Solus Rex
Solus Rex is a fragment of a novel by Vladimir Nabokov . The author gave up the project , which had begun in Russian , in the winter of 1939/40 when he emigrated to the United States .
Nabokov stated the planned content as follows: The hero Sineussow, badly hit by the early death of his wife, takes refuge in a mind game in which he is king on a fictional Nordic island. There he resurrects his wife as queen. The widower is so absorbed in this fantasy that it begins to develop its own reality.
Nabokov chose the title of a novel for a chess problem in which the black king stands alone against the white pieces. Nabokov was a passionate chess player and also composed problems himself. In German, the phrase "Rex Solus" is more common.
Two independent stories have been preserved.
Ultima Thule would have been the first chapter of the planned novel. The first-person narrator tells his late wife about the encounter with a man who happened to have solved "the riddle of the universe", but no longer provides any information because the first person to whom he shared his findings died of astonishment. The title refers to the Thulemythos ; the narrator has begun to illustrate an epic verse of the same title. The text appeared in Russian in 1942 in an émigré magazine in New York; In 1973 it was translated into English by Nabokov and his son Dmitri .
Solus Rex , the section that would have given the title to the whole novel, is a concrete elaboration of the Thule idea. The privately and politically isolated king of the northern island kingdom is portrayed as well as in a reminiscence, through which coincidences and intrigues he accidentally came to the throne. The text appeared in Russian in 1940 in an émigré magazine in Paris; In 1973 it was translated into English by Nabokov and his son Dmitri.
literature
- Michael Maar: Solus Rex - The beautiful, evil world of Vladimir Nabokov . Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8270-0512-0 .
- D. Barton Johnson: Vladimir Nabokov's Solus Rex and the "Ultima Thule" Theme. In: Slavic Review. 40, 4, 1981, pp. 543-556.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Vladimir Nabokov: Stories 2nd edited and with notes and an afterword by Dieter E. Zimmer . Rowohlt Verlag, 1989, ISBN 3-498-04652-7 , pp. 346-394.