Pale Fire Research Articles

On Telling a Lie to Reveal the Truth: Mongrel

<p>South African author William Dicey’s 2016 collection of essays, Mongrel, operates as a literary prism, refracting and clarifying literary and sociological elements of life. The book’s six essays grapple with a sprawling range of subjects, including: the elusive distinction between fiction and non-fiction, literary footnotes, the endeavor of writing, the search for truth, the citizen’s search for community, the relevance of ethnicity in post-apartheid society, the perpetuation of socioeconomic disadvantage, the tragedy of criminal justice, and collective moral culpability for climate change. History, economics, and practical ethics underscore the entire collection, and exogenous sources such as Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Coetzee’s Disgrace can lend depth to the works. The essays of Mongrel can be understood as six discrete works, but they can also be understood as a meta-narrative that takes as its object the sociological search for restored community and the literary quest for authenticity. </p>

Inventário Poético: Anotações sobre os resíduos do humano na literatura

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n2p53Este ensaio pretende dissertar sobre o texto de ficção eletrônica de Richard Holeton – Frequently Asked Questions About “Hypertext” – publicado por N. Katherine Hayles na Eletronic Literature Collection (vol. 1, 2006), obra que fornece um rico material para leituras “pós-humanistas” sobre o futuro da poesia como um locus privilegiado de expressão anímica. Trata-se de uma releitura irônica de um texto parodístico de autoria de Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire (1962). Ao contrário do que sugere o título, porém, o texto de Holeton não se apresenta como um ensaio acadêmico sobre a escrita digital, mas como um poema experimental sujeito aos mirabolantes exercícios analíticos de diversos críticos fictícios, praticantes de algumas linhas dos atualmente populares Estudos Culturais. A obra possibilita ao leitor uma reflexão bem-humorada sobre os perturbadores desdobramentos da escrita, da leitura e da produção de conhecimento na contemporaneidade.

«…the viewer and the view»: Зеркальность, движение и мгновение. Заметки к параллельному чтению Набокова и Пастернака

My reflexions propose a parallel reading of Pasternak and Nabokov. Firstly, some possible perspectives in the comparative research of these two authors are listed. Then, there follows an outline of some typological similarities in the two writers’ early period that may be deducted from their literary situation of the time and their similar position between traditions and innovations. Finally, I discuss a very possible intertextual dialogue that may cast a new light on Nabokov’s Pale Fire.

Entre metaficção e metafísica, ou como não interpretar Pale Fire

O presente trabalho se propõe a explorar o problema da autoconsciência metaficcional na obra de Vladimir Nabokov a partir da figura de John Shade, o autor fictício de “Pale Fire”, poema que integra o peculiar romance de mesmo título. A reflexão metafísica de Shade, ao ser separada do romance que a contém – uma possibilidade concretizada por uma edição de 2011 do poema, produzida pela Gingko Press –, serve então como via de acesso para se considerar a relação entre os diversos artistas criados por Nabokov e o próprio escritor. Isso levará, por sua vez, à investigação da concepção de natureza subjacente à sua obra, calcada na ideia de um criador bondoso que parece servir de modelo tanto para alguns de seus personagens quanto para a própria arte de Nabokov.

Parodical Study of Literary Criticism in Vladimir Nabokov’s <i>Pale Fire</i>

In <i>Pale Fire</i>, Nabokov employ parody to constructs a world where truth intertwines with falsehood, leaving a labyrinth for his readers to read between and beyond lines and to make their own decision on the authenticity of the lines. Being the most distinct characteristic, parody in <i>Pale Fire</i> is much more than merely an experimental innovation on form itself: it brings uncertainty for the content of the story by breaking away from old traditions of writing techniques, as well as unveils the writer’s reflection of both literature and life, which together displays the writer’s deep humanistic concern.

An Interview with Maurice Couturier

An Interview with Maurice Couturier Zoran Kuzmanovich Note: This much overdue interview is the first in the series of Nabokov Studies interviews wuth pioneering Nabokovian scholars. It serves as a preface to Prof. Couturier's FORUM piece, and it took place on November 20, 2017, at Centre Commercial CAP 3000, 66 promenade Jacques Yves Cousteau, 06700 Saint-Laurent-du-Var, France. ZK: The first question is always going to be "How did you end up becoming a Nabokov scholar?" MC: It's fairly easy to explain. When I started to teach, I followed an MA correspondence course with a professor at the Sorbonne, André Le Vot [repeats name], in which the set books were The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne Booth, The Sound and the Fury and Pale Fire. Good books. Very good choice. ZK: What year was that? MC: I followed this course in '69. And that was the first time I heard of Nabokov. And then in 1970, I went back to the states, to the University of Notre Dame. When I visited the Notre Dame bookstore, I found The Annotated Lolita which had just come out. So, I bought it. That should have been September 1970. And I soon bought Ada through the Book of the Month Club. That's how I really discovered Nabokov and really fell in love with him. At the same time, I was doing another dissertation – there were two types of dissertations in France the short one and the long one. Now there is only one. The short one I was doing was on a Wisconsin writer that you probably have never heard of though she got the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, Zona Gale. She was a good friend of Bob La Follette and Eleanor Roosevelt. I wrote this dissertation at Notre Dame, from '70 to '72, while also researching Nabokov's work. When I came back from the States, I defended my dissertation on Zona Gale, took the "Agrégation," a very competitive exam, and was appointed at the Sorbonne where I continued to work on Nabokov. I had chosen as research director André Le Vot, a marvelous man to whom I am very grateful; he wasn't totally convinced by my structuralist approach yet backed me all the way. I took the liberty of staging him in my first novel, La Polka piquée, one of the first global campus novels by the way, but under an anagram, René Tadlov. My good friend Malcolm Bradbury listed Tadlov in the bibliography of a clever little book, My Strange Quest for Mensonge. Needing my permission, Malcolm arranged to meet me in Brittany where he was vacationing with David Lodge. That was also the beginning of my long friendship with David whose autobiography I am currently translating. Sorry for this digression. ZK: And how does Ronald Barthes end up on your thesis committee? MC: An American friend of mine, Harry Blake, a draft dodger, had done some work for Barthes and Foucault as a translator. He managed to help me get an appointment with Roland Barthes at L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and I had no difficulty, curiously, to make Barthes agree to sit on the panel of my Doctoral Defense. What were his reasons? Nabokov? I still wonder if he had ever read him. My structuralist approach? Perhaps. My friendship with one of his probable lovers? Perhaps again. More likely, his desire to set foot again at the Sorbonne where he had long been persona non grata. I found out a few weeks before the defense that he had lost the copy of my dissertation, so I sent him another one. And on the day of the defense, 23rd of October 76, we had to wait for him at the Sorbonne for at least fifteen minutes. He arrived at 2:15. The defense took place in the Louis Liar amphitheater, a kind of chapel with portraits of seventeenth century writers on the walls; it was full on this occasion, because of Roland Barthes' presence probably. He had read only part of my dissertation as I found out after he gave me back the second copy I had sent him and...

From America and Other Poems

from America and Other Poems Ayukawa Nobuo (bio) Translated by Leza Lowitz (bio) and Shogo Oketani (bio) lonely double Somewhere in the distance,the evening sun has been extinguished—more darkness than I can bear.It weighs down my armslike your body. Turn off the light, you said.I try to cover your mouth with my hand,but its blackness scares me.Your body, more than I can hold,weighs down my chest. It's the midnight of the world.Under the moonlight that streams in from the window,you close your eyes tightly, pretending to be dead.In sleep, where I'm not with you,you murmur a secret: I'm alone, I'm alone…where I amble about a roomwearing a single slipper… (Is my heart that generous?) Turn on the light, you said.But I just sit quietly,a vast loneliness before me.If only I were the morning star,if only I had the clear eyes of a martyr. Just as I don't believe in you, you don't,even try to believe in me.We just happen to look at each other's pale faces [End Page 69] wearing innocent smilesthat have been theresince long before we were born. (1950) a story about heaven He stood with hunched shouldersunder the freezing November night sky.On an empty platformwhere only a few human forms were visibleone pale girl said to another:I heard there used to be a place somewhere,a radiant place called heaven. One small star shonein the frozen November night sky.Like this girl, he had somewheredark and cold to return to. I heard that there used to be a beautiful garden…The girl's memory seemed to stopbut continued on again as if passingthrough a small town.The neon signs were extinguishedfrom the freezing November night sky.The thin knife blade of a cold windblew, cutting the city's rough skin. At twelve-ten, the eyes of the clock's handsstared into the heart's darkness—There's the stiff face of a woman whowaits for him, staring into cold soup,there's the stiff bed made of cheap wood. I heard a man called God used to live there.No one knows what happened next…Her words broke off completely.Two girls, afraid of unseen happiness,held the shadows of their wings togetherunder the frozen November night sky.The tracks echo where the last train passes through,reverberating forever in that far-off country.(1953) [End Page 70] soldiers of god It's easier to revive a dead soldierthan to encounterthe Resurrection of Christin a gold-rimmed book.Countless soldiers died any number of timesand came back to life any number of times. (As long as sacred words and mysterious rewards never to be given continue to exist…) Soldiers who die any number of times,and come back to life any number of timeswill line up for a few centurieson continents and oceansas they always have. (Rewards never given are an infinite essence.) One night, in May 1944,I was with a soldier as he died.He lay in a wooden bunk,enduring a high fever,clinging to life. Memory's pale fire engulfed him,as he wept endlessly for his mother, sister, and lover.The border between us couldn't be crossed.I could see death crouching intentlybehind the dimness of an ever-lit lamp. Cursing the war, he left this world.In a room on a hospital ship,crossing the East China Sea at night,he left forever,refusing any reward from God. (Oh, humanity! This beautiful soldier will never come back to life!) [End Page 71] Somewhere in a far-off country,his noble death is shut insidea gold-rimmed book.On it are laid the quiet voice of prayerand a kind woman's hands (1953) dreaming of the mountain These mountains of my homelandare the beginning and end of nature—they are the only place I can return.My father was born in a mountain village,my mother was...

From Nabokov’s Amerussia to Mallarmé’s Donje te zankoriv: Vladimir Nabokov at the crossroads of languages

Vladimir Nabokov makes a predominant use of code-switching in the novels he wrote in English. However, he occasionally indulges in hybridity, which makes him resemble, linguistically and stylistically speaking, Creole writers. Nabokov’s style is indeed creolized, in the sense of Glissant’s philosophy, and his hybridization of tongues is manifest in four of Nabokov’s novels. This paper first focuses on Lolita and Ada by studying lexical and syntactical hybridity as well as two macaronic tongues which are always associated with eroticism. It then studies two forged languages used extensively by Nabokov. In Bend Sinister, the “vernacular” is defined by the author as “a mongrel blend of Slavic and Germanic” and is the language of the totalitarian regime in the novel; it is contrasted with another hybrid idiom, based on French, which challenges tyranny with the poetic power of suggestion inherent to foreign languages. In Pale Fire, “Zemblan” is the creolized language of an exile torn between his two identities; this tongue reveals his madness through the return of the linguistically repressed.

Bodies of Literature

Bodies of Literature

Narrative Strategies and Aesthetic Ethics of Nabokovian Otherworld in Lolita and Pale Fire

Narrative Strategies and Aesthetic Ethics of Nabokovian Otherworld in Lolita and Pale Fire

J. F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban

J. F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban H. Wendell Howard (bio) Katherine Anne Porter is rightly acclaimed as a pure literary stylist capable of presenting complex subjects artfully and economically while still penetrating with an admirable subtlety the psychological dimensions of characters. These talents are particularly evident in her novel Ship of Fools, a moral allegory evidencing, as she said, that evil is always accomplished “with the collusion of good.” Even though the persons depicted in this fiction are traveling to Germany on the eve of Hitler’s accession to power the insights she sets forth make the novel pertinent and readable for generation after succeeding generation. Like Porter, Vladimir Nabakov has laid claim to a lasting niche in the modern American literature canon with his memorable treatment of such subjects as the moral deterioration of an initially respectable person, the struggle of a politically uncommitted individual to maintain personal integrity in a totalitarian state, the farcical dimensions of the midirected passion of a middle-aged sophisticate, or, as in Pale Fire, a complex tour de force, the writing of a poem about an exiled Balkan king that elicits the king’s own involved critical comments on that poem. In Pale Fire, as elsewhere, Nabakov proves himself a master [End Page 81] of fiction that makes us as readers feel implicated, a fundamental requirement of all fiction that would be art. Finally, for our purposes here, a third writer of artistic brilliance, public admiration, and critical acclaim is John Updike. His Pigeon Feathers, a collection of short stories, lays bare his bold ingenuity and intense seriousness as a writer, and because he unflinchingly witnesses the troubled human condition and then describes what he sees with a wondering conscience, he sits shoulder to shoulder with Parker and Nabakov. So, when in 1963 Ship of Fools, Pale Fire, and Pigeon Feathers were among the books being considered for The National Book Award, they were formidable competitors for the prize. In the end, however, they apparently were not formidable enough for they were bested by J. F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban. This selection was surprising on many counts and requires a critical examination not only of the novel itself but also of various factors that at first may seem tangential but that in the final analysis are part and parcel of an informed literary evaluation that aims to address a book’s importance to the culture. The general subject and setting of Morte D’Urban is Roman Catholic priests in a woebegone village in Minnesota. The specific comic-opera milieu is created by a religious order, the Clementines, that is constituted of bumblers and connivers who function mostly to highlight Fr. Urban as a wily priest with ambitions for himself and the order of St. Clement. Fr. Urban, a gifted speaker, travels the religious circuit exuding a charisma that endears him to moneyed contributors who can, at least initially, endow his budding dreams. Born Harvey Roche, he had entered the priesthood because as a young man he had chauffeured the outsized Fr. Placidus and had become enamored of the life of luxury that that unique Clementine indulged in. He was determined to duplicate that existence for himself. Such a blueprint required a modernism predicated on a tolerance for moral ambiguity as well as a broadly defined view of the spiritual life that became his mantra. Because Fr. Urban soon recognized that the Order of St. Clement “labored under the curse of mediocrity,” he envisioned himself [End Page 82] to be the logical choice as the next provincial of the Order’s Chicago province. He further envisioned that he would “raise the tone [of the Order] by packing the Novitiate with exceptional men”; he would change the prevailing assessment that the Clementines were unique in being “noted for nothing at all.” What Fr. Urban had failed to consider in all this was the depth of the individual jealousy and the breadth of the hierarchical envy that absorbed the Clementine community. Thus, when the time came to elect a provincial he was accorded the “green banana.” He not only was passed over but also was exiled to the Order’s retreat...

The Writerly Task and the Narrative: Making Art of the Quotidian

The Writerly Task and the Narrative: Making Art of the Quotidian Amy Day Wilkinson (bio) There’s a tradition of using what I call “writerly tasks” to make narrative art, dating back to the earliest novels, many of which, like Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Pamela, were epistolary. Long before the experiments of literary modernism, while the novel-as-genre stumbled into being, Richardson and others set their eyes on the writerly task of letter-writing as a way to tell their stories. Moving forward almost a century, one could argue that Herman Melville used such writerly tasks as the underpinnings of Moby-Dick, with chapters that read like excerpts from whaling manuals and others that read like ships’ manifests. And there are loads more modern and contemporary examples. Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire is a novel told in part through a poem written by a fictitious poet and in part through the foreword and commentary framing the poem, written by the poet’s colleague: academic tasks. In a similar academic vein, Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist is a novel that [End Page 189] results from the narrator’s failure to complete his task of composing an introduction to a poetry anthology. Likewise, Geoff Dyer’s memoir Out of Sheer Rage is a meditation on life and writing and D. H. Lawrence that results from Dyer’s failure to complete his writerly task of completing a “study of D. H. Lawrence.” A final example in this scattershot list is a book I keep on my cookbook shelf. Elissa Altman’s Poor Man’s Feast is a memoir about Altman’s childhood and food education and an adult relationship that throws all she knows into relief; but at its core is the writerly task of sharing recipes and cooking know-how. And, as is the case with many such narratives, Altman’s book accomplishes both things at once: it’s a vivid, moving memoir; it’s a cookbook with a recipe for miroton I use when I have leftover roast beef. In sum, narrative fiction and nonfiction comprising pieces of what purport to be other kinds of writing have long been part of the literary canon, and big books composed of such pieces continue to flourish and to surprise readers. The online literary magazine Memorious has a regular blog feature called “Big Loves” in which writers discuss books they love and why. The May 11, 2016, post was by fiction writer Katie Chase on Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Madeleine Is Sleeping, a novel told in short chapters that relate the dreams of a young girl who just keeps sleeping as well as what’s happening in the world around her, a dreamscape of its own. I liked Chase’s post because she grapples with a question of structure and form in novel writing. Chase writes, “I can’t be the only one constantly scouting for ways to cheat at novel-making: Do others have favorite novels that seem to have stumbled upon shortcuts to the finish?” Anyone who has tried to write a novel, to sustain momentum and narrative over all those pages, knows there’s no cheating in novel writing, like there’s no cheating in marathon running. That these things happen at all, let alone that they happen with regularity—a person sustains a story over hundreds of pages; a person runs 26.2 miles—is astonishing. Madeleine is Sleeping Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. Harvest Books, 276 pp., $13.95 (paper) [End Page 190] And yet with books like Bynum’s Madeleine Is Sleeping, we look at the text and think we can see how Bynum did it. (“Think” being the operative word.) This false sense of comprehension comes largely from the illusion that the secret is in the short chapters: maybe writing a novel is easier if you do it in small pieces. Writing coaches routinely offer suggestions along these lines. In Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a book of writing advice, she talks about a one-inch picture frame that she keeps on her writing desk: “It reminds me that all I have to do is write down as much as I can see through...

Line 1: Taped to the Wall of My Cell

Line 1: Taped to the Wall of My Cell Terrance Hayes (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Digital rendering by Terrance Hayes [End Page 805] As we study the life and lineage of a particular adult cell, we ask the same questions that a biographer asks of her subject: what were the critical decisions that defined the trajectory of this life, and when were they made? What was the contribution of neighbors, and what role was played by more distant influences? What was the role of chance? At what point was the final fate initially specified, and when was it ultimately sealed? In essence, we would like to understand the molecular biography of the cell. —David A. Shaywitz and Douglas A. Melton, “The Molecular Biography of the Cell” What Were the Critical Decisions that Defined the Trajectory of this Life? When I began collecting interviews and stories about Etheridge Knight more than a decade ago, I said, mostly to the few people I cornered for interviews, that I’d never write a biography because it would take more than a decade to do it. This is not a biography. But perhaps it will encourage a future Knight biographer. Consider this a collection of essays as speculative, motley and adrift as Knight himself. His various personae grace the book covers that are at any given moment resting beside my bed or on my desk. The bespectacled Knight in a prison cell on the back of Poems From Prison (1968); the nappy bohemian Knight on the cover of Belly Song and Other Poems (1973); the Mississippi Knight in cap and overalls on the cover of Born of a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1980); and the sober intellectual Knight on the cover of The Essential Etheridge Knight (1988). Because he has been on my mind for virtually all of my writing life, he has appeared from time to time among my poems: influencing the perspective (as in “Poet Dying at the Window” from my first book), influencing the voice (as in “The Blue Knight” from my third book), influencing the form (as in “Portrait of Etheridge Knight in the Style of a Crime Report,” from my fifth book). And each time I’ve returned to work on Knight between publications of my own poetry books, only the impossibility of a biography has remained consistent. He remains both a muse and mystery. When Were the Critical Decisions that Defined the Trajectory of this Life Made? At some point in my years wandering/wondering in and between the lines of “The Idea of Ancestry” I began to think of myself as a real life Charles Kinbote, the deranged scholar in Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel Pale Fire. Except where Kinbote is literally a mad professor unraveling a 999 line poem by his neighbor-poet, the murdered John Shade, I’m me: a poet, a brother, a Southerner unraveling “The Idea of Ancestry,” a poem by Etheridge Knight. The distinction between a scholar on the trail of a poet and a poet on the trail of a poet is an important one. The scholar looks upon his subject as if through a window. The scholar aims to frame the poet’s work according to things like genre, talent, culture, history. [End Page 806] A clear pane of logic, interpretation, and appreciation separates him from his subject. Conversely, a poet looking upon on the poem of another poet sees something of himself reflected in the pane. Process, imitation, and competition are reflected in the work. A poet looks upon the work of another poet not only as if through a window but also through a mirror. (Please forgive my generalizations.) What’s odd about Charles Kinbote is 1) he believes the window is a mirror—he sees only himself when he looks into it; and 2) he means to lift the window and climb, as a peeping Tom (or Goldilocks) would into the lines of his subject. He sees himself everywhere in the poem. Any interpretation of the poem is hogtied to the interpreter. The great, distorting power of Kinbote’s imagination gives Nabokov’s novel its tension and trajectory. Lampooning the practice of...

Nabokov's Literary Legacy: Bridging Russian and American Postmodernism

This paper aims to highlight the importance of V. Nabokov’s ouvre in shaping some aspects of selected Russian and American postmodern novels. In fact, given the complex stratification of different narrative layers that characterises his prose, the extreme attention to details, the constant presence of doubles, linguistic puns and a general playful attitude toward the text, it is quite clear why Nabokov has been recently seen as a precursor and pioneer of the postmodern genre. Lipovetsky ( Russian Postmodernist Fiction , 1999) states that the ‘postmodernist potential’ of Russian modernism is easily demonstrated by the evolution of Nabokov: while works such as The Gift and Invitation to a Beheading embody the modernist canon, Lolita stands as the milestone of the American postmodern aesthetic. Moreover, Couturier considers Lolita , Pale Fire and Ada to be ‘archetypal postmodernist novels’ (‘Nabokov in Postmodernist Land’ in Critique 34, no. 4, 1993). The presence of an unreliable narrator who despotically plays with the characters’ lives ( Pnin , Look at the Harlequins! ), testifies once more how blurred is the line between the role of ‘director’ and ‘character’: this key feature of the postmodernist narration (and metafiction) generates a tension that results in irony and self-referentiality. Barthes’s concept of ‘the death of the Author’ is clearly represented in Nabokov’s prose: the author’s presence merges with the text itself and pours into the characters’ actions, dialogues and behaviours. It is not by chance that Nabokov entrusts his last reincarnation, Vadim Vadimych N., with what may be considered his manifesto ‘the “I” of the book cannot die in the book’ ( Look at the Harlequins! ). Thus, Nabokov’s modernist metafiction has evolved into something different, something new, and as Hassan ( The Postmodern Turn , 1987) points out, modernism and postmodernism are not to be considered separated: postmodernism is in fact a continuation of modernism, a logical evolution of the previous literary movement and a physiological reaction to the contemporary society. However, as this paper will show, Nabokov is not only to be considered as a bridge between modernism and postmodernism: he also represents the link between Russian and American postmodern literatures. By focusing on V. Pelevin’s The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (where the protagonist A Hu-Li is a revised - supernatural - version of Lolita) and T. Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (where the allusions to Nabokov’s style are frequent) we shall highlight the nabokovian elements present in these novels and demonstrate how Nabokov is in fact the keystone to the arch of Russian and American postmodernism. In conclusion, the explicit tribute paid by Pynchon (a former pupil of his) and Pelevin (considered nowadays as ‘the Nabokov of the cyber-age’) to the author’s unique style, will allow us to unveil where the ‘new Nabokov’ lies and how he may indeed be seen as a literary Charon, who ferries the characters’ souls across space (Russian and American) and time (modern and postmodern).

Nabokov’s Cold War Novels and the Containment of American Sexuality

This paper focuses on Nabokov's American fiction as novels of the so-called “Long 1950s” and tries to divert traditional debate of Nabokov’s work from its canon of post-modern reception, as centering on language play and upended narrative codes. By focusing on the ever present subtext of Cold War culture in Nabokov’s narratives, this research tries to identify the complex elaboration of “subversive sexuality” in Nabokov’s key novels of the Long 1950s, Lolita and Pale Fire , his most successful and most widely commented works.

“Not Text, but Texture”: Nabokov and the Joycean Momentum

This essay focuses on the influence of Joyce’s writing on Nabokov in terms of both style and themes. The first part discusses the impact of Ulysses on Nabokov’s novel The Eye ( Soglyadatai , 1930) – his last “European text” – while the second part considers the possible analogies between Finnegans Wake and Pale Fire (1962), and in particular the way both Nabokov and Joyce create a specific idiolect and linguistic universe of its own for their characters. As a result, such a comparison discloses a series of complex and ingenious interconnections for which perhaps the term influence is inappropriate or at least limited. In other words, although may be true that when Nabokov begins to study Joyce systematically he is “definitely formed and immune to any literary influence”, it is quiet apparent that Joyce’s “noble originality and unique lucidity of thought and style” cannot be so easily dismissed. Indeed, as this essay demonstrates, the Irish writer surfaces in Nabokov’s narratives as a sort of textual reverberation from a sophisticated interplay of literary as well as cultural references.

Left Side of the Moon: Nabokov’s Personal Terminology of Homosexuality

In Nabokov’s works we find homosexuals, unhappy, highly enigmatic people, often associated with the moon, as in The Gift and Pale Fire. Nabokov probably drew this metaphor from Rozanov’s People of the Moonlight . This essay traces the various references to this metaphor that can be found throughout Nabokov’s oeuvre

Swift’s Angers. Claude Rawson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv+305.

<i>Swift’s Angers</i>. Claude Rawson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv+305.

The Prestige of Violence: American Fiction, 1962–2007 by Sally Bachner, Roth and Trauma: The Problem of History in the Later Works (1995–2010) by Aimee Pozorski

<i>The Prestige of Violence: American Fiction, 1962–2007</i> by Sally Bachner, <i>Roth and Trauma: The Problem of History in the Later Works (1995–2010)</i> by Aimee Pozorski

Morris, Paul D. Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice (review)

SEER, 92, 4, OCTOBER 2014 748 to Zamiatin’s archives and especially his voluminous correspondence has resulted in a full, balanced and meticulously detailed account of his life and work. Of particular value to scholars of this period are accounts of Zamiatin’s friendships and collaborations with Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Fedin, Annenkov, Kustodiev, Chukovskii and many other figures in Russian modernism. The photographs and illustrations included in the book add significantly to the story Curtis tells in this volume. It is a story that expands and enriches our understanding of early twentieth-century Russian and Soviet culture as a whole. Stetson University Karen L. Ryan Morris, Paul D. Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2010. xxv + 447 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $75.00. Vladimir Nabokov’s poetry was highly appreciated by many Russian émigré critics in the 1920s, yet only a small number of critics today believe that Nabokov’s lyric poetry matches his prose for ingenuity. In his book, Paul Morris challenges Alexander Dolinin’s opinion that ‘the verse exercises of the young Nabokov played an important role in the formation of his narrative style’ (p. 88) and aspires to demonstrate the centrality of poetry to Nabokov’s body of writing. Morris claims that ‘the lyric sensibility Nabokov developed in his verse pervades all of his writing’(p. xvii). As Morris indicates, the aim of his study is twofold: ‘to offer a comprehensive view of Nabokov’s poetry’ and to identify the role of the lyric sensibility in Nabokov’s drama, short fiction and novels (p. xvi), especially in The Gift (1937–38), in which many poems were written by that novel’s protagonist, and in Pale Fire (1962), which opens with a 999-line iambic pentameter poem in rhymed couplets. The book comprises the Introduction/chapter one that outlines the evolution of Nabokov as a poet and six chapters. Chapter two examines the reception of Nabokov’s poetry written both in Russian and in English; chapter three discusses in great detail Nabokov’s lyric voice and focuses on the presence of metaphysical traits in his poetry and identifies major themes used in his verse, including such topics as poetic inspirations, love, cosmic synchronization, encounters with the otherworld and the poeticization of everyday life; chapter four describes the lasting effect of poetry on Nabokov’s drama; chapter five explores the employment of Nabokov’s lyricism in short fiction, and chapters six and seven focus on Nabokov’s novels The Gift and Pale Fire. The strength of Morris’s study lies in its thorough investigation of Nabokov’s lyric consciousness and Morris’s awareness of its thematic and structural REVIEWS 749 complexitythatenhancesanunderstandingofthewritingsofNabokovaffected by that complexity. Yet Morris’s exploration of Nabokov’s poetic persona is far from being exhaustive. While Morris rightly detects several important allusions in Nabokov’s verse to the poetry of Keats, Blok, Fet, Tiutchev and Belyi, they are not explored in depth. The role of Nabokov’s parodies and translations of Russian poetry in the development of his narrative style is not mentioned at all. Some of Morris’s statements appear superficial and unsupported by references. For example, the statement that Nabokov’s short story ‘A Guide to Berlin’ ‘seems to be more a prose poem than a short story’ (p. 260) is not supported by any references to the tradition of prose poems as had been developed in Russia and in France. It would be appropriate at least to compare the above story to Turgenev’s prose poems which were inspired by Baudelaire’s Petits poèmes en prose. The latter marked the beginnings of the genre in the 1860s. While Turgenev the fiction writer sought to enhance and heighten the ideas of his earlier prose narratives in his prose poems, it can be argued that the fragmentary and impressionistic style of Nabokov’s story, ‘A Guide to Berlin’, develops some of the mnemonic imagery of his verse written in emigration. Many references to Nabokov’s links with Russian Symbolism are not given adequate consideration and are mentioned in passing. A good example of lumping Nabokov together with major European and Russian poets can be...