Lectures on Russian Literature

Nabokov is a native of world literature. So it is no surprise that as he is taking the reader on a guided tour of his land, his strong literary opinions easily navigate centuries and continents of literary landscape. However, being an emotional as well as scholarly narrator, Nabokov naturally gravitates to his favorite corners of the world. He is a guide giving a tour of his native city and adding more intimate detail and color when talking about the streets where he grew up. Russian literature must occupy a very special place in his heart, since it permeated his Russian childhood, his longing for which he so beautifully described in "Speak, Memory". In "Lectures on Russian Literature", Nabokov is noticeably closer to the Russian writers than he is to the European writers in his previous volume, "Lectures on Literature" (itself very enjoyable). His spectrum of vision is wider, embracing multiple works of a writer and his personal qualities. The resulting picture is richer, the contrasts of the temperaments and styles make the writers stand out: Chekhov's altruism and Turgenev's vanity, Gogol's impressionist colors and Gorky's clichés, Dostoevsky's cold reason overwhelming his art and Tolstoy's "mighty" art "transcending the sermon", the believable and coherent worlds of Chekhov or Tolstoy and Dostoevsky's internally contradicting world or Gorky's "schematic characters and the mechanical structure of the story"...Here Nabokov continues his thought that a writer is mostly a creative artist, rather than a historian or philosopher. This is how he summarized Gogol's desperate attempts to collect facts for the second part of "Dead Souls": "[Gogol] was in the worst plight that a writer can be in: he had lost the gift of imagining facts and believed that facts may exist by themselves" (Gogol was asking his friends to supply him with descriptions of life around them which he could use in his art). Contrast with it Nabokov's admiration of Chekhov's writing for being so true to life. Chekhov invented his characters, but did it so well that they naturally created a coherent world. Nabokov always put imagination and style at the top of the writer's arsenal, and much above any "reality" (which he always mentioned in quotation marks).Nabokov clearly prefers characters to reveal themselves rather than be explained by the author: for example, where Chekhov let his characters act (not surprisingly, Chekhov was a great playwright), Turgenev tended to over-explain. In "Fathers and Sons", he uses epilogue to describe what happened next in the story. In the scene where Bazarov's father embraces his wife "harder than ever", Turgenev feels the need to explain that this happened because "she had consoled him in his grief". For the same reason Dostoevsky, whose characters Nabokov sees as "mainly ideas in the likeness of people", was not one of his favorite authors. Primacy of idea over form and style was anathema to Nabokov. Both Turgenev and Dostoevsky were too visible on the page for his taste.Personal style of a writer enjoys a special consideration throughout these lectures. While Chekhov is presented as a master of light touch, of suggestion, Dostoevsky appears repetitive, dogmatic, hurried and over-working. As an illustration, Nabokov points out that to set up the murder in "Crime and Punishment" the author needed a whole confluence of circumstances: "Raskolnikov's poverty, self-sacrifice of his sister and utter moral debasement of the intended victim".Nabokov believes that literature should not be gulped, but "taken and broken into bits, pulled apart, squashed", gradually releasing its flavors. One could hear a master chef admiring the virtues of spice freshly crushed in a mortar. His obvious delight in attending to the minute flavors of the novel makes his lectures so enjoyable and unique.

This is a very good book that offers insights into great Russian authors, their works, and techniques. Chekhov the master of the detail that illuminates the whole character or scene. Tolstoy with his great cinematic eye, for the gestures, and movements of his characters, and whom Nabokov credits for being the first author to use the stream of consciousness technique, although at a very rudimentary level. Gogol who wistfully humanized his descriptions.But despite it's insightfulness , one of the annoying things about Nabokov's book on Russian Literature is his idea that the language of a literature separates it from "a universal art to a national one," i.e, to fully appreciate literature one must understand its language, which may in fact be true, as Nabokov shows us how various translators of Russian literature, omit, distort, make banal, and prim the works they are translating. Also Nabokov's requirements of a good translator seem impossible: the translator in Nabokov's opinion must be on the level of the writer whom he is translating. But to create a book on Russian Literature and analyze it only to put up the disclaimer that you cannot truly appreciate or care about Russian literature because you cannot understand Russian seems a poor way to introduce or share insights to Russian Literature.My other pet peeve about this book is his analysis of Dostoevsky. In Nabokov's opinion, Dostoevsky wrote crime novels, about crazy people, and crime novels in Nabokov's opinion cannot aspire to art, and crazy people have no humanity and therefore their actions cannot be taken seriously. I will limit my argument to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and say, yes he was pathological and grandiose, but he was a human, who was remorseful, and realized his motive for killing the pawnbroker was entirely delusional. Nabokov fails to understand this book because he fails to realize the motive for Raskolnikov's murder because he simply dismisses it, as "inhuman, and stupid," and fails to connect all the dots of the motive, which can be explained as Raskolnikov's need to be daring and willful, because those who take up power, and those who are benefactors of humankind, must be daring, in order to defy authority, and the revered but conventional and outmoded way of doing things, and are willful because they defy and destroy authority and the old, and set a new way. Galileo is an example of a benefactor of humankind who defied the church, and set a new standard for science. But what makes Raskolnikov human is that yes he proves he can be daring and frighteningly willful, but he lacks the third and most key element to justify his crime, genius, which he becomes clearly and powerfully aware of, as he realizes his actions and their consequences. In my mind Nabokov simply dismisses Dostoevsky, and doesn't feel the need to analyze his work, which is made clear when he talks about Brothers Karamazov as a whodunit, and does not examine the most noteworthy chapter in Brothers K., The Grand Inquisitor, which is a glaring omission one would not expect from a scholar or even a student.Don't get me wrong I learned alot from this book, and the best thing that can be said for it is that it makes you want to revisit all the classics that it analyzes. But to simply dismiss Dostoevsky, and his admirers is something I didn't expect.

good

This is an indispensable guide to the Russian classics, and IMO superior and far more insightful than this lectures on European literature. The epub text is marred by an unbelievable number of typographical errors; I have reported most of them, but it remains to be seen if they will be corrected. Strange that a book of this academic value was not subjected to even a basic spell check.

Nabokov's critical thought is here reconstructed from his lecture notes. In this volume and in the companion volume concerning Western literature in general, Nabokov shows you how to follow the arc of a plot and what are the touches of specificity that make a reader enter into the author's created world. He helps you notice style, that is, how words carry the individual mind along its individual way.

As literature a good book, however the print is quite small, perhaps a 9pt in Times Roman and the print is not centered on the page. The print begins perhaps 1/2 inch from the top of the page while there is perhaps 2 inches at the bottom of the page. Reading is much easier when the text is centered and just a little larger, 11pt - 12pt would be a big improvement. Not large print - large print books are usually 16pt, just a little larger to make for ease of reading.

An excellent overview of the major Russian Masters of Literature by... one of the major Russian Literature Master! More then that, Nabokov is one of the few in the history of literature who could master the second language (English) to the level of his original one (Russian).

I thought this book was worth the price for just for the analysis of the carriage scene in Anna Karenina. Nabokov is a careful and critical reader. The book was a great help in seeing and paying attention to the details.

2 Stars because whoever put this out just did not care about the reader. Typos fly everywhere in this careless edition. Sometimes as many 4 per page (depending on your font size). And if Nabokov were alive you can bet he would skewer this publisher they way he does Constance Garnett. That said, this is a great companion to reading some of the very best works in Russian literature. Might be worth sourcing a hardcover or paperback version though.

I am a great admirer of Nabokov and I must say that when reading this book you immediately go back to your favorite Russian writers to read them again with a fresh eye!

Very interesting and useful for referencing in my dissertation.

A master-piece.

The best, the very best .... writing about the very best. If you really love literature, it's impossible not to love this. These lectures are to be treasured all one's life - they only grow and grow in value.