Black and White and Dead All Over: Color Imagery in Nabokov's Prose

Abstract

Vladimir Nabokov possessed an acute sensitivity to gradations of color, and he rebuffed attempts to attach broad symbolic meanings to specific colors in his work. Yet although Nabokov's work displays an impressive range of color images, one color combination perhaps carried a special resonance in his fiction. In several works the combination of black and white appears conspicuously associated with the theme of death. The essay focuses on the use of black and white in Laughter in the Dark and Lolita in an attempt to explore and explain the thematic association.