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.
May, C. E. (2012). Critical Survey of Short Fiction: World Writers (4th ed.). Ipswich: Salem Press.
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.
(Sept. 1976): 35-39. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Carol T. Gaffke. Vol. 26. Detroit:
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...
...." 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.
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 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.
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.
Literary critic and the novel’s annotator Alfred Appel Jr. claims “what is extraordinary about Lolita is the way in which Nabokov enlists us, against our will, on Humbert’s side… Humbert has figuratively made the reader his accomplice in both statutory rape and murder” (Durantaye, Style Is Matter: the Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov 8). Nabokov employs various literary devices such as direct second reader address, metaphor, and allusions through Humbert Humbert as a means to conjure up feelings of empathy. The reader comes to find that . It is clear that Humbert Humbert uses second person address as a way to control how the reader perceives him. Through the use of this narrative mode, he aims to convince the reader that his sexual violence is artistically justifiable and that the art he creates is a remedy for mortality. I will argue is that art is not a remedy for mortality because in Humbert Humbert’s creation of Lolita, t...
Nabokov presents the reader with three touching characters of the mother, father, and son. The characters of the story arouse a sense of compassion and sympathy from the reader due to the helpless situation they are in. For example, the son in the story suffers from a condition called “referential mania.” Referential mania is a case where “the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence” (1166). In other words, the son has this perception where he is in a state of paranoia where he feels as if the objects around him are evil and plotting against him. He feels as if “clouds in the staring sky transmit signs detailing information about him, coats in window stores have a distort opinion of him and misinterpret his actions….he must always be on guard every minute and module of life to decoding of the undulation of things” (1167). The son is always on this mission with the objects trying to decipher the meaning behind why these objects are...