Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The quest for the other
- 2 Altering the themes of life
- 3 The evil differentiation of shadows
- 4 A fondness for the mask
- 5 Dimming the bliss of Narcissus
- 6 The struggle for autonomy
- 7 The transforming rays of creative consciousness
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
1 - The quest for the other
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The quest for the other
- 2 Altering the themes of life
- 3 The evil differentiation of shadows
- 4 A fondness for the mask
- 5 Dimming the bliss of Narcissus
- 6 The struggle for autonomy
- 7 The transforming rays of creative consciousness
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Summary
The prose works Nabokov wrote early in his career are structurally and stylistically simpler than his later works, but in them he introduces elements of the self–other relationship that will remain significant throughout his œuvre. One of the most dynamic of these is the effect of an individual's obsession with an absent other. Many of Nabokov's early stories center on protagonists who become so preoccupied with the image of an absent other that they lose touch with the everyday world and find their ability to cope in this world threatened.
Nabokov's concern with absence and loss undoubtedly reflects his own recent experience – first his exile from Russia, and then the murder of his father in 1922. During the mid-1920s he wrote a series of works weighing the impact of personal loss on sensitive individuals. In “Christmas” (“Rozhdestvo” 1925), a man suffers such grief over the sudden death of his child that he contemplates committing suicide. In “A Letter that Never Reached Russia” (“Pis'mo v Rossiiu” 1925), a man who has been separated for eight years from the woman he loves creates a text in which he tries to assert his sense of joy in life but which dwells on images of solitude, emptiness, and again, suicide. “Bachmann” (“Bakhman” 1924) presents the tale of a musician who first becomes infuriated when his sick lover fails to attend one of his performances and then becomes deranged when she dies shortly thereafter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nabokov's Early FictionPatterns of Self and Other, pp. 10 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992