The best works of Nabokov

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Vladimir Vladimirovich left, without exaggeration, a huge creative heritage to his descendants. The main books published in our country that Nabokov created are works, the list of which can be compiled as follows: "Mashenka" (1929), "King, Queen, Jack" (1928), written in 1930 "Luzhin's Defense" and " The Return of Chorba", in 1932 - "Feat", in 1936 - "Circle", in 1937-38 - "Gift", as well as "Spy" (1938) and others. At the same time, he also published many poems, such dramas as "Death", "Grandfather", "Plus", "Wanderers", many translations, including works for children, for example, L. Carroll's "Anya in Wonderland", plays in prose. All of them were written in Russian, but this author also wrote in English.

What will you find in this article?

In this article we will present you the main creations that Nabokov created. The works, the list of which is offered to your attention, includes both those written in Russian and in English. On thethe last author created when he lived in the US.

Nabokov's works "Lolita", "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight", "Ghost Things", "Under the Sign of Illegitimate", "Look at the Harlequins!" belong to the American period. This author also translated Russian poets of the 19th century into English. He commented line by line and translated, in particular, "Eugene Onegin", published lectures on Russian literature, read by him at Cornell University and Walesley College.

His pen also has a significant dramatic heritage: Vladimir Vladimirovich wrote nine plays, as well as the script for the film based on the novel "Lolita".

We will describe the most famous works of Nabokov, their characteristic features and summary.

Masha

This first novel by the author, written in 1926, is the most "Russian" of all his works in this genre. In it, the reader is enveloped in an atmosphere of illusiveness of being, strangeness. The work depicts true destinies, which Nabokov's talent turned into fictitious ones. In "Other Shores" in 1954, he outlined the actual incidents that gave rise to the novel, naming the real scene - the banks of the Oberez River, located near Petrograd. Thus, the work is semi-biographical.

The book describes life in a Russian boarding house, located in Berlin, of Russian emigrants. Ganin, the main character, recognizes in the story of Alferov, his neighbor, hisformer love and decides to meet the girl at the station. But at the last moment, he realizes that the past cannot be returned, and therefore he goes to another station, deciding to leave Berlin forever.

Already in this work there is the main cross-cutting theme in Nabokov's work: the theme of two houses. The house where the protagonist temporarily lives is transparent not only for trains, but also for the reader - it is a symbol of the past as such. At the end of the work, Ganin finally realizes that the image of Masha, dear to his heart, has forever remained in this place of "shadows". And after that, another house appears, still under construction.

Luzhin's Defense

This work was created in 1930, this is the third Russian novel by Vladimir Nabokov, which brought him to the forefront of the literary Russian abroad, making the author a big name. The plot is based on the life events of the writer's friend Kurt von Bardeleben, who committed suicide in 1924. The reader behind the ups and downs of the life of a one-sided, albeit brilliant, hero, the insane and gifted Russian chess player Alexander Ivanovich Luzhin, who emigrated from the country, discovers the most important and constant theme of the writer's work - the repetition and development of secret themes in the fate of man. The chess defense that the main character develops gradually becomes an allegory of protection from real life, in which the mind, traumatized by the disease, sees the sinister actions of unknown forces, similar to chess moves. In repetitions of the events of his biography, Alexander Ivanovichsees the fatal moves of his opponent - fate, and, not finding the opportunity to unravel its secret, he chooses to leave the game - the only possible solution.

Invitation to execution

We continue to describe Nabokov's works. The next novel we'll look at was written in 1936. The time and place of action is not so easy to determine - one can imagine conditionally that the writer depicts the distant future of our country, when civilization has stalled and degenerated. The protagonist of the work should be executed for the so-called "opacity" and "epistemological infamy", it is assumed that he must come to terms and passively accept his death. However, at the last moment, he understands all the illusory nature of the world in which he exists, refuses non-resistance and emerges from this situation as a winner.

Gift

The next creation, related to the list of "Nabokov's best works", was created by him in 1938. This is a meta-novel in form, which combines poetry and prose. The work was written in Russian during the writer's life in Germany. The protagonist has some features of the biography of the author himself: he is an emigrant, an aspiring young poet, the son of a famous scientist, who lives during the events taking place in the work in a rented apartment. Her owners are a former prosecutor who is an anti-Semite, as well as his wife and her daughter from his first marriage. The latter falls in love with the main character. For a variety of reasons, the relationshiplovers cannot enter into a period of intimacy in any way. The chapter "The Gift", the fourth in the novel, is a "book within a book", its content is a presentation of the ideas and biography of Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

Lolita

Next in chronology Nabokov's work, referring to his best creations, is "Lolita". This novel was written in 1955. According to many literary critics, the story of how an adult man was passionately carried away by a girl who was only twelve years old is the pinnacle of the entire legacy created by Vladimir Nabokov. The works that make up the main part of his work cannot be imagined without the mention of "Lolita". In the story, the main character torments the girl with his unrequited love and eventually loses her. Nabokov's work "Lolita" brought the author worldwide fame.

Pnin

This creation was created by Vladimir Vladimirovich in the USA, published in English, is the fourth novel in this language. Its main character is the professor of literature and Russian language Timofey Pnin. He is shown by the writer with slight irony as a representative of the Russian intelligentsia of the old school, trying to become his own in the academic environment of America, but comically at odds with the language spoken by the students, which, together with his absent-mindedness, funny appearance and awkwardness in handling objects, turns this figure into a local curiositySight. Gradually, however, this eccentric, unlucky and touchingly ridiculous title character is revealed to us as a multifaceted, complex personality, in whose fate moments of genuine tragedy and supreme happiness are combined, whose life, like any human life, forms a mixture of inescapable sadness and indescribable charm … Background, on which the story unfolds is a picture of life in the United States of Russian emigrants of the first wave.

Laura and her original

We continue our analysis of Nabokov's works. The novel, which we will consider at the very end of the article, was started by the author in 1977, remained unfinished and was published only after Nabokov's death, against the will of his father, by Dmitry Vladimirovich, the writer's son. The basis of the book is the relationship with the present and former lovers of Philip Wilde, a neuroscientist. This work is an original, brilliant and revolutionary thing in its essence, which is, as it were, the quintessence of the work of a writer like Nabokov.

The works, the best according to critics, were briefly reviewed by us in this article. Their list can be continued in order to better familiarize yourself with the work of this author. At the very beginning, we listed other of his novels and plays that you can refer to. Also, in order to better understand the work of Vladimir Vladimirovich, you can watch films based on the works of Nabokov. There are quite a lot of screen versions now, both Russian and foreign. An example isfilm by Adrian Lyne "Lolita", released in 1997.