Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0003455, Sat, 31 Oct 1998 14:19:50 -0800

Subject
VN Bibliography
Date
Body
Thanks to Svetlana Polsky (discoverer of VN's long last short story
"Easter Rain") for calling NABOKV-L's attention to the followign items.

1. V. Serdiuchenko. "Chernyshevskii v romane V. Nabokova DAR: K
predistorii voprosa" _Voprosy literatury_. Mar.-Apr. 1998, pp. 333-343.

2. V.V.Save'eva. "Litso i `lichiko chasov' u Vladimira Nabokova" _Russkaia
Rech_" 4 (1998), pp. 17-21. A rather charming piece on clocks and watches
in VN's works.

3. M. Bubenikova. "Pis'mo E.I Nabokovoi k A.L. Bemu." _Slavianovedenie 4
(1998), pp. 91-93. VN's mother supplies some bio-bibliography info for the
scholar-critc Bem. No new data.
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Miscellaneous editor's notes:

1. Catching up on old "New Yorkers" I ran across Daphne Merkin's
favorable review of "Love Sick on Long Island." It's last line is :" It'sa
though Humbert Humbert had wandered into "Death in Venice" and found
release through MTV."


2. It is interest to speculate what kind of novels, if any, Nabokov would
have written had he not left Russia. While the young VN in Berlin was
writing modernist novels tinged with nostalgia for a lost Russia, his (per
force) Soviet coevals also were, in many cases, nostalgically exploring
the theme of a lost culture while cautiously greeting to new. Konstantin
Vaginov (1899-1934), and his _Kozlinaya pesn'_, known in English as _The
Tower_ is a case in point. Translator Benjamin Sher has now put his
translation on the web. The short novel novel offers an intriguing
contrast to Nabokov's books of the twenties. See item before for location.





---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Benjamin Sher <sher07@bellsouth.net>
Subject: Vaginov's The Tower -- Online -- Complete!

Dear Colleagues:

May I cordially invite you to read Konstantin Vaginov's The Tower
(original title: The Goat Song -- Kozlinaia Pesn' -- St. Petersburg,
1928) online in its entirety in a special edition designed for the
World Wide Web.

Vaginov's surrealistic novel depicts the spiritual self-destruction of
the Russian intelligentsia in the 1920's. This is the first translation
ever of this classic of Russian modernism into English.

Please double-click on the address below to go to the Sher
Publishers web site at:

http://members.xoom.com/sher07/

When you arrive at the site, please scroll down to the bottom of the
page where you will find the Kandinsky online "dust jacket" painting.
Click ANYWHERE on the image. It will take you directly to The
Tower, where you will see the Kandinsky painting in full page mode.
You may at this point simply read the online edition as you would
any book or go to the Table of Contents and click on any chapter.
This will take you instantly to the chapter you have selected. To
return to the Table of Contents press Control +Home.

I would like to express my very special gratitude to Professor
Alexander Boguslawski of Rollins College for help with HTML
problems and especially for designing the fabulous Kandinsky
cover art.

I think Vaginov would have been pleased to see his most important
novel online, available to any English-speaking reader with access
to the Internet. I hope you, the reader, are equally pleased.


Thank you.

Benjamin

P. S. You can also access this complete online edition of The Tower
indirectly through my Sher's Russian Web, the address of which is
provided below.


Benjamin Sher
Sher's Russian Web and Index
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/