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| Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | McGraw-Hill Companies |
Publication date | 1974 |
Look at the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.
Look at the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N. (VV), a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. VV is born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and raised by his aunt, who advises him to "look at the harlequins" "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!". After the revolution, VV moves to Western Europe. Count Nikifor Nikodimovich Starov becomes his patron (is he VV's father?). VV meets Iris Black who becomes his first wife. After her death—she is killed by a Russian émigré—he marries Annette (Anna Ivanovna Blagovo), his long-necked typist. They have a daughter, Isabel, and emigrate to the United States. The marriage fails; and, after Annette's death, VV takes care of the pubescent Isabel, now known as Bel. They travel from motel to motel. To counter ugly rumors, VV marries Louise Adamson while Bel elopes with an American to Soviet Russia. After the third marriage fails, VV marries again, a Bel lookalike (same birthdate, too), referred to as "you", his final love.
VV is an unreliable narrator who gives conflicting information (e.g., on the death of his father) and seems to suffer from some psychological affliction. When making a full turn while walking—mentally, that is—and tracing his steps back, he is unable to execute the reversion of the surrounding vista in his imagination. He also has the notion that he is a double of another Nabokovian persona.
Literary criticism has weighed in on both sides of this debate, some even claiming that Vadim is both a parody and a double or Doppelgänger of Nabokov. For example, Nabokov's Lolita is acted out by the narrator of Look at the Harlequins! through his fondling of the nymphet, Dolly von Borg. The attribution of a string of wives to the narrator may be understood in the context of Nabokov's strictly monogamous life. After the publication of Lolita the wider public and many critics thought that its author must be a "sexual daredevil". With the serial polygamy related in Look at the Harlequins!, Nabokov can be seen to be poking fun at these perceptions. V.V.'s final wife is simply addressed as "You", which parallels Nabokov's addressing his wife, Véra, simply as "you" in his autobiography Speak, Memory . The fact that the final object of V.V.'s love is a perfect image of V.V.'s daughter, "Bel," parallels the search by Humbert Humbert, the main character of Lolita, for a girl-child just like "Annabel", his first love when he himself was aged 12.
If V.V. is afflicted by feelings of being the double of another Nabokovian persona, this is because he bears in fact significant resemblances to the main character of the novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight from 1941.
The composition of Look at the Harlequins! followed on the heels of Andrew Field’s biography Nabokov: His Life in Part, a biography that eventually resulted in the termination of Nabokov’s relations with Field and in the novelist’s failed attempt at legal suppression of the biography. Nabokov felt that Field had created a character named Vladimir Nabokov in his biography—a character whom the real author could not recognize (Johnson, 330). Nabokov “had already perfected the role of his own biographer—in a series of mock biographies that began with a game he invented in adolescence, and that continued in his memoir Speak, Memory (1966) and his fiction. The encounter with Field, his first real-life biographer, produced. . .[the] parodic text. . .Look at the Harlequins! (1974). . .” (Sweeney 295-6)[ full citation needed ].
The book begins with a list of "Other Books by the Narrator" (that is, Vadim rather than Vladimir Nabokov). Many (if not all) of these titles appear to be doppelgangers of Nabokov's real novels.
Look at the Harlequins! was heavily influenced by Nabokov's reading of Martin Gardner's book The Ambidextrous Universe . [2] [3]
Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. Nabokov wrote Pale Fire in 1960–61, after the success of Lolita had made him financially independent, allowing him to retire from teaching and return to Europe. It was commenced in Nice and completed in Montreux, Switzerland.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was an expatriate Russian and Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
Suellyn Lyon was an American actress who is most famous today for playing Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation of Nabokov's eponymous novel, for which she was awarded a Golden Globe.
Pnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States launched Nabokov's career into literary prominence. Its eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born assistant professor in his 50s living in the United States, whose character is believed to be based partially on the life of both Nabokov's colleague Marc Szeftel as well as on Nabokov himself. Exiled by the Russian Revolution and what he calls the "Hitler war", Pnin teaches Russian at the fictional Waindell College, loosely inspired by Cornell University and Wellesley College—places where Nabokov himself taught.
The Original of Laura is an incomplete novel by Vladimir Nabokov, which he was writing at the time of his death in 1977. It was published by Nabokov's son Dmitri Nabokov in 2009, despite the author's request that the work be destroyed upon his death.
Lolita is an American 1962 black comedy-psychological drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the eponymous 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The black-and-white film follows a middle-aged literature lecturer who writes as "Humbert Humbert" and has hebephilia. He is sexually infatuated with young, adolescent Dolores Haze. It stars James Mason as Humbert, Shelley Winters as Mrs. Haze, Peter Sellers as Quilty, and Sue Lyon as Dolores "Lolita" Haze.
Lolita is a 1997 drama film directed by Adrian Lyne and written by Stephen Schiff. It is the second screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze, and Frank Langella as Clare Quilty. The film is about a middle-aged professor who is sexually attracted to adolescent girls he calls "nymphets". He rents a room in the house of a young widow to get closer to her daughter, whom he calls "Lolita". Obsessed with the girl, he eventually has her to himself after they embark on a cross-country road trip together.
Despair is the seventh novel by Vladimir Nabokov, originally published in Russian, serially in the politicized literary journal Sovremennye zapiski during 1934. It was then published as a book in 1936, and translated to English by the author in 1937. Most copies of the 1937 English edition were destroyed by German bombs during World War II; only a few copies remain. Nabokov published a second English translation in 1965; this is now the only English translation in print.
Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. The book includes individual essays published between 1936 and 1951 to create the first edition in 1951. Nabokov's revised and extended edition appeared in 1966.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939 in Paris and first published in 1941. A work centred on language and its inability to convey any satisfactory definition, it has been identified as a forerunner of the postmodernist novel.
Florence "Sally" Horner was an American girl who, at the age of 11, was abducted by serial child molester Frank La Salle in June 1948 and held captive for twenty-one months. It is believed that Vladimir Nabokov drew on the details of her case in writing his novel Lolita, although Nabokov consistently denied this.
The Eye, written in 1930, is Vladimir Nabokov's fourth novel. It was translated into English by the author's son Dmitri Nabokov in 1965.
Lolita, My Love was an unsuccessful musical by John Barry and Alan Jay Lerner, based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita. It closed in Boston in 1971 while on a tour prior to Broadway.
"Lolita" is an English-language term defining a young girl as "precociously seductive." It originates from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita, which portrays the narrator Humbert's sexual obsession with and victimization of a 12-year-old girl whom he privately calls "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores. Unlike Nabokov, however, contemporary writers typically use the term "Lolita" to portray a young girl who attracts adult desire as complicit rather than victimized.
The Ambidextrous Universe is a popular science book by Martin Gardner, covering aspects of symmetry and asymmetry in human culture, science and the wider universe. It culminates in a discussion of whether nature's conservation of parity is ever violated, which had been proven experimentally in 1956.
The Enchanter is a novella written by Vladimir Nabokov in Paris in 1939. As Волшебник (Volshebnik) it was his last work of fiction written in Russian. Nabokov never published it during his lifetime. After his death, his son Dmitri translated the novella into English in 1986 and it was published the following year. Its original Russian version became available in 1991. The story deals with the hebephilia of the protagonist and thus is linked to and presages the Lolita theme.
This is a list of works by writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov which addresses hebephilia. The protagonist is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He describes his obsession with a 12-year-old "nymphet", Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.
Lolita (Лолита) is an opera in two acts by composer Rodion Shchedrin. Composed in 1992, it uses a Russian language libretto by the composer which is based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name, written in English. The opera premiered in 1994 at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm, using a Swedish language translation of the original libretto.
Lolita is a play adapted by Edward Albee from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name. The troubled production opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway on March 19, 1981, after 31 previews and closed after only 12 performances.
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