More so than that of most other comparably illustrious writers, a number of Vladimir Nabokov’s works beckon near polarizing discrepancies in interpretation and actual author intent amidst literary circles. In a letter to the editor of The New Yorker, he concedes to constructing systems “wherein a second (main) story is woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one” (Dolinin). In practice, such an architectural premise is complicated further by his inclination to dabble in the metaphysical and occasionally, in the metafictional. Nabokov’s inclusion of meticulous description and word choice coupled with his reliance on unreliable narrators—in “Signs and Symbols,” “The Vane Sisters,” and “Details of a Sunset”-- permits him to explore the boundaries surrounding objective versus subjective realities, creating conscientiously woven narratives multi-layered and possibly cryptic in meaning.
Perhaps his most widely renowned and frequently debated short story, “Signs and Symbols” recounts the story of a boy diagnosed with “referential mania” (Nabokov, “Signs” 600) and his immigrant parents struggling to cope with his condition and recurrent suicide attempts during his residence in an insane asylum. The boy is afflicted with a strain of intense paranoia that leaves him to believe everything external—trees, pebbles, clouds—are malevolently conspiring against him, that “everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence…Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme” (Nabokov, “Signs” 602).
The assumption that every detail is a clue, a cipher leading towards some sort of truth or resolution is projected onto the reader (Andrews 142) whose “insistence on pattern and meaning...
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...ov, Vladimir. “The Vane Sisters.” The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Dmitri Nabokov. N.p.: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1997. Print. Vintage International Series.
Wood, Michael. “The Cruelty of Chance: Bend Sinister, ‘The Vane Sisters,’ ‘Signs and Symbols.’” The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994. 55-82. Rpt. in Short Story Crticism. Ed. David Siegel. Vol. 86. Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2006. 158-267. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.
Wyllie, Barbara. “Memory and Dream in Nabokov’s Short Fiction.” Torpid Smoke: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Steven G. Kellman and Irving Mallin. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 5-19. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 86. Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2006. 158-267. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
In “Nevsky Prospect,” the third person narrator pulls double duty by describing two stories that parallel each other in time. After describing the seemingly harmless bustling avenue, mustaches, and clothing of Nevsky Prospect, the narrator happens to come upon two different characters: an artist and an officer. First, he follows the artist and right away, the narrator seems to be absorbed in the world of the artist. We see this occur when it is often hard to tell when the artist is dreaming or awake. The narrator does not initially make it clear when the artist is dreaming, which can be disorienting for the reader.
_______. Critical Review of Short Fiction. Vol. III 4 vols.. Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1991.
...." Studies In The Literary Imagination 36.2 (2003): 61-70. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
The Art of the Chekhovian Language escapes from the personal intentions. Reality is neither embellished nor blackened, altered or "signified" through a restrictive conceptual vision.
Therefore, it is apparent that the dystopian paradigm presented by Nabokov challenges the preconceived concepts of the future through exaggerations of conformity, forced abolishment of knowledge, and an individual’s metaphysical reality, thus highlighting that the future is contingent on the present to a significant
In Nabokov's short story "Beneficence" ("The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov", New York: Vintage 1997, p. 74-78), two kinds of point of view can be discovered: the predominant limited first-person point of view and, in several passages, also a second-person point of view employed always when the narrator refers to his lover and serving to point out their (former) close relationship. As the narrator is a person whose attitudes, feelings, emotions and recognitions influence the way the story is told, he is dramatised and, in the first part of the story (until p. 75, 5th paragraph), also a narrator-agent, while in the remaining part he has no influence on the action any more and is thus only an observer.
...s of Lolita and Humbert to show the isolation and loneliness they feel, and to show just how different and immoral the situation is. By stressing the dissonance between one persona to the next, he portrays a view of his characters that is sad and shocking, for the public seen is also the reader; the unaware, innocent, “moral” group. By letting us into the different faces of Lolita and Humbert, Nabokov reveals the tragedy in the novel, and allows the reader to vividly feel what is morally right and wrong with Humbert, Lolita, and ourselves.
May, C. E. (2012). Critical Survey of Short Fiction: World Writers (4th ed.). Ipswich: Salem Press.
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...
(Sept. 1976): 35-39. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Carol T. Gaffke. Vol. 26. Detroit:
Vladimir Nabokov suffered a neurological disorder called Synthesia. In this disorder, some senses appear the form of other senses. For his specific case, it allowed him to see letters in color. The literary form of this disorder is writing when one sense describes another. Nabokov’s synthesia allowed for him to compose its’ literary form in a superior manner. Additionally, in its literary implication, synthesia generates juxtapositions of the senses. With and in juxtaposition, he uses the comparison of senses to describe one sense through another sense. Nabokov uses his Synthesia to enhance juxtapositions in order to capture essence of life through words. In his short story First Love, he illustrates importance of using the senses in descriptions
In the short story “Signs and Symbols,” Vladmir Nabokov entices the reader with the story of a concerned elderly couple who visits their mentally unstable son on his birthday at the sanitarium. This visit is further complicated by the son’s attempt to take his life, which compels the hospital staff at the sanitarium to prevent the parents from meeting their son. This circumstance then embarks on the difficult journey that life has been for this mother and father of their mentally deranged child. Nabokov provides a touching story to his readers and does this through: the illustration of the characters, the setting, and keeps the readers interest by presenting the story in a suspenseful way that it leaves the reader thirsting for more.
In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overruling drive of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his want to attest himself master of all, whether man or woman, his prime cravings, all-powerful destiny, or even something as broad as language. Through the novel the reader begins to see Humbert’s most extreme engagements and feelings, from his marriage to his imprisonment, not as a consequence of his sensual, raw desires but rather his mental want to triumph, to own, and to control. To Humbert, human interaction becomes, or is, very unassuming for him: his reality is that females are to be possessed, and men ought to contest for the ownership of them. They, the women, become the very definition of superiority and dominance. But it isn’t so barbaric of Humbert, for he designates his sexuality as of exceptionally polished taste, a penchant loftier than the typical man’s. His relationship with Valerie and Charlotte; his infatuation with Lolita; and his murdering of Quilty are all definite examples of his yearning for power. It is so that throughout the novel, and especially by its conclusion, the reader sees that Humbert’s desire for superiority subjugates the odd particularities of his wants and is the actual reason of his anguish.