The bastard sign

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The bastard sign (English: Bend sinister ) is a 1947 novel , a dystopia , by Vladimir Nabokov . A German translation was first published in 1962.

action

The philosopher Adam Krug is widowed and has a young son, David. Against his will, Krug is drawn into the current politics of his home country. He was a classmate of the brutally ruling dictator Paduk. That is why he is asked by his fellow professors to use his supposed influence in favor of the university. Paduk himself would also like to take advantage of the good reputation of the leading intellectual, which extends abroad. However, Krug contemptuously rejects any cooperation. The repression of the regime that then unfolded culminated in the kidnapping of David, who was murdered by his fellow prisoners in a youth prison. Krug goes mad and provokes his shooting by the Paduk bodyguard.

On various occasions Krug touches the idea that he is not living in reality, but in a nightmare controlled from a higher level. At the end of the book this comes true: The author reveals himself and claims that he redeemed his creature Adam Krug through death.

The actual plot is interrupted by an extensive, learned debate between Krug and his friend and colleague Elber. The subject is Shakespeare's life and work, particularly Hamlet . According to Dieter E. Zimmer , Nabokov used this interlude because the drama and the person Hamlet, "as the highest manifestation of individual consciousness", represent the diametrical contradiction to the brutal leveling of the Paduk dictatorship.

The title

The bastard sign , also bastard thread , is a heraldic sign. The English term bend sinister can also be understood non-heraldically and then denotes a sinister, i.e. unpleasant phrase. In the heraldic context, the English term means left bar. The coat of arms with the left bar is the dividing wall between Adam Krug's fictional world and the real world of the author, who in turn sees the bar the right way round.

Historical background

Nabokov himself rejected “automatic comparisons” with Kafka and Orwell - precisely because they are obvious. The nightmarish unfathomability of the system of rule is reminiscent of works by Kafka, especially Der Trial . The processing of contemporary politics is similar in its starting position to Orwell's novel 1984, which was written at exactly the same time : Both books draw on experiences with Stalinism and National Socialism . Nabokov had emigrated from Russia in 1919 and from Germany in 1937.

Although he insisted not to represent any political concerns (as in a foreword from 1963), in 1948 he agreed in principle to an immediate translation into German demanded by the American government. Vera Nabokov told the officer in charge: “My husband hopes his book will be of use in the government's re-education program , although, as we know the Germans, we have some doubts that it is amenable to re-education are. [...] Although the dictatorship actually described in the book is imaginary, it still deliberately shows features that are inherent in a) Nazism, b) Communism, c) every dictatorial trend, even in an otherwise non-dictatorial social order. " However, Nabokov found the German translation submitted to him so bad that the project did not materialize.

output

The bastard sign. Collected Works Volume VII, Dieter E. Zimmer Ed., Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 3-498-04645-4 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Maar : Solus Rex. The beautiful evil world of Vladimir Nabokov . 2007 ISBN 978-3-8270-0512-0
  2. ^ "The Bastard Sign", Collected Works Volume VII, Dieter E. Zimmer Ed., Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1990
  3. ^ "The Bastard Sign", Collected Works Volume VII, Dieter E. Zimmer Ed., Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1990
  4. ^ Alan Levy, "Vladimir Nabokov: The Velvet Butterfly," Open Road Media, 2015
  5. ↑ Michael Maar: Solus Rex. The beautiful evil world of Vladimir Nabokov . 2007 ISBN 978-3-8270-0512-0