From Erik Eklund, Associate Editor
Nabokov Studies 20 (2025) has been published and is now live, and currently Open Access, on Project MUSE. I have written out the Table of Contents and Abstracts below.
NABOKOV STUDIES
Volume 20 • 2025
Contents
From the Editors, iv
Contributors, vii
Abstracts, ix
Articles
Erica Camisa Morale
The Writing of Imagination: Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Terra Incognita” and Invitation to a Beheading, 1
Olga Voronina
The Potter and His Mark: Reading Conclusive Evidence and Pnin Archivally, 25
Jeroen Vanheste
The Straightjacket of Normality: The Downfall of an Autistic Chess Genius in The Defense, 42
Kian Lee Powys
The Barber of Kasbeam (Continued): Ethics and Affect in Nabokov’s Lolita, 54
Juan Wu
Symmetry, Synchrony, and Tree Structures: Cognitive Approaches to Narrative Form and Pattern Recognition in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, 67
Forum Pieces
Omar Sabbagh
Bodies of High Style: Insight and Form in Lawrence Durrell and Vladimir Nabokov, 97
Ljiljana Ćuk
The Zemblan Treasure: Whose Is It?, 119
Abstracts
The Writing of Imagination: Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Terra Incognita” and Invitation to a Beheading, by Erica Camisa Morale
Scholars have especially studied the relationship between Vladimir Nabokov and cinema at the sociological, economic, and existential levels. However, the impact of cinema on Nabokov runs much deeper and is rooted in cinematic language. As a curious and eclectic writer, Nabokov realized the novelty brought about by cinema, treasuring its ability to express the relationship between the individual and the world, and between so-called “reality” and “imagination.” By analyzing the short story, “Terra Incognita” (1931), and the novel, Invitation to a Beheading (Prisglashenie na kazn’, 1934), this essay shows how adapting cinematic devices to narration (e.g. montage, dissolve, multiple exposure, and stop-motion) allows Nabokov to tell stories through visual associations that go beyond the mechanic reproduction of existence. The adaptation of cinematic tools to literary language enables Nabokov to convey the fluidity of human experience and the inner workings of consciousness related to his ideas on the interconnection between so-called “reality” and “imagination.”
The Potter and His Mark: Reading Conclusive Evidence and Pnin Archivally, by Olga Voronina
Are there similarities between the structural and thematic patterns that dominate Conclusive Evidence and Pnin? What do the authorial mock review of the autobiography—unpublished during Nabokov’s lifetime and now known as “Chapter Sixteen”—and the seven draft notes on index cards hidden among Nabokov’s papers at the Library of Congress expose about the autobiography’s overlapping images of pottery and bridges, puzzles and chess, rainbows and sea pebbles? How does Nabokov’s in-depth research on the early history of ceramic production illuminate the convergence of the themes of loss and art’s permanence and redemptive power in Conclusive Evidence? Finally, can an early version of the autobiography’s title, “The Potter’s Mark,” coupled with Nabokov’s preparatory study of pigments, be used to explain Victor Wind’s relationship with his mother and Professor Lake in Chapter Four of Pnin? This paper explores complex motifs that tie the autobiography’s thematic thread of loss to a central idea in Nabokov’s postwar work: if life produces loss, then art’s purpose is to thwart its destructiveness by creating a unique, permanent version of the broken vessel.
The Straitjacket of Normality: The Downfall of an Autistic Chess Genius in The Defense, by Jeroen Vanheste
This article approaches Nabokov’s novel The Defense as the story of the highly problematic development of an autistic boy into a young man. The protagonist Luzhin is an extremely talented chess player, but his “otherness” is neither recognized nor understood. Neglected as a child and adolescent, he grows up to be an unworldly young adult. He becomes a chess grandmaster and one of the strongest players in the world but is unfit for life and enters a downward spiral of delusions and psychotic behavior. This article illustrates how literary works may contribute to our understanding of the subjective dimension of neurodiverse conditions, such as autism. This ties in with the recent interest in a phenomenological approach to neurodiversity, an approach that focuses, not so much on finding (neuro)biological explanations, but on gaining a better understanding of “what it is like” to live with a neurodiverse condition. Furthermore, The Defense shows us what can happen when the world is unable or unwilling to adequately recognize, accept, and support the otherness of highly talented young people, but instead stigmatizes them and tries to normalize them.
The Barber of Kasbeam (Continued): Ethics and Affect in Nabokov’s Lolita, by Kian Lee Powys
A particular mode of criticism—what can be referred to as “cerebral formalism”—has now dominated Nabokov studies for decades. Such criticism is often limited to identifying patterning, intertextuality, and wordplay. As a result, very little attention is given to the affective responses produced by Nabokov’s work. The influence of “cerebral formalism” also means that Lolita’s ethical value has largely been conceived of in an affectively desensitized way. By engaging with recent critical discussions about affect in Nabokov, I seek to move away from this cerebral mode of criticism that remains prevalent in Nabokov studies. I frame my article around Lolita’s much-discussed Kasbeam barber passage—a passage that Nabokov describes as one of “the nerves of the novel” (AnLo 316). In the first section, I consider Richard Rorty’s reading of the Kasbeam passage, and I go on to contrast Rorty’s reading of the passage with my own affect-oriented close reading. In the second section, I offer a strong intentionalist reading of the same passage, directly connecting it to sections from The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, Speak, Memory, and Lolita. However, I use this intentionalist evidence primarily to demonstrate the limits of intentionalism. The article concludes by arguing that Lolita is best treated as an experiential object, and by calling for a critical embracing of affect and literary uncertainty.
Symmetry, Synchrony, and Tree Structures: Cognitive Approaches to Narrative Form and Pattern Recognition in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, by Juan Wu
This article examines Nabokov’s engagement with cognitive patterns and pattern recognition in Pale Fire, emphasizing their role in narrative construction and literary interpretation. While the novel is often read as a parody of literary commentary, its treatment of pattern recognition has received limited scholarly attention. The study highlights parallels between Nabokov’s narrative techniques, pattern formation, and cognitive processes, focusing on how Kinbote employs asymmetry, synchrony, and tree structures to link Shade’s poem with his imagined kingdom of Zembla. Three interconnected arguments are advanced. First, pattern recognition is a powerful cognitive and associative capability that functions as a sophisticated narrative strategy. Second, Kinbote’s seemingly absurd commentary is a deliberate strategy to construct Zembla through parasitic annotations, revealing the mind’s capacity for reality construction. Third, despite readers’ awareness of his misinterpretations, they are nonetheless drawn into Zembla, guided by narrative patterns. The study demonstrates that pattern recognition is crucial for decoding Kinbote’s construction of Zembla and appreciating Nabokov’s polyphonic literary artistry.
Bodies of High Style: Insight and Form in Lawrence Durrell and Vladimir Nabokov, by Omar Sabbagh
This paper discusses different but at times converging features in the articulated poetics, the styles, of Lawrence Durrell and Vladimir Nabokov. The emphasis is on the way they embody their imaginaries, their temperaments, in gambits to outflank mortality and chronological temporality. Their use of lists, for example, and other features by which form manumits their materials, are discussed in some detail. Along with the registering of their various modernist and/or postmodernist temperaments, situating them in their times, I also elicit comparison with other modernists, such as Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, who are equally thinking, if not narrating, in the wake of the ravages of modernity. While also registering, of course, the many differences between these two subjects of study, the hope is that some fresh insight emerges from this discussion, alighting on well-traveled ground from the keyhole of a fresh angle of vision.
The Zemblan Treasure: Whose Is It?, by Ljiljana Ćuk
The narrator of Pale Fire cleverly hides King Charles’ Zemblan wealth by intricately weaving it into the text’s structure. A character from a famous fairy tale, Ali Baba, appeared within the narrative of the novel, accompanied by numerous terms related to wealth, currency, and gemstones. This textual exploration will uncover previously hidden evidence concerning the existence of Ali Baba and the forty thieves on the back side of the novel. Nabokov provides warnings throughout the book, yet their importance is only now becoming clear. His “word golf” requires an expert in lexical semantics and stylistic figures of repetition, unlike Lewis Carroll’s word game. At the heart of the “web of sense” is an ornament (the gardener with wheelbarrow), from which the entire narrative was crafted. Next to the ornament and key clusters lies the “Ali Baba” cluster, acknowledged as one of the most important. Following instances where the motifs of the tale of Ali Baba are present, the lexemes that connect to the term “Ali Baba” through word golf are enumerated. Ali Baba serves as the quintessential symbol, transporting the treasure that is carefully protected by Kinbote.
Those whose libraries subscribe to Project MUSE can find the articles here:
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/257
and
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/56115
Those in countries and institutions where Project MUSE is unavailable should contact Zoran Kuzmanovich zokuzmanovich@davidson.edu AND Nabokov.Studies@gmail.com.
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