First edition (Russian) | |
Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
---|---|
Original title | Машенька (Mashen'ka) |
Translator | Vladimir Nabokov and Michael Glenny |
Language | Russian |
Publisher | Slovo McGraw Hill (English) |
Publication date | 1926 |
Publication place | Germany |
Published in English | 1970 |
Mary (Russian : Машенька, Mašen'ka) is the debut novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first published under the pen name V. Sirin in 1926 by Russian-language publisher "Slovo".
Mary is the story of Lev Glebovich Ganin, a Russian émigré and former White Guard Officer displaced by the Russian Revolution. Ganin is now living in a boarding house in Berlin, along with a young Russian girl, Klara, an old Russian poet, Podtyagin, his landlady, Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn and his neighbour, Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov, whom he meets in a dark, broken-down elevator at the beginning of the novel. Through a series of conversations with Alfyorov and a photograph, Ganin discovers that his long-lost first love, Mary, is now the wife of his rather unappealing neighbour, and that she will be joining him soon. As Ganin realizes this, he ends his relationship with his current girlfriend, Lyudmila, and begins to be consumed by his memories of his time in Russia with Mary, which Ganin notes were "perhaps the happiest days of his life". Enthralled by his vision of Mary and unable to let Alfyorov have her, Ganin contrives to reunite with Mary, who he believes still loves him.
Eventually, Ganin claims that he will leave Berlin the night before Mary is to arrive and his fellow residents throw a party for him the night before. Ganin steadily plies Alfyorov with alcohol, heavily intoxicating him. Just before Alfyorov falls into his drunken sleep, he asks Ganin to set his alarm clock for half past seven, as Alfyorov intends to pick up Mary at the train station the next morning. The infatuated Ganin instead sets the clock for eleven and plans to meet Mary at the train station himself. However, as he leaves the house, he has a moment of clarity. "The world of memories in which Ganin had dwelt became what it was in reality: the distant past... Other than that image no Mary existed, nor could exist." Instead of meeting Mary, Ganin decides to board a train to France.
A secondary, minor plot concerns an old Russian poet, Anton Sergeyevich Podtyagin, who appears to be an older version of Ganin. He frequently expresses that his life dedicated to poetry has been a waste. Podtyagin desires to eventually leave Berlin and arrive in Paris, but fails to do so on several occasions due to a series of unfortunate events (i.e. loses passport).
Lev Glebovich Ganin – The protagonist of the novel; a young displaced Russian writer in Berlin who is unable to forget Mary, his first love.
Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov – The husband of Mary and the neighbour of Ganin.
Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn – The landlady of Ganin. An old Russian woman who inherited the boarding house after her German husband died.
Lyudmila Borisovna Rubanski – Ganin's girlfriend in the opening chapters of the novel.
Klara – A young Russian girl living in the same building as Ganin. She harbors an intense attraction to him.
Anton Sergeyevich Podtyagin – An old Russian poet who desires to leave Berlin for Paris, but fails to do so. Reappears briefly in The Gift.
Mary Alfyorov – The eponymous character and Ganin's first love. Mary never appears in the present of the novel, but only in Ganin's memories.
Kolin and Gornotsvetov – Ballet dancers, also living at Lydia's boarding house.
Erika – Maid (her name is mentioned in chapter 2, clearing way the plates, and in chapter 7, delivering a letter to Ganin).
Russian doctor – Unnamed physician called on to see Podtyagin (chapter 16).
Mary was first written and published in the mid-1920s during Nabokov's stay in Berlin. Nabokov's (or "Sirin's", as he was known at the time) first novel contains, as many of his works do, key autobiographical elements. According to Brian Boyd, the character Mary Alfyorov is based on Nabokov's first love, Valentina (Lyussya) Evgenievna Shulgin, a fifteen-year-old Russian girl he met in 1915 at a pavilion in the estate of Vyra, at the age of sixteen. [1] Nabokov's time with Lyussya is recorded in the final chapter of his autobiography, Speak, Memory where she is given the pseudonym "Tamara". [2] Nabokov confirms this connection himself in the foreword to the English edition, where he writes that "Mary is a twin sister of my Tamara". [3] Like Ganin, Nabokov was separated from Tamara by the Russian Revolution and forced into Berlin as an émigré.
The novel was initially well-received in the 1920s for its inventive structure and vivid descriptions of pre-Revolutionary Russia. Among contemporary critics however, it is generally viewed as an early, relatively juvenile work of Nabokov, written at a time before he came into his own as an author. Nabokov himself seemed to share the same opinion, at least on a technical level, as he notes its "flaws, the artifacts of innocence and inexperience". Furthermore, Nabokov's decision to translate and publish Mary in English last out of all his Russian novels perhaps is an indication of his opinion on its quality (the Russian works which he held in most esteem, such as Invitation to a Beheading and The Defense , were translated and published into English decades earlier). Yet the author seemed to also have a softer side for his first novel, "confessing to the sentimental stab of [his] attachment" to it.
In Mary, Nabokov explores many of the metaphysical ideas of French philosopher Henri Bergson and investigates the nature of the relationships between time, memory and consciousness, as noticed by scholars like Boyd and Eric Laursen. [4]
Furthermore, the issue of solipsism, which, according to Alfred Appel, is "a central concern" in Nabokov's oeuvre, is prominently featured in Mary, as Ganin struggles with the self-created image of his first love. [5] As Leona Toker remarks, "the romance which started solipsistically in the imagination [ends], no less solipsistically". [6]
A film adaptation, titled Maschenka after the original Russian title, was released in 1987. The film, directed by John Goldschmidt with screenplay by John Mortimer, starred Cary Elwes as Ganin and Irina Brook as Maschenka. John Goldschmidt won the Cine De Luca Award for directing 'Maschenka" at the Monte Carlo TV Festival.
The novel first appeared in English in 1970 in a translation by Michael Glenny "in collaboration with the author." According to Nabokov, "I realized as soon as [we] started that our translation should be as faithful to the text as I would have insisted on its being had that text not been mine." [7] He further stated that "The only adjustments I deemed necessary are limited to brief utilitarian phrases in three or four pages alluding to routine Russian matters ...[and] the switch of seasonal dates in Ganin's Julian Calendar to those of the Gregorian style in general use." [8]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a 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.
Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov was a Russian criminologist, journalist, and progressive statesman during the last years of the Russian Empire. He was the father of Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov.
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.
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.
The Gift is Vladimir Nabokov's final Russian novel, and is considered to be his farewell to the world he was leaving behind. Nabokov wrote it between 1935 and 1937 while living in Berlin, and it was published in serial form under his pen name, Vladimir Sirin.
Carrousel is a booklet published in 1987 containing three short texts written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1923 for "Karussel", a Russian cabaret.
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 a 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.
The Defense is the third novel written by Vladimir Nabokov after he had immigrated to Berlin. It was first published in Russian 1930 and later in English in 1964.
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.
King, Queen, Knave is the second novel written by Vladimir Nabokov while living in Berlin and sojourning at resorts in the Baltic. Written in the years 1927–8, it was published as Король, дама, валет in Russian in October 1928 and then translated into German by Siegfried von Vegesack as König, Dame, Bube: ein Spiel mit dem Schicksal. Forty years later the novel was translated into English by Nabokov's son Dmitri, with significant changes made by the author. A film adaptation only loosely based on the novel followed in 1972.
Véra Yevseyevna Nabokova was the wife, editor, and translator of Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, and a source of inspiration for many of his works.
"Bachmann" is a short story written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov under his pen name, Vladimir Sirin, in Berlin in 1924. The story details a three-year love affair between the titular Bachmann, a celebrated pianist, and Mme. Perov, a married woman.
"The Return of Chorb" is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov written in Russian under his pen name Vladimir Sirin in Berlin in 1925. In 1929 it became part of a collection of fifteen short stories and twenty-four poems also called The Return of Chorb in Russian by "V. Sirin".
This is a list of works by writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov that addresses the controversial subject of 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 diminutive 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.
Details of a Sunset is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov written in Russian under his pen name Vladimir Sirin in Berlin in 1924.
Aris Fioretos is a Swedish writer, translator and scholar of Greek and Austrian extraction who writes in Swedish, German and English. Aside from his own literary career, he is also Professor of Aesthetics at Södertörn University and a member of both the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and the Akademie der Künste.
Maschenka is a 1987 international film adaptation of the debut novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first published under his pen name V. Sirin in 1926. The film was directed by John Goldschmidt from a screenplay by John Mortimer and stars Cary Elwes as Ganin and Irina Brook as Maschenka.