 鈥� 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922. Lived in Berlin (1922-1937), Paris, the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).
May 3, 2020
Iniziato, senza capirci niente, dieci anni fa. Poi lasciato, poi recuperato per caso in questa quarantena e solo per questo benedetta fu.
Difficile spiegare i perch猫 di un libro al tempo stesso ostico e godibile. Nabokov 猫 uno scrittore esigentissimo, pretende lettori che corrispondano al suo maniacale, ossessivo rapporto con ci貌 che scrive.
Questo libro non 猫 mai ci貌 che sembra essere: 猫 la storia di F毛dor Godunov-膶erdyncev, un giovane scrittore russo esiliato a Berlino durante gli anni '20, dopo la rivoluzione russa. Nel primo capitolo seguiamo le vicende del giovane F毛dor che riflette sulla sua magra produzione letteraria, un libro di poesie dedicate alla sua infanzia, scritto secondo una eco circolare che segue la peripezia di un pallone perduto e infine ritrovato. Orfano di padre, per貌, F毛dor si convince di scrivere un romanzo sulle vicende del padre, l'esploratore, naturalista, entomologo Kostantin Godunov-膶erdyncev. Persona affascinante ed enigmatica, costantemente in viaggio, famoso in tutto il mondo e scomparso, probabilmente morto, durante la sua ultima spedizione nelle steppe dell'Asia, in coincidenza con la rivoluzione russa. Questa storia occupa un altro intero, lungo capitolo. Ma il libro non vedr脿 mai la luce; troppo carico di emozioni il ricordo del padre. Nel frattempo F毛dor si innamora di Zina, la giovane figlia di un'altra coppia di espatriati presso cui prende alloggio, dopo un forzato trasloco, sempre a Berlino. Prende finalmente corpo il suo primo romanzo, la biografia romanzata del critico letterario ottocentesco Nikolaj 膶erny拧evskij, circonfuso di un alone di sacro rispetto e di cui lui scrive invece una caustica ma documentatissima anti-agiografia. Questo libro 猫 interamente riportato in un capitolo del libro (dunque libro nel libro, il secondo a non contare il libro di poesie, scritto secondo un movimento circolare che inizia e finisce con lo stesso sonetto).
Questa opera suscita una certa reazione nel milieu degli intellettuali della diaspora russo-zarista, scandalizzato e in parte ammirato. La partenza dei padroni di casa permette inoltre a F毛dor di poter finalmente abbracciare l'amata Zina. In un fantastico, onirico ultimo capitolo finiamo per capire che F毛dor ha in animo di scrivere un ultimo libro centrato sulle circostanze che lo hanno portato a conoscere Zina e che quel libro 猫 proprio il libro che abbiamo in mano. Con un ultimo movimento circolare.
Impossibile spiegare gli innumerevoli raffinatissimi passaggi che costellano il libro, le storie nelle storie (post-moderno puro ma 20 anni prima di Pynchon), la raffinatissima conoscenza della letteratura russa, i giochi di nomi e coincidenze, la densa riflessione metaletteraria.
La quantit脿 di temi toccata con profondit脿 nel libro (rapporto padre-figlio, uomo-natura, ragione-intuizione) 猫 quasi inumana: anche se tutto viene attinto quasi di taglio, sempre trasversalmente.
Libro eccezionale di un autore eccezionale.
Per alcune (bellissime) riflessioni sul libro (che necessitano, per essere apprezzate, di aver letto il libro) consiglio:
Difficile spiegare i perch猫 di un libro al tempo stesso ostico e godibile. Nabokov 猫 uno scrittore esigentissimo, pretende lettori che corrispondano al suo maniacale, ossessivo rapporto con ci貌 che scrive.
Questo libro non 猫 mai ci貌 che sembra essere: 猫 la storia di F毛dor Godunov-膶erdyncev, un giovane scrittore russo esiliato a Berlino durante gli anni '20, dopo la rivoluzione russa. Nel primo capitolo seguiamo le vicende del giovane F毛dor che riflette sulla sua magra produzione letteraria, un libro di poesie dedicate alla sua infanzia, scritto secondo una eco circolare che segue la peripezia di un pallone perduto e infine ritrovato. Orfano di padre, per貌, F毛dor si convince di scrivere un romanzo sulle vicende del padre, l'esploratore, naturalista, entomologo Kostantin Godunov-膶erdyncev. Persona affascinante ed enigmatica, costantemente in viaggio, famoso in tutto il mondo e scomparso, probabilmente morto, durante la sua ultima spedizione nelle steppe dell'Asia, in coincidenza con la rivoluzione russa. Questa storia occupa un altro intero, lungo capitolo. Ma il libro non vedr脿 mai la luce; troppo carico di emozioni il ricordo del padre. Nel frattempo F毛dor si innamora di Zina, la giovane figlia di un'altra coppia di espatriati presso cui prende alloggio, dopo un forzato trasloco, sempre a Berlino. Prende finalmente corpo il suo primo romanzo, la biografia romanzata del critico letterario ottocentesco Nikolaj 膶erny拧evskij, circonfuso di un alone di sacro rispetto e di cui lui scrive invece una caustica ma documentatissima anti-agiografia. Questo libro 猫 interamente riportato in un capitolo del libro (dunque libro nel libro, il secondo a non contare il libro di poesie, scritto secondo un movimento circolare che inizia e finisce con lo stesso sonetto).
Questa opera suscita una certa reazione nel milieu degli intellettuali della diaspora russo-zarista, scandalizzato e in parte ammirato. La partenza dei padroni di casa permette inoltre a F毛dor di poter finalmente abbracciare l'amata Zina. In un fantastico, onirico ultimo capitolo finiamo per capire che F毛dor ha in animo di scrivere un ultimo libro centrato sulle circostanze che lo hanno portato a conoscere Zina e che quel libro 猫 proprio il libro che abbiamo in mano. Con un ultimo movimento circolare.
Impossibile spiegare gli innumerevoli raffinatissimi passaggi che costellano il libro, le storie nelle storie (post-moderno puro ma 20 anni prima di Pynchon), la raffinatissima conoscenza della letteratura russa, i giochi di nomi e coincidenze, la densa riflessione metaletteraria.
La quantit脿 di temi toccata con profondit脿 nel libro (rapporto padre-figlio, uomo-natura, ragione-intuizione) 猫 quasi inumana: anche se tutto viene attinto quasi di taglio, sempre trasversalmente.
Libro eccezionale di un autore eccezionale.
Per alcune (bellissime) riflessioni sul libro (che necessitano, per essere apprezzate, di aver letto il libro) consiglio:
May 18, 2010
Includes: Hunting expeditions in Tibet; fake executions; nude sunbathing; mysterious disappearances; Siberian exiles; three-way suicide pacts; left-wing censorship; recurring ghosts; Russian emigre life in Berlin; an affecting love story; the secrets of fictional composition; and much, much more. One of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces.
January 12, 2024
Maestoso, tutto in questo libro 猫 di livello irraggiungibile.
February 15, 2015
Please see website for the full review
Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art: Vladimir Nabokov
The Gift is Nabokov鈥檚 greatest and most important work-it is Nabokov鈥檚 most poetic novel, in which he develops the themes central to his work and philosophy; the ability of art to capture and recreate the miracle of consciousness, of parental, romantic and platonic love, of the wonders of childhood and the importance of individuality and the ephemerality in comparison to the endless void of death. The Gift is the clearest distillation of Nabokov鈥檚 humanist philosophy, of his aesthetic preferences and acts as a kind of guide book on happiness; it teaches us about the wonders of a sunbeam on a desolate park bench, to incandescent blueness of the eyes of a person we love, the beauty of a verse by Pushkin and shows us that life is miraculous beyond any words if only we would open our eyes and see. It is Nabokov鈥檚 gift to the world.
BEAUTY
The Miracle of Conciousness
The novel begins with the description of an everyday scene; a couple are moving into a new flat and the narrator quips, 鈥淪omeday, I must use that scene to start a good old fashioned novel.鈥� The reason as to why the narrator would use this scene is explained further down the page, 鈥淟ined with lindens of medium size, with hanging droplets of rain distributed among their intricate black twigs according to the future arrangements of leaves (tomorrow each drop would contain a green pupil; complete with a smooth tarred surface some thirty feet across and variegated sidewalks (hand-built and flattering to the feet) it rose at a barely perceptible angle, beginning with the post office and ending with the church, like an epistolary novel.鈥� Nabokov is attempting to reveal the quiddity of the most quotidian things; he is drawing our eyes to the beauty beneath the most everyday scenes and objects, the budding of a leaf and the reflection of the sky in a dusty mirror: 鈥淎s he crossed towards the pharmacy at the corner he involuntary turned his head because a burst of light that had ricocheted from his temple, and saw, with that quick smile with which we greet a rainbow or a rose, a blindingly white parallelogram of sky being unloaded from the van-a dresser with mirror across which, as across a cinema screen passed a flawlessly clear reflection of boughs sliding and swaying, not arboreally, but with human vacillation, produced by the nature of those who were carrying the sky, these boughs, this gliding fa莽ade.鈥�
Nabokov鈥檚 musings on the beauty of the world and the wonders of life reach their crescendo in his lyrical evocations towards the end of the book; 鈥淭he sun played on various objects along he right side of the street, like a magpie picking out the tiny things that glittered: and at the end of it, where it was crossed by the wide ravine of a railroad, a cloud of locomotive steam suddenly appeared from the right of the bridge, disintegrated against its iron ribs, then immediately loomed white again on the other side and wavily streamed away through the gaps in the trees.鈥� Via his lyrical language and charming solecisms Nabokov is able to pay homage to life and consciousness and that most ephemeral of things: the present, forever trapped between the inexorable walls of the future and the past, whose fleetingness can only be captured via the鈥�
The intransigence of memory
The narrator states, 鈥淚t is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age 鈥搒trange, strange are the mishaps of memory.鈥� For Nabokov our memory, like nature, could be deceitful and has to power to deceive us, to trick us into believing something is more beautiful than it actually was or vice versa, the only way to overcome this is via art and its ability to recapture the wonders of consciousness, the beauty behind a sunset or the smile of a woman we love, and, unlike Proust, Nabokov felt that we could only reconstruct the past via conscious effort, not involuntarily. 鈥淭he theory that I find most tempting-that there is no time, that everything is the present situated like a radiance outside our blindness.鈥� For Nabokov memory and the imagination were intertwined-every time we remember something we go about imagining it too, because our memory is merely us consciously reimagining the past in accordance to the innumerable flights of our imagination. Great art, or in this case literature, is the purest and most distilled form of imagination possible, which leads us to鈥�
The power of art
Despite the inability of the imagination to truly recapture the past, the imitation which Fyodor is able to conjure up is a thing of wondrous beauty; 鈥淓ach of his poems iridesces with harlequin colours鈥�. Fyodor ponders whether any readers will notice the boundless beauty which lay within his work, the secret messages which were disguised via the words , images and metaphors that made up his poems, as he observes, 鈥淲hile he had been musing over his poems, rain had lacquered the street from end to end. The van had gone and in the spot where its tractor had recently stood, there remained next to the sidewalk a rainbow of oil, with the purple predominant and prune-like twist. Asphalt鈥檚 parakeet.鈥� Fyodor has several imaginary conversations with the artists Koncheyev and Vladimirov (both stand ins for Nabokov circa 1925) in which they discuss Russian literature and art in general. Fyodor has very definite tastes in literature, though Koncheyev points out that even supposedly worthless writers such as Dostoevsky have worthwhile elements and passages that Fyodor is too myopic in his literary tastes and myopia is the most inartistic of human qualities. And yet how to describe the joy which art brings is-that tell-tale tinge along the spine-or in its innate ability to, like magic, recapture and relive memories and emotions. For Fyodor, the question as to whether words can truly capture emotions drives him when he is writing his poetry (鈥渕odels of your future novels鈥� according to Koncheyev), Fyodor feels it can and it is one of his artistic purposes to do so; 鈥淭he oft repeated complaints of poets that, alas, no words are available, that words are incapable of expressing our thingummy-bob feelings (and to prove it a torrent of trochaic hexameters is let loose) seemed to him just as senseless as the staid conviction of the eldest inhabitant of a mountain hamlet that yonder mountain has never been climbed by anyone and never will be.鈥� Fyodor, like Humbert Humbert, may only have words to play with, but those words are Fyodor鈥檚 gateway in capturing鈥�
The wonders of childhood
The narrator then thinks about the joy brought about the publication of his poetry, poems about childhood, about finding a lost ball or the drive to the dentists, yet the true importance of the poetry doesn鈥檛 lie in the subject matter, which is merely the vehicle by which the narrator is able to express, 鈥淭he strategy of inspiration and the tactics of the mind, the flesh of poetry and the spectre of translucent prose.鈥� Further than the narrator is celebrating the wonders of childhood and the insatiable curiosity it brings, of the uniqueness of every childhood and of how art is able to transmute our individual perceptions of the world into something tangible and universal; 鈥渢he author ought on the one hand to generalize reminisces by selecting elements typical of any successful childhood-hence their seeming obviousness; and on the other hand he has allowed only his genuine quiddity to penetrate into his poems-hence their seeming fastidiousness.鈥� For the narrator, in documenting the events of his own childhood he is able to both celebrate the uniqueness of his own experiences but also of others-after all which one of didn鈥檛, as a child, felt disconsolate about a lost ball or desultorous about the dreaded trip to the dentist? The true artist is able to capture both the particular and the universal-in many ways this is Nabokov鈥檚 rejoinder to old fraud Freud, who chose to cloak childhood behind a phalanx of meaningless symbols and banal sexual theories, whereas Freud wished to fashion human consciousness according to his own neuroses, Nabokov wanted to celebrate the uniqueness of each individual existence and the ability of art to capture this. Another major Nabokovian theme is鈥�
The beauty of the natural world
For Nabokov, books whose descriptions of nature were static and clich茅d were completely inartistic. He frequently railed against books such as Don Quixote or eighteenth century literature (鈥渢he most inartistic of centuries鈥�), because as a result of their picaresque and one-dimensional renderings of the natural world they failed to recapture or recreate the limitless bounty which nature, and thus life, has to offer. For Nabokov truly great art opens our eyes to the limitless beauty of the world, the inexhaustible potential of an existence, in which spider-webs are transformed into a shimmering rainbow as in Chekhov or pink hawthorns into a bridal train as in Proust, where clouds are not white but pink, snow is blue and the sea and sky coalesce into one as in a Turner painting. Everybody sees the world in different ways, the very concept of 鈥榬ealist鈥� literature or 鈥榦bjective reality鈥� was abhorrent to Nabokov, who valued the individual and particular and the artists ability to render their own unique outlooks on life and the world. Few writers were able to render nature as beautifully and completely as Nabokov; 鈥淔arther on it became very nice: the pines had come into their own, and beneath their pinkish, scaly trunks the feathery foliage of the low rowans and vigorous greenery of oaks broke the stripiness of the pinewood sun into an animated dapple.鈥� And 鈥溾€fter being made transparent by the strength of the light, it was now assimilated to the shimmering of the summer forest with its satiny pine needles and heavenly-green leaves, with its ants running over the transfigured, most radiant-hued wool of the laprobe, with its birds, smells, hot breath of nettles and spermy odour of sun-warmed grass, with its blue sky where droned a high-flying plane that seemed filmed over with blue dust, the blue essence of the firmament.鈥� And yet whilst nature is beautiful, without people its beauty is inherently empty-after all even Nabokov鈥檚 most poignant depictions of nature are still populated with people (however insignificant) and with people comes鈥�
The wonders of love
Fyodor reminisces about his first love, a pale, pathetic and gentle woman, whose chestnut hair and black eyes still haunt him until he meets Zina Mertz, whose philistine family he lodges with. At first they hardly talk, as he cautiously observe her over the breakfast table; 鈥淪he hardly spoke to him, although by certain signs-not so much by the pupils of her eyes as by their lustre that seemed slanted at him-he felt that she was noticing every glance of his and that all her movements were restricted by the lightest shrouds of that very impression she was producing on him; and because it seemed completely impossible to him that he should have any part in her life, he suffered when he detected anything particularly enchanting in her and was glad and relieved when he glimpsed some flaw in her beauty. Her pale hair which radiantly and imperceptibly merged into the sunny air around her head, the light blue vein on her temple, another on her long, tender neck, her delicate hand, her sharp elbow, the narrowness of her hips, the weakness of her shoulders and peculiar forward slant of her graceful body, as if he floor over which, gathering speed like a skater, she hastened was always sloping away towards the haven of the chair or table on which lay the object she sought-all this was perceived by him with agonize distinctness. 鈥� She knocks on his door and insouciantly asks him to sign her copy of his poetry book, her impertinence driven perhaps by her attraction to him and her desire to keep this attraction a secret from her family. Gradually they meet in secret and their relationship develops and blossoms beautifully as Fyodor imbues every glance, every look, from the imperceptible bristles of hair on her forearm to the limpidity of her eyes or their shared love of literature and outlooks on life. They are finally able to be together without any kind of interruption from her parents, who conveniently relocate to Copenhagen and he is able to bask in the gentle warmth her presence brings to him, a salve to the loneliness which had punctuated his life before her met her; 鈥淎s they walked down the street he felt a quick tremor along his spine, and again that emotional constraint, but now in a different languorous form. It was a twenty minutes slow walk to the house, and the air, the darkness and the honeyed scent of blooming lindens caused a suckling ache at the base of his chest. The scent evanesced in the stretch from linden to linden, being replaced there by a black freshness, and then again, beneath the next canopy, and oppressive and heavy cloud would accumulate, and Zina would say, tensing her nostrils, 鈥楢h, smell it鈥欌€�.
There is also the love Fyodor feels for his parents. His parents are intrinsically linked to his love of art-for example his father鈥檚 love of Pushkin; and the serene, happy and almost conversationless walks with his mother, which inspires him to write a book on Pushkin, a book which he never finishes and in fact never really begins. Fyodor has a deep love for his father, whose individuality, indifference to public opinions and love of freedom, art and nature he hopes to emulate. He imagines what it must have been like on the trips his father took when he was exploring China; 鈥淥nly in China is the early mist so enchanting鈥s into any abyss, the river runs into the murk of prematutinal twilight that still hangs in the gorges, while higher up, along flowing waters, all glimmers and scintillates, and quite a company of blue magpies has already awakened in the willows by the mill.鈥� He thinks about his last farewell to his father, gradually his reminiscences coalesce with his present as he notes the fauna surrounding him as his father, who was a great naturalist, would; he puts his fist on a tree and bursts into tears, as he realises his father is irrevocably lost to him and all he has left of him is the memories of their time together, a precious gift, but shallow in comparison to the gift of hearing his father鈥檚 voice or hear him talking about his expeditions.
He thinks back to his mother鈥檚 visit the previous year after a 3 year absence ; 鈥減owdered to a deathly pallor, wearing black gloves and black stockings and an old seal-skin coat thrown open, she had descended the iron steps of the coach, glancing with equal quickness first at him and then what was underfoot, and the next moment, her face twisted with the pain of happiness, was clinging to him鈥t had seemed to him that the beauty of which he had been so proud had faded, but as his vision adjusted itself to the twilight of the present, so different at first from the distantly receding light of memory, he once again recognized in her everything he had loved .鈥� Nevertheless the spectre of his father鈥檚 death haunts the both of them, a grief too sad to put in words punctuated by the na茂ve hope that he may in fact still be alive somewhere, that maybe one day he will turn up again in Berlin or Paris or Petersburg or anywhere and come back into their lives, to fill in the endless chasm which his death has opened up in their lives, which leads us on to鈥�
PITY and
The irrevocability of death
Memory, art, the powers of the imagination and sacredness of childhood are all important themes within Nabokov鈥檚 work, yet as Nabokov stated, art is beauty plus pity and we are about to feel pity for the pathetic Chernyshevskis. Fyodor is introduced to them after Mrs Chernyshevski noticed a passing resemblance between him and her dead son. Fyodor thinks any such resemblance is purely superficial, however is touched by their melancholy, by their anguish over the death of their son, the victim of a suicide in a banal love affair, Mr Chernyshevski, half crazed with grief, still sees an apparition of his son wondering around the flat. Before Fyodor leaves the flat he experiences a kind of epiphany, 鈥淎nd now they began gradually to grow less distinct, to ripple with the random agitation of a fog, and then to vanish altogether; their outlines, weaving in figure-eight patterns, were evaporating though here and there a bright point still glowed-the cordial glint in an eye, the gleam of a bracelet鈥nd at the very last there was a floating glimpse of pistachio-coloured straw, decorated with silk roses and now everything was gone, and into the smoky parlour, without sound, in his bedroom slippers, came Yasha, thinking his father had already retired, and with a magic tinkling, by the light of crimson lanterns, dim beings were repairing the corner of the pavement鈥︹€� This coalescment of life with death and the ability of art to, if not wholly overcome than to at least traverse the spectre of death are further developed in the relationship between Fyodor and his father, who went missing whilst exploring and is presumed dead.
Fyodor鈥檚 forlorn hope, that his father is still alive and that he will perhaps one day meet him again, links him to lachrymose Chernyshevski who, like Fyodor is followed be the ghost of a loved one, though, unlike Fyodor, Chernyshevski is unable to differentiate between reality and his imagination. Yet, Fyodor ponders upon an aura his father had about him, as if he knew a profound secret, a secret known to very few people, the secret of consciousness and the ability of the mind to cheat and overcome the purely physical sensation of dying. Fyodor later ponders whether this is merely a flight of fancy, a sentimental embellishment of his father鈥檚 aura, after all just before Chernyshevski passes away (and who in the novel was closer to the world of dead than him?) he confirms that after death there is nothing. Yet a feeling still lingers on, that perhaps his father did know how to cheat death, on a spiritual if not physical level, and perhaps Fyodor himself has or is able to develop this gift via his literature. Perhaps his sharing of this knowledge via his art is his gift to the world, yet it is a gift which only few will ever know, appreciate or take pleasure in as he undergoes the
The feeling that his art will be forever unappreciated or misunderstood
More than this, however, Fyodor is disappointed that his art will never be known, that he will forever remain obscure, doubly obscure even, his homeland would be forever closed to him and his sole audience would consist of the Russian 茅migr茅 community, most of whom, as Koncheyev points out, will never truly understand him. The only fame he will ever have is a kind of local literary fame, hard to gain and easy to lose. And yet beyond this Fyodor deeply feels鈥�
The loneliness of exile
And it鈥檚 utter displacement-Fyodor can never revisit the places he writes about in his poems, they only exist within his memory, which will only ever be a pale imitation of his past life, the fact that the garden of his past will be forever closed to him via the unsurmountable gate of political exile-he imagines one day revisiting Leshino;
August 3, 2015
Il manifesto dell'identit脿 intellettuale di Nabokov (e molto altro)
Il dono segna la fine della prima fase della produzione letteraria di Nabokov, e la storia della sua pubblicazione 猫 abbastanza contorta. Fu infatti scritto in russo nell'ultimo periodo della permanenza dell'autore a Berlino, tra il 1935 e il 1937, ed apparve a puntate negli anni successivi, su una rivista dell'emigrazione russa a Parigi, in una edizione non integrale. Solo nel 1952 vide la luce integralmente a New York, essendosi l'autore ormai da tempo trasferito prima in Gran Bretagna e poi negli USA, e nel 1963 fu tradotto in inglese (con revisione dello stesso Nabokov). Questa edizione Adelphi 猫 condotta sul testo originale russo.
Le peripezie editoriali del libro ben si adattano alla complessit脿 del testo: Il dono 猫 infatti una sorta di autobiografia romanzata dei primi anni berlinesi dell'autore, nella quale sono comprese altre due storie, quella del padre del protagonista e un 鈥渓ibro鈥� su Nikolaj 膶erny拧evskij, lo scrittore e pensatore rivoluzionario dell'ottocento russo autore di Che fare?, scritto dal protagonista de Il dono.
Queste due storie, che occupano rispettivamente quasi tutto il secondo e l'intero quarto capitolo dei cinque in cui 猫 suddiviso Il dono sono le colonne su cui si fondano due delle tematiche fondamentali sviluppate nel libro (tematiche peraltro sempre presenti nell'opera di Nabokov, almeno del Nabokov russo: la nostalgia per la Russia prerivoluzionaria 鈥� associata ad un profondo disprezzo per la Russia sovietica 鈥� e la polemica (che anche in questo caso sfocia nel disprezzo) nei confronti dell'arte utilitaristica, realista, volta all'impegno civile, rappresentata in sommo grado 鈥� nell'immaginario dell'intelligentsia russa di inizio '900, proprio dall'opera di 膶erny拧evskij.
Accanto a questi due temi portanti, che Nabokov sviluppa lungo tutto il libro, Il dono contiene anche una sferzante satira sull'ambiente dell'immigrazione intellettuale russa a Berlino, ci mostra il disprezzo (ancora!) di Nabokov per la citt脿 e la mentalit脿 tedesca in genere, ci fa conoscere nuclei familiari gretti e meschini o sconvolti da tragedie personali, ci narra della nascita dell'amore del protagonista per una giovane russa e ci espone la sua completa dedizione all'opera dei grandi poeti russi romantici e simbolisti, Pu拧kin e Blok sopra tutti.
Il tributo a Pu拧kin emerge sin dal nome scelto da Nabokov per il protagonista, F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 Godunov-膶erdincev: egli 猫 da poco giunto a Berlino, all'inizio degli anni '20, ed ha pubblicato un primo volume di poesie dedicate alla sua agiata e serena infanzia russa, che ha tuttavia venduto poche decine di copie. A Berlino frequenta, oltre ai circoli letterari degli emigranti, anche la casa dei 膶erny拧evskij (significativamente una famiglia con il cognome dello scrittore ottocentesco), il cui unico figlio, Ja拧a, aspirante poeta, si 猫 da poco suicidato. Il secondo capitolo del libro 猫 in gran parte dedicato alla rievocazione del padre, famoso entomologo ed esploratore, che non 猫 pi霉 tornato da un viaggio in Asia nel periodo della rivoluzione, sulla cui figura F毛dor vuole scrivere un libro (che non scriver脿). F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 quindi si innamora, corrisposto, di Zina, la figlia dei suoi nuovi padroni di casa, gretti borghesi antisemiti a loro volta emigrati dalla Russia. Progetta e scrive un libro sulla vita di Nikolaj 膶erny拧evskij, il cui risultato 猫 il contenuto del quarto capitolo. Il libro, tuttavia, mettendo decisamente alla berlina un intellettuale considerato un po' da tutti uno dei massimi rappresentanti della letteratura russa dell'800, prima trova difficolt脿 ad essere edito, quindi riceve molte critiche negative. Nelle ultime pagine, F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 prima partecipa ad una seduta dell'associazione degli scrittori emigrati, nella quale si scontrano diverse correnti la cui unica finalit脿 猫 gestire la cassa, poi ha un divertente incidente mentre fa il bagno al Gr眉newald, infine, approfittando della partenza dei genitori di Zina per Copenhagen, si appresta ad andare a vivere con lei e progetta un nuovo libro, magari da scrivere tra alcuni anni, in cui raccontare la sua vita a Berlino. Questa a grandi linee la trama, che sicuramente non 猫 l'elemento essenziale del libro: facendo i dovuti distinguo, ritengo che Il dono, come struttura, possa essere accostato ad un capolavoro assoluto scritto un decennio prima: L'Ulisse di Joyce. Cos矛 come nella insignificante giornata di Leopold Bloom si dispiega il viaggio esistenziale dell'uomo novecentesco, la sua ricerca di identit脿 di fronte al venir meno di ogni certezza, sublimata nel bisogno di paternit脿, negli anni berlinesi di F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 ci viene mostrato il viaggio intellettuale dell'emigrato Nabokov, la ricerca di una nuova identit脿 fondata sulla nostalgia del paradiso perduto russo e sul recupero di quella parte della sua cultura antecedente alla grande rottura che non ne costituisse il presagio o l'humus letterario. Tra l'altro sembra (anche se nella traduzione di Serena Vitale 猫 a mio avviso difficile trovarne traccia) che ciascuno dei cinque capitoli de Il dono sia stato scritto nello stile di diversi autori russi (Pu拧kin, Gogol', Saltikov 鈥� 艩膷edrin), il che aumenterebbe il tasso delle inquietanti assonanze con il capolavoro di Joyce.
Il dono, l'esaltazione di Pu拧kin, il disprezzo per 膶erny拧evski, certamente quantomeno ingeneroso e secondo me dettato in buona parte dall'ammirazione apertamente espressa da Lenin, non possono quindi a mio avviso essere compresi appieno se non si tiene presente il sostrato di viscerale antibolscevismo che animava Nabokov, gi脿 emerso appieno nei primi racconti, raccolti da Adelphi ne 鈥淟a veneziana鈥�. Sarebbe interessante indagare se la posizione rigidamente individualistica e la sua concezione dell'arte per l'arte, il suo rifiuto di qualsiasi ruolo sociale dell'intellettuale e del suo prodotto siano stati la causa o la conseguenza del suo assoluto rifiuto di comprendere ci貌 che stava avvenendo nel suo Paese.
Al netto di questi presupposti ideologici 猫 indubbio che Il dono sia un libro estremamente affascinate, per la complessit脿 dei temi trattati, per l'efficacia satirica del ritratto impietoso degli intellettuali russi emigrati, per la prosa di Nabokov che sta raggiungendo le vette espressive della maturit脿, per la forza quasi picaresca di alcuni episodi (su tutti quello del bagno al Gr眉newald).
Il libro tra l'altro ha un andamento quasi circolare, e questo 猫 un ulteriore indubbio motivo di fascino, nel senso che la sua fine 猫 anche l'inizio dell'idea del suo racconto da parte di F毛dor Kostantinovi膷. Questa circolarit脿 猫 espressa anche in alcuni episodi apparentemente secondari: Nelle prime pagine l'osservazione di un trasloco fa pensare a F毛dor che quello Sarebbe un buon inizio per un bel romanzo lungo, di quelli che si scrivevano una volta; sia nel primo sia nell'ultimo capitolo vi 猫 una storia di chiavi dimenticate da F毛dor, che gli impediscono di entrare in casa; due (e simmetrici) sono gli incontri che F毛dor immagina di avere con il poeta Kon膷eev. Vi sono poi alcuni episodi anticipatori di Lolita, a testimonianza del fatto che Nabokov sapeva di dover scrivere il suo capolavoro: il colloquio con il patrigno di Zina in cui questo esprime l'idea di scrivere un romanzo su un vecchio che si innamora di una giovanissima, e il modo in cui F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 decide di prendere in affitto la stanza offertagli dai genitori di lei.
Si 猫 discusso molto del fatto se nel personaggio di F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 si rispecchi totalmente il giovane Nabokov: l'autore stesso, nella prefazione all'edizione statunitense, nega recisamente l'identit脿 con il suo personaggio. Io credo che la questione non sia importante: 猫 Il dono nel suo complesso che 猫 Nabokov, un Nabokov ormai pronto per traghettare la sua opera al di l脿 dell'oceano ma che non si 猫 ancora liberato completamente (se mai lo far脿) di alcuni retaggi della sua aristocratica origine.
Il dono segna la fine della prima fase della produzione letteraria di Nabokov, e la storia della sua pubblicazione 猫 abbastanza contorta. Fu infatti scritto in russo nell'ultimo periodo della permanenza dell'autore a Berlino, tra il 1935 e il 1937, ed apparve a puntate negli anni successivi, su una rivista dell'emigrazione russa a Parigi, in una edizione non integrale. Solo nel 1952 vide la luce integralmente a New York, essendosi l'autore ormai da tempo trasferito prima in Gran Bretagna e poi negli USA, e nel 1963 fu tradotto in inglese (con revisione dello stesso Nabokov). Questa edizione Adelphi 猫 condotta sul testo originale russo.
Le peripezie editoriali del libro ben si adattano alla complessit脿 del testo: Il dono 猫 infatti una sorta di autobiografia romanzata dei primi anni berlinesi dell'autore, nella quale sono comprese altre due storie, quella del padre del protagonista e un 鈥渓ibro鈥� su Nikolaj 膶erny拧evskij, lo scrittore e pensatore rivoluzionario dell'ottocento russo autore di Che fare?, scritto dal protagonista de Il dono.
Queste due storie, che occupano rispettivamente quasi tutto il secondo e l'intero quarto capitolo dei cinque in cui 猫 suddiviso Il dono sono le colonne su cui si fondano due delle tematiche fondamentali sviluppate nel libro (tematiche peraltro sempre presenti nell'opera di Nabokov, almeno del Nabokov russo: la nostalgia per la Russia prerivoluzionaria 鈥� associata ad un profondo disprezzo per la Russia sovietica 鈥� e la polemica (che anche in questo caso sfocia nel disprezzo) nei confronti dell'arte utilitaristica, realista, volta all'impegno civile, rappresentata in sommo grado 鈥� nell'immaginario dell'intelligentsia russa di inizio '900, proprio dall'opera di 膶erny拧evskij.
Accanto a questi due temi portanti, che Nabokov sviluppa lungo tutto il libro, Il dono contiene anche una sferzante satira sull'ambiente dell'immigrazione intellettuale russa a Berlino, ci mostra il disprezzo (ancora!) di Nabokov per la citt脿 e la mentalit脿 tedesca in genere, ci fa conoscere nuclei familiari gretti e meschini o sconvolti da tragedie personali, ci narra della nascita dell'amore del protagonista per una giovane russa e ci espone la sua completa dedizione all'opera dei grandi poeti russi romantici e simbolisti, Pu拧kin e Blok sopra tutti.
Il tributo a Pu拧kin emerge sin dal nome scelto da Nabokov per il protagonista, F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 Godunov-膶erdincev: egli 猫 da poco giunto a Berlino, all'inizio degli anni '20, ed ha pubblicato un primo volume di poesie dedicate alla sua agiata e serena infanzia russa, che ha tuttavia venduto poche decine di copie. A Berlino frequenta, oltre ai circoli letterari degli emigranti, anche la casa dei 膶erny拧evskij (significativamente una famiglia con il cognome dello scrittore ottocentesco), il cui unico figlio, Ja拧a, aspirante poeta, si 猫 da poco suicidato. Il secondo capitolo del libro 猫 in gran parte dedicato alla rievocazione del padre, famoso entomologo ed esploratore, che non 猫 pi霉 tornato da un viaggio in Asia nel periodo della rivoluzione, sulla cui figura F毛dor vuole scrivere un libro (che non scriver脿). F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 quindi si innamora, corrisposto, di Zina, la figlia dei suoi nuovi padroni di casa, gretti borghesi antisemiti a loro volta emigrati dalla Russia. Progetta e scrive un libro sulla vita di Nikolaj 膶erny拧evskij, il cui risultato 猫 il contenuto del quarto capitolo. Il libro, tuttavia, mettendo decisamente alla berlina un intellettuale considerato un po' da tutti uno dei massimi rappresentanti della letteratura russa dell'800, prima trova difficolt脿 ad essere edito, quindi riceve molte critiche negative. Nelle ultime pagine, F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 prima partecipa ad una seduta dell'associazione degli scrittori emigrati, nella quale si scontrano diverse correnti la cui unica finalit脿 猫 gestire la cassa, poi ha un divertente incidente mentre fa il bagno al Gr眉newald, infine, approfittando della partenza dei genitori di Zina per Copenhagen, si appresta ad andare a vivere con lei e progetta un nuovo libro, magari da scrivere tra alcuni anni, in cui raccontare la sua vita a Berlino. Questa a grandi linee la trama, che sicuramente non 猫 l'elemento essenziale del libro: facendo i dovuti distinguo, ritengo che Il dono, come struttura, possa essere accostato ad un capolavoro assoluto scritto un decennio prima: L'Ulisse di Joyce. Cos矛 come nella insignificante giornata di Leopold Bloom si dispiega il viaggio esistenziale dell'uomo novecentesco, la sua ricerca di identit脿 di fronte al venir meno di ogni certezza, sublimata nel bisogno di paternit脿, negli anni berlinesi di F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 ci viene mostrato il viaggio intellettuale dell'emigrato Nabokov, la ricerca di una nuova identit脿 fondata sulla nostalgia del paradiso perduto russo e sul recupero di quella parte della sua cultura antecedente alla grande rottura che non ne costituisse il presagio o l'humus letterario. Tra l'altro sembra (anche se nella traduzione di Serena Vitale 猫 a mio avviso difficile trovarne traccia) che ciascuno dei cinque capitoli de Il dono sia stato scritto nello stile di diversi autori russi (Pu拧kin, Gogol', Saltikov 鈥� 艩膷edrin), il che aumenterebbe il tasso delle inquietanti assonanze con il capolavoro di Joyce.
Il dono, l'esaltazione di Pu拧kin, il disprezzo per 膶erny拧evski, certamente quantomeno ingeneroso e secondo me dettato in buona parte dall'ammirazione apertamente espressa da Lenin, non possono quindi a mio avviso essere compresi appieno se non si tiene presente il sostrato di viscerale antibolscevismo che animava Nabokov, gi脿 emerso appieno nei primi racconti, raccolti da Adelphi ne 鈥淟a veneziana鈥�. Sarebbe interessante indagare se la posizione rigidamente individualistica e la sua concezione dell'arte per l'arte, il suo rifiuto di qualsiasi ruolo sociale dell'intellettuale e del suo prodotto siano stati la causa o la conseguenza del suo assoluto rifiuto di comprendere ci貌 che stava avvenendo nel suo Paese.
Al netto di questi presupposti ideologici 猫 indubbio che Il dono sia un libro estremamente affascinate, per la complessit脿 dei temi trattati, per l'efficacia satirica del ritratto impietoso degli intellettuali russi emigrati, per la prosa di Nabokov che sta raggiungendo le vette espressive della maturit脿, per la forza quasi picaresca di alcuni episodi (su tutti quello del bagno al Gr眉newald).
Il libro tra l'altro ha un andamento quasi circolare, e questo 猫 un ulteriore indubbio motivo di fascino, nel senso che la sua fine 猫 anche l'inizio dell'idea del suo racconto da parte di F毛dor Kostantinovi膷. Questa circolarit脿 猫 espressa anche in alcuni episodi apparentemente secondari: Nelle prime pagine l'osservazione di un trasloco fa pensare a F毛dor che quello Sarebbe un buon inizio per un bel romanzo lungo, di quelli che si scrivevano una volta; sia nel primo sia nell'ultimo capitolo vi 猫 una storia di chiavi dimenticate da F毛dor, che gli impediscono di entrare in casa; due (e simmetrici) sono gli incontri che F毛dor immagina di avere con il poeta Kon膷eev. Vi sono poi alcuni episodi anticipatori di Lolita, a testimonianza del fatto che Nabokov sapeva di dover scrivere il suo capolavoro: il colloquio con il patrigno di Zina in cui questo esprime l'idea di scrivere un romanzo su un vecchio che si innamora di una giovanissima, e il modo in cui F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 decide di prendere in affitto la stanza offertagli dai genitori di lei.
Si 猫 discusso molto del fatto se nel personaggio di F毛dor Kostantinovi膷 si rispecchi totalmente il giovane Nabokov: l'autore stesso, nella prefazione all'edizione statunitense, nega recisamente l'identit脿 con il suo personaggio. Io credo che la questione non sia importante: 猫 Il dono nel suo complesso che 猫 Nabokov, un Nabokov ormai pronto per traghettare la sua opera al di l脿 dell'oceano ma che non si 猫 ancora liberato completamente (se mai lo far脿) di alcuni retaggi della sua aristocratica origine.
May 8, 2016
Questo libro 猫 rimasto in attesa quasi due anni sul mio scaffale, nonostante Nabokov sia da sempre uno dei miei autori preferiti. 脠 rimasto in attesa soprattutto perch茅 da pi霉 parti mi veniva indicato come un librone di quelli difficili e che, senza un'adeguata conoscenza della letteratura russa, difficilmente avrei capito tutte le allusioni che l'autore vi aveva inserito. Allora io, in questi due anni, mi sono preparato attentamente, leggendo i miei Tolstoj, i miei Dostoevskij, i miei Gogol', ho scavato nella (sempre troppo poca) letteratura russa tradotta in italiano, con la speranza di capire almeno una buona parte dei riferimenti di Nabokov. Ecco, 猫 servito a ben poco. A fine libro, quando ho letto il saggio in cui Serena Vitale racconta a suo modo "Il dono", ho capito di non aver riconosciuto un buon 80% delle allusioni che Nabokov ha inserito in questo suo librone.
Detto questo, ora che probabilmente avr貌 scoraggiato tutti coloro che vorrebbero leggere "Il dono" di Nabokov e che dalla loro non hanno mai neanche aperto "Guerra e pace", posso aggiungere che non importa. Alla fine il libro di Nabokov 猫 comunque godibile, anche se non si riconoscono tutte le allusioni alla cultura russa. Nabokov, nel suo trasformismo che lo porta a scrivere romanzi sempre molto distanti fra loro 鈥� tanto come forma, quanto come contenuto 鈥�, si lancia in un racconto che a tratti pare molto autobiografico: un emigrato russo nella Berlino degli anni venti affronta la perdita del suo Paese con l'amore per la letteratura (e una passione per i lepidotteri). Ma il libro 猫 a sua volta un contenitore, una scatola in cui tanti racconti si incastrano fra di loro, un labirinto che, giunti al finale, ci riporta esattamente l矛 da dove eravamo partiti.
La maestria di Nabokov viene qui tutta allo scoperto, tanto che mi 猫 parso in certi momenti che due romanzi fondamentalmente avessero "influenzato" l'idea di Nabokov. Il primo 猫 l'Ulisse di Joyce, il secondo La Recherche di Proust. L'Ulisse perch茅 la struttura de "Il dono" 猫 potenzialmente simile: ci troviamo alle prese con un protagonista i cui pensieri e azioni sono in primo piano, e tutto ci貌 che lo circonda viene visto dai suoi occhi e al tempo stesso 猫 il protagonista che cerca di modificarlo. La Recherche perch茅 anche in Nabokov 猫 l'idea del libro stesso ad essere alla base del libro che stiamo leggendo: protagonista e scrittore si mescolano fra loro, e al lettore non resta che capire in questo "sistema a pi霉 livelli", in queste scatole che racchiudono al loro interno altre scatole, dove finisce una storia e dove inizia l'altra. Entrambi, Ulisse e Recherche, hanno poi la stessa caratteristica de "Il dono" di divagare avanti e indietro nel tempo, di riesumare vicende passate su cui il protagonista rimugina e che pian piano presenta al lettore. Ma Nabokov ha uno stile tutto suo (pi霉 stili tutti suoi, a voler essere corretti): "Il dono" non 猫 un flusso di coscienza e non 猫 un testo con frasi descrittive lunghe cinque pagine. La personificazione degli oggetti, la ricerca spasmodica del termine pi霉 rappresentativo, l'uso della lingua in maniera maniacale, fanno di Nabokov uno scrittore che con la singola frase 猫 capace di lasciare il segno nel lettore.
"Il dono" ha per貌 anche un difetto, ed 猫 una pesantezza eccessiva, soprattutto l矛 dove i riferimenti alla letteratura russa iniziano a diventare fondamentali. Leggere questo libro, che nel primo centinaio di pagine sembra essere decisamente scorrevole, si rivela pagina dopo pagina sempre pi霉 pesante, tanto che arrivati ai due terzi del libro vi sembrer脿 di aver scalato una montagna a mani nude.
Detto questo, sicuramente non 猫 il libro giusto per chi Nabokov non l'ha mai letto n茅 per chi non ha una minima conoscenza della letteratura russa. Tutti gli altri, anche senza per forza sapere chi 猫 Cernysevskij (ma almeno Puskin, quello s矛), potranno provare ad affrontare questo mattone, sapendo gi脿 in partenza che richieder脿 un bel po' di fatica e di costanza. Per me rimane comunque il solito Nabokov, quello de "Un mondo sinistro" piuttosto che di "Lolita", l'emigrato russo che, alla maniera di un Dovlatov o di uno Sklovskij, rimpiange con calore la fredda Russia.
Detto questo, ora che probabilmente avr貌 scoraggiato tutti coloro che vorrebbero leggere "Il dono" di Nabokov e che dalla loro non hanno mai neanche aperto "Guerra e pace", posso aggiungere che non importa. Alla fine il libro di Nabokov 猫 comunque godibile, anche se non si riconoscono tutte le allusioni alla cultura russa. Nabokov, nel suo trasformismo che lo porta a scrivere romanzi sempre molto distanti fra loro 鈥� tanto come forma, quanto come contenuto 鈥�, si lancia in un racconto che a tratti pare molto autobiografico: un emigrato russo nella Berlino degli anni venti affronta la perdita del suo Paese con l'amore per la letteratura (e una passione per i lepidotteri). Ma il libro 猫 a sua volta un contenitore, una scatola in cui tanti racconti si incastrano fra di loro, un labirinto che, giunti al finale, ci riporta esattamente l矛 da dove eravamo partiti.
La maestria di Nabokov viene qui tutta allo scoperto, tanto che mi 猫 parso in certi momenti che due romanzi fondamentalmente avessero "influenzato" l'idea di Nabokov. Il primo 猫 l'Ulisse di Joyce, il secondo La Recherche di Proust. L'Ulisse perch茅 la struttura de "Il dono" 猫 potenzialmente simile: ci troviamo alle prese con un protagonista i cui pensieri e azioni sono in primo piano, e tutto ci貌 che lo circonda viene visto dai suoi occhi e al tempo stesso 猫 il protagonista che cerca di modificarlo. La Recherche perch茅 anche in Nabokov 猫 l'idea del libro stesso ad essere alla base del libro che stiamo leggendo: protagonista e scrittore si mescolano fra loro, e al lettore non resta che capire in questo "sistema a pi霉 livelli", in queste scatole che racchiudono al loro interno altre scatole, dove finisce una storia e dove inizia l'altra. Entrambi, Ulisse e Recherche, hanno poi la stessa caratteristica de "Il dono" di divagare avanti e indietro nel tempo, di riesumare vicende passate su cui il protagonista rimugina e che pian piano presenta al lettore. Ma Nabokov ha uno stile tutto suo (pi霉 stili tutti suoi, a voler essere corretti): "Il dono" non 猫 un flusso di coscienza e non 猫 un testo con frasi descrittive lunghe cinque pagine. La personificazione degli oggetti, la ricerca spasmodica del termine pi霉 rappresentativo, l'uso della lingua in maniera maniacale, fanno di Nabokov uno scrittore che con la singola frase 猫 capace di lasciare il segno nel lettore.
"Il dono" ha per貌 anche un difetto, ed 猫 una pesantezza eccessiva, soprattutto l矛 dove i riferimenti alla letteratura russa iniziano a diventare fondamentali. Leggere questo libro, che nel primo centinaio di pagine sembra essere decisamente scorrevole, si rivela pagina dopo pagina sempre pi霉 pesante, tanto che arrivati ai due terzi del libro vi sembrer脿 di aver scalato una montagna a mani nude.
Detto questo, sicuramente non 猫 il libro giusto per chi Nabokov non l'ha mai letto n茅 per chi non ha una minima conoscenza della letteratura russa. Tutti gli altri, anche senza per forza sapere chi 猫 Cernysevskij (ma almeno Puskin, quello s矛), potranno provare ad affrontare questo mattone, sapendo gi脿 in partenza che richieder脿 un bel po' di fatica e di costanza. Per me rimane comunque il solito Nabokov, quello de "Un mondo sinistro" piuttosto che di "Lolita", l'emigrato russo che, alla maniera di un Dovlatov o di uno Sklovskij, rimpiange con calore la fredda Russia.
January 21, 2016
"......but suddenly the unpleasant feeling of lateness was replaced in Fydor's soul by a distinct and somehow outrageously joyful decision not to appear at all for the lesson - to get off at the next stop and return home to his half-read book, to his unworldly cares, to the blissful mist in which his real life floated, to the complex, happy, devout work which had occupied him for about a year already. He knew that today he would receive the payment for several lessons, knew that otherwise he would have to smoke and eat again on credit, but he was quite reconciled to this for the sake of that energetic idleness (everything is here, in this combination), for the sake of the lofty truancy he was allowing himself. And he was allowing it not for the first time. Shy and exacting, living always uphill, spending all his strength in pursuit of the immumerable beings that flashed inside him, as if at dawn in a mythological grove, he could no linger force himself to mix with people either for money or for pleasure, and therefore he was poor and solitary. "
- Vladimir Nabokov (The Gift)
In my journey through books I always glimpsed flashes of myself in the characters. In The Gift, I came across this passage that exactly summerises my life and the lives of several thousand souls like me that lived down the ages and will continue to haunt the forgotten corners of the earth till the end of time.
How many times have I broken away from the 'acceptable' course of daily activities to hide away among the pages of a delightful book or to hold my pen feverishly between my ink-stained fingers and scratch across a page. How many job offers, how many invitations to go shopping, eating, movies I'd given up, how many things I've postponed, people I've forgotten to call because I was lost in wonder at the drama unfolding around me, between the folds of a book.
Oh the bliss, the bliss of swimming, sinking, floating in that abyss, caring nothing, dreaming everything, reading deep into the night, watching the pre-dawn sky trickle into my eyes. The numbing yet sensual joy of floating through the mundanity, of languishing at the office waiting, just waiting for the clock to strike 5.30 to rush out into the arms of magic waiting for me out there. And the inspiration a single book can spawn - the number of things to be made, flavours to be tasted, verses to be recited in soft whispers over and over again, rains to be drenched in, sunsets to be seen, blue-grey starry nights to be touched staining my face with their inky shadows, and the ideas, the stories the countless ones waiting to be captured, tended, fondled, loved and eventually written down.
Reading a book is like hiking to the mountains, each bend opening a new vista of ideas, histories, a new ways of thinking. And this book, despite its complexities, and meanderings, opened to me a new way to accept the way I am and inspired me to continue this madcap path that I've taken.
- Vladimir Nabokov (The Gift)
In my journey through books I always glimpsed flashes of myself in the characters. In The Gift, I came across this passage that exactly summerises my life and the lives of several thousand souls like me that lived down the ages and will continue to haunt the forgotten corners of the earth till the end of time.
How many times have I broken away from the 'acceptable' course of daily activities to hide away among the pages of a delightful book or to hold my pen feverishly between my ink-stained fingers and scratch across a page. How many job offers, how many invitations to go shopping, eating, movies I'd given up, how many things I've postponed, people I've forgotten to call because I was lost in wonder at the drama unfolding around me, between the folds of a book.
Oh the bliss, the bliss of swimming, sinking, floating in that abyss, caring nothing, dreaming everything, reading deep into the night, watching the pre-dawn sky trickle into my eyes. The numbing yet sensual joy of floating through the mundanity, of languishing at the office waiting, just waiting for the clock to strike 5.30 to rush out into the arms of magic waiting for me out there. And the inspiration a single book can spawn - the number of things to be made, flavours to be tasted, verses to be recited in soft whispers over and over again, rains to be drenched in, sunsets to be seen, blue-grey starry nights to be touched staining my face with their inky shadows, and the ideas, the stories the countless ones waiting to be captured, tended, fondled, loved and eventually written down.
Reading a book is like hiking to the mountains, each bend opening a new vista of ideas, histories, a new ways of thinking. And this book, despite its complexities, and meanderings, opened to me a new way to accept the way I am and inspired me to continue this madcap path that I've taken.
February 6, 2024
4.5 stars. A very well written, character based novel about the Russian immigrant community in Berlin after World War One. There are two story threads. One is the maturation of Fyodor, as a gifted writer. The other is his love affair with Zina, also a Russian immigrant.
The part of the novel describing in detail Fyodor鈥檚 father is particularly compassionate and memorable. Fyodor explores the writings of Gogol and Pushkin.
This novel is a demanding read with little plot momentum.
There are many beautifully written, thoughtful sentences, for example:
鈥極ne night between sunset and river on the old bridge we stood, you and I. Will you ever forget it, I queried. that parallel swift that went by? And you answered so earnestly: Never! And what sobs made us suddenly shiver, what a cry life emitted in 鈥榝light! Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever, you and I on the old bridge one night.鈥�
Highly recommended. A book to reread.
The author, in the novel preface, states that the novel is about Russian literature and not about himself. However, the novel reads like an autobiography, particularly in the first half of the book. For example, Fyodor鈥檚 father is a lepidopterist and Fyodor also takes an interest in butterflies and moths.
This book was first published in Russian in 1938.
The part of the novel describing in detail Fyodor鈥檚 father is particularly compassionate and memorable. Fyodor explores the writings of Gogol and Pushkin.
This novel is a demanding read with little plot momentum.
There are many beautifully written, thoughtful sentences, for example:
鈥極ne night between sunset and river on the old bridge we stood, you and I. Will you ever forget it, I queried. that parallel swift that went by? And you answered so earnestly: Never! And what sobs made us suddenly shiver, what a cry life emitted in 鈥榝light! Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever, you and I on the old bridge one night.鈥�
Highly recommended. A book to reread.
The author, in the novel preface, states that the novel is about Russian literature and not about himself. However, the novel reads like an autobiography, particularly in the first half of the book. For example, Fyodor鈥檚 father is a lepidopterist and Fyodor also takes an interest in butterflies and moths.
This book was first published in Russian in 1938.
June 28, 2022
Per leggere Nabokov ti devi immergere tra i flutti del suo oceano narrativo. Parole e frasi che brillano di poesia e complessit脿. Ogni paragrafo 猫 un gioiello. L'intreccio si perde nella complessit脿 delle parentesi (tonde, quadre, graffe ecc.) che metaforicamente compongono la struttura del testo. In questo caso gli abissi acquatici che il lettore 猫 chiamato a solcare ed esplorare sono quelli della letteratura russa. Un'immersione in piena regola, ti senti a volte quasi spaesato, solo, di fronte a una massa d'acqua che ti sovrasta e che non riesci interamente a decifrare, nonostante la dimestichezza in materia. Uno stupendo intermezzo 猫 rappresentato anche dall'altro grande amore dell'autore: l'entomologia (v. il capitolo 3) e qui pare davvero di sfogliarle certe pagine di Pri拧vin, ti inerpichi tra i boschi dell'estremo oriente, alla ricerca di nuove specie di lepidotteri...
E' un libro che richiede la matita tra le dita, ti serve per segnare quel che serve, e qui ce n'猫 parecchio (linee orizzontali, verticali, punti, cerchi...), per evidenziare il marasma di elegantissimi pensieri e di taglienti citazioni che vorresti sempre avere pronte, alla bisogna, sulla punta della lingua ma che - ahim猫 - sai gi脿 che richiedono una padronanza della sintassi che forse non 猫 nelle tue corde...
E' un libro che richiede la matita tra le dita, ti serve per segnare quel che serve, e qui ce n'猫 parecchio (linee orizzontali, verticali, punti, cerchi...), per evidenziare il marasma di elegantissimi pensieri e di taglienti citazioni che vorresti sempre avere pronte, alla bisogna, sulla punta della lingua ma che - ahim猫 - sai gi脿 che richiedono una padronanza della sintassi che forse non 猫 nelle tue corde...
March 9, 2023
Avrei dovuto dare quattro stelle perch茅 ho trovato leggermente ostico il quarto capitolo; tuttavia, la splendida scrittura di Nabokov ha avuto la meglio.
March 2, 2021
Este livro foi a minha primeira incurs茫o na bibliografia de Nabokov, e n茫o posso dizer que tenha sido uma experi锚ncia memor谩vel. N茫o estou, no entanto, a dizer que o livro 茅 mau; muito pelo contr谩rio, acredito que seja um livro 贸timo - mas quem, como eu, n茫o est谩 familiarizado com a cultura russa e, especificamente, com a sua literatura (que no meu caso desconhe莽o completamente com a exce莽茫o de um par de livros de e outro de ) fica necessariamente completamente perdido. Desde as infind谩veis discuss玫es sobre as val锚ncias liter谩rias , e , 脿 minibiografia (altamente cr铆tica) do escritor e pensador , este livro 茅 uma declara莽茫o de amor 脿 sua p谩tria e 脿s suas letras maternas. Declara莽茫o de amor cujas nuances se perderam completamente, inegavelmente pela minha falta de conhecimento no campo. Aparentemente cada um dos cinco cap铆tulos foi escritos no estilo de um not贸rio autor russo - Pushkin, Gogol, entre outros - facto do qual permaneci completamente ignorante at茅 ter acabado a leitura e come莽ar a ver algumas avalia莽玫es no 欧宝娱乐.
A hist贸ria resume-se rapidamente: centra-se no personagem principal, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, um escritor em in铆cio de carreira no seu caminho para o reconhecimento liter谩rio. Uma trama lateral descreve tamb茅m o seu romance com Zina, filha dos seus senhorios e incans谩vel apoiante dos seus projetos.
Fiquei sem d煤vida com vontade de explorar mais Nabokov (da pr贸xima vez talvez um romance que n茫o requeira conhecimentos profundos da literatura russa). Apesar de estar perdido durante quase toda a dura莽茫o do livro, 茅 um livro que tem os seus momentos. O estilo de escrita 茅 bastante complicado mas altamente cativante, e apanha-se-lhe o jeito passado algum tempo de ambienta莽茫o . Talvez me dedique ao , da pr贸xima vez.
A hist贸ria resume-se rapidamente: centra-se no personagem principal, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, um escritor em in铆cio de carreira no seu caminho para o reconhecimento liter谩rio. Uma trama lateral descreve tamb茅m o seu romance com Zina, filha dos seus senhorios e incans谩vel apoiante dos seus projetos.
Fiquei sem d煤vida com vontade de explorar mais Nabokov (da pr贸xima vez talvez um romance que n茫o requeira conhecimentos profundos da literatura russa). Apesar de estar perdido durante quase toda a dura莽茫o do livro, 茅 um livro que tem os seus momentos. O estilo de escrita 茅 bastante complicado mas altamente cativante, e apanha-se-lhe o jeito passado algum tempo de ambienta莽茫o . Talvez me dedique ao , da pr贸xima vez.
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