1. Nabokov, Vladimir, Dar (Ann Arbor, 1975), 369 Google Scholar; The Gift (New York, 1991), 329.

2. Study of boundaries, borders, and thresholds in literature was pioneered by Bakhtin, Mikhail, especially in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. and trans. Emerson, Caryl (Minneapolis, 1984)Google Scholar and in “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” see index entries; and by Iurii Lotman, especially in “Problema khudozhestvennogo prostranstva v proze Gogolia,” in Izbrannye stat'i, 3 vols. (Tallinn, 1992) 1: 413–47. On boundaries in Nabokov, see Thomas Seifrid, “Getting Across: Border Consciousness in Soviet and Émigré Literature,” Slavic and East European Journal 38, no. 2 (1994): 245–60, which discusses Nabokov's novel Glory and Sasha Sokolov's Palisandriia against the background of Soviet border consciousness. There is of course an enormous literature on the topic of exile; three of the most important recent studies are Seidel's, Michael Exile and the Narrative Imagination (New Haven, 1986)Google Scholar; Sandler's, Stephanie Distant Pleasures: Alexander Pushkin and the Writing of Exile (Stanford, 1989)Google Scholar; and Bethea's, David(Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (Princeton, 1994).Google Scholar

3. See Greenleaf, Monika, “Pushkin's ‘Journey to Arzrum': The Poet at the Border,” Slavic Review 50, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 940–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a detailed discussion of text-boundary interplay in that Pushkin narrative.

4. Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich, Dead Souls, trans. Guerney, Bernard Guilbert, ed. Fusso, Susanne (New Haven, 1996), 69.Google Scholar

5. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, A Writer's Diary, trans, and annotated Lantz, Kenneth (Evanston, 1994), 1292 Google Scholar. Original in Dostoevskii, F. M., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. (Leningrad, 1984), 26: 145–46.Google Scholar

6. For example, see Georgii Ivanov's famous tirade in a review of Mary, King, Queen, Knave, The Defense, and The Return of Chorb, in Chisla, 1930, no. 1: 233–36 (esp. 234).

7. John Burt Foster, Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism (Princeton, 1993). This entire book explores the strong transcultural elements in Nabokov's oeuvre; in “The Covert Modernism of The Gift” (146–56), Foster discusses hidden and explicit French subtexts. On the other hand, the novel's Russian modernism is, of course, quite overt.

8. For a summary of die “Shishkov” affair, see Boyd, Brian, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton, 1990), 509–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The “Trojan Horse” metaphor provides some other productive angles on The Gift: the novel's title might be seen as an oblique reference to the ancient deception, and Zina's warning that Fyodor's novel might result in “mass executions” recalls the carnage wrought by the Trojan present. Dar, 409; The Gift, 364.

9. Nabokov, Vladimir, Strong Opinions (New York, 1990), 63.Google Scholar

10. For the founding document in this area of study, see Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, 1969).

11. Zoran Kuzmanovich, “The Fine Fabric of Deceit: Nabokov and His Readers” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1988), 162.

12. Dar, 37; The Gift, 30.

13. Dar, 347; The Gift, 310.

14. Dar, 369–70; The Gift, 330 (first emphasis added, second in the original).

15. However, the theme is strongly suggested by other elements of the text as well: trees lining the streets along Fyodor's walk to the Grunewald are given military garb and called “stragglers behind the regiment” (Dar, 368; The Gift, 329); and Yasha Chernyshevski's death by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in the presence of the German Rudolf, is emblematic of the Grunewald in its early and late appearances in The Gift.

16. Dar, 196; The Gift, 174.

17. For a different perspective on some related issues, see Hana Pichova, “The Theme of Exile in Nabokov's The Gift and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1991).

18. For a nuanced discussion of the issues involved, see Bethea, Brodsky, 37–47, especially the discussion surrounding the comments of Edward Said on 39.

19. Raeff, Marc claims that “the cultural life and creativity of Russia Abroad was preeminently, if not exclusively, verbal.” Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919–1939 (New York, 1990), 7, 10–11 Google Scholar.

20. We see a different elaboration of the same theme in Martin Edelweiss's activities in Glory. Thomas Seifrid's article “Getting Across … “ discusses the significance of borders in Glory and works by other authors (especially Sasha Sokolov) as a function of a specifically Russian boundary-consciousness. He describes Nabokov's “fondness for leaping over frames” (250), connecting it both to the fact of exile and to a competitive attitude toward Soviet boundary poetics.

21. Dar, 392; The Gift, 349. This formulation echoes Bakhtin's—then unpublished— notion of outsideness, vnenakhodimost', in “Author and Hero,” 15, 16–17, 235n28.

22. Cf. also: “Now it was not far to the forest and he quickened his step, already feeling the sun's hot mask on his upturned face. “Dar, 368; The Gift, 329. And in “Pushkin, or the Real and the Plausible,” Nabokov asserts: “A fondness for the mask, let us not forget, is an essential trait of the true poet.” New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988, 40.

23. Meanwhile, another, related and provocative, argument is advanced by Monika Greenleaf: she proposes that in lepidoptery (specifically as practiced by Fyodor's father), Nabokov creates a space between himself and his own father that both can occupy: Nabokov with his artistic, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov with his political, passions. This space is the mystical boundary where both are at home, and where Nabokov claims his “inheritance” from his father, creating his own genealogy. “Fathers, Sons and Imposters: Pushkin's Trace in The Gift,” Slavic Review 53, no. 1 (1994): 140–58.

24. For a detailed and enlightening consideration of the theme of infinity within The Gift, see Leona Toker's chapter in Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures (Ithaca, 1989). Consider also Schelling's comments in The Philosophy of Art. von Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, The Philosophy of Art, ed. and trans. Stott, Douglas W. (Minneapolis, 1989), 31–39.Google Scholar

25. For a full discussion of this question, see my forthcoming Zina's Paradox: The Figured Reader in Nabokov's Gift, Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature (New York, in press).

26. Brian Boyd, in the chapter on The Gift, makes a similar observation. Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years.

27. Dar, 37–38; The Gift, 30–31.

28. In fact, the core of Koncheyev's name, n–ch, reveals the etymological link between the Russian words for end and beginning, a productive notion when one thinks of The Gift's structure. Another playful doubling emerges from the word konets in the story “Music” (published in The Eye [Paris, 1938; reprint, Ann Arbor, 1978]), 181: “Vot tozhe interesnoe slovo: konets. Vrode konia i gontsa v odnom” (Here's another interesting word: end. Like a horse and herald in one [my translation]); the pun is highly diluted in Nabokov's translation: cf. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (New York, 1995), 331. The well-known affinities between Khodasevich and Koncheyev suggest the possibility of a Shklovskian Khod-asevich Konia-cheyev (knight's move), an artistic principle that resonates throughout The Gift and would signal a sly acknowledgement of Koncheyev's oblique relationship to Nabokov's friend. D. Barton Johnson demonstrates that the novel's unfolding structure resembles Fyodor's chess problem from chapter 3. Johnson, , Worlds in Regression (Ann Arbor, 1985), 104.Google Scholar

29. Dar, 106–7; The Gift, 93 (emphasis added).

30. Dar, 18; The Gift, 9.

31. Dar, 379; The Gift, 338.

32. Dar, 382–83; The Gift, 341.

33. Dar, 383; The Gift, 341.

34. This move humorously recalls the early episode, during Fyodor's reminiscences of childhood, where his watch begins to run backwards. Dar, 35; The Gift, 29.

35. Dar, 108; The Gift, 95.

36. Dar, 111; The Gift, 98.

37. Fyodor is also unwilling to put a final boundary on the work in the form of an ending.

38. One root of this obstacle may lie in the difference between Fyodor and Konstantin Kirillovich as readers: Fyodor immersed himself in every symbolist utterance, while his father read only Pushkin.

39. There is some ambiguity to this aspect of the Chernyshevski chapter. The narrator does seem to address his protagonist early on: “Take off your hat, Nikolya,” he says on the work's opening page. This seems, however, to be an oblique and ironic address, rather than a direct connection between author and protagonist. Dar, 239; The Gift, 212.

40. Dar, 381; The Gift, 340.

41. Dar, 202; The Gift, 180.

42. Dar, 9; The Gift, 3.

43. Dar, 186; The Gift, 166.

44. Dar, 187; The Gift, 166.

45. In Russkaia literatura v izgnanii (Paris, 1996), Gleb Struve offers another perspective on Berlin's Russian quarter: ” … soglasno odnomu populiarnomu v to vremia anekdotu, kakoi-to bedyi nemets novesilsia s toski po rodine slysha vokrug sebia na Kurfiurstendamme tol'ko russkuiu rech'” (… according to a popular joke of the day, some poor German fellow hung himself out of longing for his homeland, because he could hear only Russian spoken on the Kurfurstendamm, 33).

46. Dar, 225; The Gift, 200.

47. Unless he did write it: there is no evidence that Fyodor does not consider Delalande to be his own created philosopher. Alexander Dolinin offers some detailed observations on this character. See Dolinin, “The Gift,” in Vladimir E. Alexandrov, ed., The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov (New York, 1995), 167n50.

48. Recalling Chernyshevski's “infinity with a minus sign.” Dar, 245; The Gift, 218.

49. Brian Boyd was the first to draw attention to this detail, as far as I know. Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: Russian Years, 455 note.

50. Dar, 201; The Gift, 179.

51. Dar, 212; The Gift, 192.

52. Dar, 216; The Gift, 192. Compare also the following passage: “Fyodor […] lived with the familiar dream of his father's return, a dream which had mysteriously embellished his life and somehow lifted it above the level of surrounding lives, so that he could see all sorts of distant and interesting things, just as, when a little boy, his father used to lift him by his elbows thus enabling him to see what was interesting over a fence.” Dar, 101; The Gift, 88.

53. Dar, 216; The Gift, 192.

54. “Sineet” (shows blue), it is worth observing, is the same verb Nozdrev uses when referring to his possessions beyond the boundary.

55. We have seen these shadows before, on Chernyshevski's book and in The Gift's opening pages. Dar, 243 and 14; The Gift, 216 and 7. The fence, in fact, reappears in Speak, Memory (New York, 1966), in Nabokov's description of his earliest efforts to write poetry (221).

56. Dar, 175–76, 176, 198–99; The Gift, 156, 157, 176–77.

57. China, too, might include a hint of light, if the street in question is the one at the beginning of chapter 2: “and already, ahead, in a clear space traversed by white specks, one glimpsed a dim yellow blotch approaching,” leading to the China of Konstantin Kirillovich's disappearance. Dar, 92; The Gift, 80. Furthermore, consider also the extensive light imagery in Fyodor's biography of his father.

58. That is, prior to the metafictional concluding Onegin stanza. Anna Maria Salehar associates the star with Fyodor's father, in “Nabokov's Gift: An Apprenticeship in Creativity,” in Proffer, Carl, ed., A Book of Things about Vladimir Nabokov (Ann Arbor, 1974), 70–83.Google Scholar

59. This line obviously recalls Blok's famous poem, “Night, a streetlamp, a street, a drugstore. “

60. Dar, 216; The Gift, 192

61. Dar, 411; The Gift, 366.

62. The ellipsis in the middle of 7, so near the center of the poem, is also a teasingly enigmatic feature.

63. Dar, 12; The Gift, 6.

64. Dar, 387; The Gift, 345.

65. Alexandrov, Vladimir, Nabokov's Otherworld (Princeton, 1991), 129.Google Scholar

66. I again refer the reader to Bakhtin's “Author and Hero,” where many of these types of boundaries are discussed in fascinating detail; although unknown to Nabokov, Bakhtin's text exhibits an explicit concern for the nature of human interactions. The planned but abandoned “sequel” to The Gift might have entailed even more radical blending of textual fragments: see Alexander Dolinin, “Zagadka nedopisannogo romana,” Zvezda, 1997, no. 12: 215–54. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for reminding me of this article.

67. This point is elaborated in Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: Russian Years, 465–66.

68. Irina Paperno, “How Nabokov's Gift Is Made,” trans. Russell Valentino, Stanford Slavic Studies 4, no. 2 (1992): 295–322.

69. See Clarence Brown, “Nabokov's Pushkin and Nabokov's Nabokov,” in L. S. Dembo, ed., Nabokov: The Man and His Work (Madison, 1967), 195–208; and Sergei Davydov, “Weighing Nabokov's Gift on Pushkin's Scales,” in Gasparov, Boris et al., eds., Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age (Berkeley, 1992), 415–28Google Scholar. See also Julian Connolly's chapter on The Gift, in which he discusses the narrative split as representing Fyodor's author-level and character-level selves. Connolly, , Nabokov's Early Fiction: Patterns of Self and Other (Cambridge, Eng, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholarc

70. Dar, 231; The Gift, 205.

71. Dar, 347; The Gift, 310.