The gift

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The gift , Russian Дар ( Dar ), is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, completed in 1938 . It is Nabokov's ninth novel and the last to be written in Russian . Using the example of his protagonist , a Russian writer in Berlin in the 1920s, Nabokov discusses problems from a literary perspective and unfolds a look back at Russian literature .

content

The novel is set in Berlin in the second half of the 1920s . The protagonist is Count Fyodor Godunow-Cherdyntsev, a homesick young Russian writer who went into exile after the October Revolution . He is told from the first person perspective as well as in the third person. At the center of each of the five chapters of the rather poor-story novel is a work by Godunow-Tscherdynzev. In the first chapter he moves into a new room to sublet in Tannenbergstrasse, which, according to the editor of the German edition Dieter E. Zimmer, means Pfalzburger Strasse in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . He has just published a collection of autobiographical poems about his childhood and would like to discuss them in the large colony of Russian emigrants, where his book has received little response. In the second chapter, Godunow-Cherdyntsev prepares a biography of his father, an explorer and lepidopterist who went missing on one of his trips through Siberia and Central Asia . Godunow-Tscherdynzev breaks off the project. He moves into a new room on Agamemnonstrasse, by which I mean Nestorstrasse in Berlin-Halensee , where Nabokov actually sublet at the time the novel was written. Again and again he admiringly refers to Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin (1799–1837), the founder of modern Russian literature .

The third chapter describes Godunov-Cherdyntsev's everyday life, which is filled with literary daydreams, chess compositions and lessons with which he makes a living and which disgust him. Allusions and mentions of Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Gogol (1809–1852), the great Russian prose writer and author of grotesques, predominate here . Godunow-Tscherdynzew begins a love affair with Sina Mertz, the stepdaughter of his landlord. They only ever meet outside the apartment in which they both live. In the prose of the description of one of their evening encounters, a love poem to Sina is inserted over about twenty pages. She believes in his gift as a writer and encourages him as his muse to write a biography of Nikolai Gavrilowitsch Tschernyshevsky (1828–1898). As a book within a book, this work takes up the entire fourth chapter. In a satirical demarcation against this writer and revolutionary, who had to spend 19 years in Siberian exile, Godunow-Cherdyntsev unfolds his own poetics : he despises Chernyshevsky's materialism , his rationalism , his artistically miserable books, which only found their way into literary history because of their political content - Chernyshevsky was a favorite author of Lenin . With this subjectively written biography, Nabokov exemplified his thesis that history never exists independently of the historian. The fifth chapter begins with the verbatim rendering of several damning reviews , some of which grotesquely misunderstood Godunov-Cherdyntsev's book, but nevertheless contribute to its sales success. At the action level, Sina's parents decide to move to Copenhagen , which means that the two lovers finally have the apartment to themselves. Godunow-Tscherdynzew spends a happy day at the Grunewaldsee , where his clothes are stolen, which is why he has to walk back home in his swimming trunks. Godunow-Tscherdynzew decides to write a novel about recent events - obviously the gift is meant. The book ends when he and Sina, after saying goodbye to her parents at the Szczecin train station , go home in happy anticipation of their first night of love, without realizing that neither of them has a key to the apartment.

background

Origin and edition history

Nabokov conceived the novel in 1933 and finished it in 1938. It is his last novel completed in Russian; the novel Solus Rex , begun in Russian, remained a fragment; after emigrating to the USA, Nabokov wrote in English . Nabokov first wrote the fourth chapter with the biography of Chernyshevsky, then chapters two and one. In January 1937 he and his family left Germany - like Sina, his wife Véra , to whom the novel and all of Nabokov's works are dedicated, was of Jewish descent , which is why her life was specifically endangered during the Nazi era . Nabokov wrote the third and fifth chapters in Cannes and Menton on the Côte d'Azur .

The gift appeared from 1937 to 1938 in various issues of the Paris emigre magazine Sovremennyje sapiski , but without the fourth chapter. The book was not fully published until 1952 by a Russian publisher in New York . The translation into English, The Gift , 1963, was done by Nabokov's son Dmitri and Michael Scammell and overseen by Nabokov. A translation into German by Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt was published in 1993.

Germany picture

The hero's image of Germany is extremely negative. Nabokov later explained that although the book was set in 1928, it was written in the mood of 1938, when he and his family were on the run from the National Socialists. Dieter E. Zimmer also states that Nabokov, who grew up in an opulent youth , was confronted with material difficulties and “the vulgus ” for the first time in Berlin .

output

  • The gift . German by Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt (= Dieter E. Zimmer (Ed.): Vladimir Nabokov: Gesammelte Werke , Vol. V.) Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter E. Zimmer: Afterword by the editor. In: Vladimir Nabokov: The Gift . German by Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt (= Dieter E. Zimmer (Ed.): Vladimir Nabokov: Gesammelte Werke , Vol. V.) Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1993, p. 614 f.
  2. ↑ Stephen H. Blackwell: Boundaries of Art in Nabokov's The Gift: Reading as Transcendence. In: Slavic Review 58, No. 3 (1999), pp. 618-621.
  3. ↑ Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt: Nabokov, Vladimir - Dar . In: Munzinger Online / Kindlers Literatur Lexikon in 18 volumes, 3rd, completely revised edition 2009, (accessed on October 14, 2017)
  4. ^ Donald F. Morton: Vladimir Nabokov with self-testimonials and picture documents . rororo, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1992, p. 44.
  5. ^ Dieter E. Zimmer: "Afterword of the editor". In: Vladimir Nabokov: The Gift . German by Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt (= Dieter E. Zimmer (Ed.): Vladimir Nabokov: Gesammelte Werke , Vol. V.) Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1993, p. 606 f.
  6. ^ Dieter E. Zimmer: "Afterword of the editor". In: Vladimir Nabokov: The Gift . German by Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt (= Dieter E. Zimmer (Ed.): Vladimir Nabokov: Gesammelte Werke , Vol. V.) Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1993, pp. 614–620.