"Signs and Symbols" is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov, written in English and first published, May 15, 1948 in The New Yorker and then in Nabokov's Dozen (1958: Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York).
In The New Yorker, the story was published under the title "Symbols and Signs", a decision by the editor Katharine White. Nabokov returned the title to his original "Signs and Symbols" when republishing the story. [1]
An elderly couple tries to visit their mentally ill son in a sanatorium on his birthday. They are informed that he attempted to take his life and they cannot see him now. After their return home, the husband announces his decision to take him out of the sanatorium. The story concludes with mysterious telephone calls. The first two apparently misdialed calls are from a girl asking for "Charlie"; the story ends when the phone rings for the third time.
In the course of the story the reader learns many details of the unnamed couple's life: they are Russian Jews who went into exile after the revolution; depend financially upon the husband's brother, Isaac; had a German maid when they lived in Germany; had an aunt, Rosa, and many other relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust; and have a nephew who is a famous chess player. The elderly man is in bad health.
The son suffers from "referential mania", where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence". "Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme". Real people are excluded from this paranoia, and the condition is worse the further he is away from familiar surroundings. The son's condition is based on a real condition—compare ideas of reference.
The New Yorker wanted to make many changes. Nabokov objected strongly, supported by his friend Edmund Wilson, and the story was printed mostly as he wrote it. [2]
However, the New Yorker version still contained four editorial changes that Nabokov eliminated in later publications. One was that the title was reversed as mentioned above. The second was that instead of numbers for the three sections, the sections were separated by ellipses. The third was that two paragraphs were joined into one. The fourth was that "beech plum" for a kind of jelly was changed to the correct "beach plum". Alexander Drescher has argued that Nabokov intended the latter two points to be among the story's "signs and symbols". With his paragraphing, the story's sections have 7, 4, and 19 paragraphs, indicating the year it takes place, 1947. (Drescher credits this connection to Anthony Stadlen.) In the New Yorker version, the last section had 18 paragraphs. To support his claim that the connection to 1947 is intentional, Drescher notes that in Nabokov's novel Pnin (1957), Pnin complains that a librarian has changed volume 19 to volume 18 and gotten the wrong year in his request for a book from 1947, saying, "They can't read, these women! The year was plainly inscribed." Regarding "beech", Drescher argues that it is the husband's misreading of the label, "an example of typographical free indirect discourse," and is one of the story's many references to the Holocaust, specifically the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald means "beech woods", and Pnin thinks of "Buchenwald" and "beechwood" (for cremation) together. [3]
In a letter to Katharine White, Nabokov said that "Signs and Symbols", like "The Vane Sisters", was a story "wherein a second (main) story is woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one." He did not say what the main story was. [4]
Some critics have argued that the story's many details can be deciphered into a message—for instance that the son has committed suicide, or that he is in an afterlife and free from his torments, [5] or that the third phone call is from him, saying that he has escaped from the asylum. [3] However, the predominant interpretation [5] is that the story inveigles the reader into an attempt at deciphering the details and thus "over-reading", which is "another, milder form of referential mania". [6]
Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka and first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, who have offered varied interpretations. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.
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.
Charles Kinbote is the unreliable narrator in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire.
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 Vane Sisters" is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov, written in March 1951. It is famous for providing one of the most extreme examples of an unreliable narrator. It was first published in the Winter 1958 issue of The Hudson Review and then reprinted in Encounter during 1959. The story was included in Nabokov's Quartet (1966), Nabokov's Congeries, Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995).
Nabokov's Congeries was a collection of work by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1968 and reprinted in 1971 as The Portable Nabokov. Because Nabokov supervised its production less than a decade before he died, it is useful in attempting to identify which works Nabokov considered to be his best, especially among his short stories.
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.
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.
Bend Sinister is a dystopian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during the years 1945 and 1946, and published by Henry Holt and Company in 1947. It was Nabokov's eleventh novel and his second written in English.
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.
Invitation to a Beheading is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian from 1935 to 1936 as a serial in Sovremennye zapiski, a Russian émigré magazine. In 1938, the work was published in Paris, with an English translation following in 1959. The novel was translated into English by Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, under the author's supervision.
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.
King, Queen, Knave was 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.
Transparent Things is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1972. It was originally written in English.
"Spring in Fialta" is a short story written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1936, originally as Весна в Фиальте in Russian, during his exile in Berlin. The English translation was performed by Nabokov and Peter Pertzov. Spring in Fialta is included in Nine Stories and Nabokov's Dozen.
"Terra Incognita" is a short story written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov that was first published in the émigré journal Posledniya Novosti in Paris in 1931. Translated by the author and his son, the story was published in English in The New Yorker in May, 1963, and later added to A Russian Beauty and Other Stories.
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.
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