Garipova, Nailya and Torres Núñez, Juan José (eds) Women in Nabokov's Life and Art (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 537 when contrasted against the far darker and more disturbing representations of adolescence to be found in the work of two other female writers, Odoevtsova and Berberova. With the exception of Vladimir Varshavsky’s Nezamechennoe pokolenie (New York, 1956), along with a handful of recent academic studies, including Leonid Livak’s How It Was Done in Paris (Madison, WI, 2003), Irina Kaspé’s Iskusstvo otsutstvovat (Moscow, 2005) and Annick Morard’s De l’émigré au déraciné (Lausanne, 2010), few critics have addressed the authors presented in this study as a distinct literary group, the so-called ‘unnoticed generation’. Rubins’s book is, therefore, a much-needed and welcome contribution to this academic field, encompassing as it does not only the work of the more prominent members of the Russian emigration such as Nabokov, Gazdanov, Boris Poplavsky, Yury Felzen and Vasily Yanovsky, but also more over-looked figures like Bakunina, Sergei Sharshun, Anatoly Shteiger and Nikolai Otsup. This well-written, well-argued monograph, which draws on a variety of sources and presents evidence from across a number of cultures and mediums, will certainly become an important reference source not only for those making future inquiries into Russian émigré literature or transnationalism, but anyone looking at the interwar modernist literary scene more broadly. Wolfson College, University of Oxford Anastasia Tolstoy Garipova, Nailya and Torres Núñez, Juan José (eds). Women in Nabokov’s Life and Art. Critical Perspectives on English and American Literature, Communication and Culture, 14. Peter Lang, Bern, New York and Oxford, 2016. 272 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. €66.70: £53.00: $86.95. InspiredbytherecentpublicationofNabokov’sletterstohislife-longloveVéra, Women in Nabokov’s Life and Art, edited by Nailya Garipova and Juan José Torres Núñez, sheds light on a hitherto neglected aspect of Nabokov studies: Nabokov and women. Indeed, as Garipova states in the Introduction, ‘[d]espite the considerable amount of criticism that his literary legacy has produced since the sixties, the studies on Nabokov’s female characters are scarce (except the ones on Lolita)’ (p. 9). As the title suggests, the volume explores the gender issue not only in Nabokov’s art, but also in his life. These two main lines of research constitute the two cores into which the collection is divided. The first part, entitled ‘Women in Nabokov’s Life’, contains five biographical essays concerning the role of real women in Nabokov’s life. The first two studies by Elena Ukhova (‘“An ideal spouse for a writer”: The Reality and Myths in Véra Nabokov’s Life’, pp. 17–37) and Alexandra Popoff (‘Véra’s Role in Nabokov’s SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 538 Life and Prose’, pp. 39–62) are devoted to the most important and investigated female figure in Nabokov’s life: his wife. Both Ukhova and Popoff argue that thanks to this creative partnership, which was usual for their time and milieu, Nabokov became a successful writer. However, in ‘Remorse and Nabokov’s Women’ (pp. 63–83) Frances Peltz Assa re-evaluates the effect of Nabokov’s love for Irina Guadanini both on his life and prose. The ‘Guadanini affair’ has always been a thorny problem for scholars, but through her insightful analysis of ‘Spring in Fialta’, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Lolita, Assa manages to prove Irina’s importance not only on a personal level but, more significantly, in Nabokov’s artistic production. Priscilla Meyer (‘Carmencita: Valentina Shulgina. The Evolution of Eros in Nabokov’s Work’, pp. 85–102) and Nora Scholz (‘“Or of the air itself”: Nabokov’s “Mothers” as Bearers of Spiritual Understanding’, pp. 103–19) find other echoes of Nabokov’s real life reflected in his prose, concentrating on the writer’s ‘first loves’: Valentina Shulgina (Liusia) and his mother, Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova. As Garipova maintains, this first part considers ‘the so-called “impact” of the writer’s life on his fiction’ (p. 8). Nevertheless, precisely because of this reason, the book might have profited from a look at the relationship between Nabokov and women writers. Mariya D. Lomakina, for example, has recently explored this issue (‘Vladimir Nabokov and Women Writers’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2014), reassessing the anti...