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| Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
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| Original title | Дар |
| Language | Russian |
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| Publication date | 1938 |
| ISBN | 0-679-72725-6 |
The Gift (Russian: Дар, Dar; ISBN 0-679-72725-6) was Vladimir Nabokov's final Russian novel, and is considered to be his farewell to the world he was leaving behind. He wrote it between 1935 and 1937 while living in Berlin. The main character is Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, a writer living in Berlin, and the story concerns his attempts to someday be worthy of and able to create the book of his dreams, to be entitled The Gift. It is possible to interpret the book as metafiction, and imagine that the book was actually written by Fyodor later in his life, though this is not the only possible interpretation.
Its heroine is not Zina, but Russian literature. The plot of Chapter One centres in Fyodor's poems. Chapter Two is a surge toward Pushkin in Fyodor's literary progress and contains his attempt to describe his father's zoological explorations. Chapter Three shifts to Gogol, but its real hub is the love poem dedicated to Zina. Fyodor's book on Chernyshevski, a spiral within a sonnet, takes care of Chapter Four. The last chapter combines all the preceding themes and adumbrates the book Fyodor dreams of writing someday: The Gift.
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- — Vladimir Nabokov, from the Foreword
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Although Nabokov did not translate the novel from Russian into English by himself (it was done by Michael Scammell), he did assist and supervise the process.
Bibliography
- Stephen H. Blackwell Boundaries of Art in Nabokov's The Gift: Reading as Transcendence Slavic Review, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 600-625
External links
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| Novels: |
Mary • King, Queen, Knave • The Defense • The Eye • Glory • Laughter in the Dark • Despair • Invitation to a Beheading • The Gift • The Enchanter • The Real Life of Sebastian Knight • Bend Sinister • Lolita • Pnin • Pale Fire • Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle • Transparent Things • Look at the Harlequins! • The Original of Laura |
| Short stories: |
"The Wood-Sprite" • "Russian Spoken Here" • "Sounds" • "Wingstroke" • "Gods" • "A Matter of Chance" • "The Seaport" • "Revenge" • "Beneficence" • "Details of a Sunset" • "The Thunderstorm" • "La Veneziana" • "Bachmann" • "The Dragon" • Christmas" • "A Letter That Never Reached Russia" • "The Fight" • "The Return of Chorb" • "A Guide to Berlin" • "A Nursery Tale" • "Terror" • "Razor" • "The Passenger • "The Doorbell" • "An Affair of Honor" • "The Christmas Story" • "The Potato Elf" • "The Aurelian" • "A Dashing Fellow" • "A Bad Day" • "The Visit to the Museum" • "A Busy Man" • "Terra Incognita" • "The Reunion" • "Lips to Lips" • "Orache" • "Music" • "Perfection" • "The Admiralty Spire" • "The Leonardo" • "In Memory of L. I. Shigaev" • "The Circle" • "A Russian Beauty" • Breaking the News" • "Torpid Smoke" • "Recruiting" • "A Slice of Life" • "Spring in Fialta" • "Cloud, Castle, Lake" • "Tyrants Destroyed" • "Lik" • "Vasiliy Shishkov" • "Ultima Thule" • "Solus Rex" • "Mademoiselle O" • "The Assistant Producer" • "That in Aleppo Once..." • "A Forgotten Poet" • "Time and Ebb" • "Conversation Piece, 1945" • "Signs and Symbols" • "First Love" • "Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster" • "The Vane Sisters" • "Lance" • "Easter Rain" |
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Death • The Grandfather • The North Pole • The Tragedy of Mr. Morn • The Man from the USSR • The Event • The Waltz Invention |
| Non-fiction: |
Speak, Memory • Strong Opinions • Nikolai Gogol • Lectures on Literature • Lectures on Russian Literature • Lectures on Don Quixote • The Nabokov-Wilson letters • Selected Letters, 1940-1977 • Notes on Prosody |
| Miscellaneous : |
Poems and Problems • Lolita: A Screenplay • The Annotated Lolita • Carrousel |
