Nabokov 101

International Summer School for Nabokov Students

August 2-10, 2004

GENERAL INFORMATION

On August 2-10, 2004 Vladimir Nabokov Museum, St.Petersburg will hold its fifth International Summer School for Nabokov students. It will be conducted at the Nabokov Museum which is located at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Street in St.Petersburg, the place Vladimir Nabokov described as “the only house in the world”. Our teachers this year will be Prof. Maurice Couturier (France) and Prof. Alexander Dolinin (USA).

The purpose of the Nabokov Summer School is to provide students from all over the world with the opportunity to study various aspects of Vladimir Nabokov’s art with internationally known Nabokov scholars. The atmosphere of the Nabokov House, which appears in many of Nabokov novels and is lovingly described in “Speak, Memory”, turns these scholarly sessions into an unforgettable personal experience for both students and teachers.

COURSES

“The Poetics of Desire in Nabokov’s Fiction”

Maurice Couturier

Professor Emeritus, University of Nice

Presentation

In this seminar the lecturer will undertake to show how desire, and its common counterpart cruelty, contribute to creating an exceptionally strong aesthetic experience in the case of Nabokov’s novels. Desire is not to be understood merely as sexual, though its sexual component is important; as Jacques Lacan put it in The Seminar, Book II, “Desire is the splicing of being and lack. This lack is properly a lack of being”. Desire is therefore at the heart of such key philosophical problems as selfhood, subjecthood for Lacan. The Lacanian doxa, which will constitute the chief theoretical grid in this seminar, will be used not to analyze the “real author” (whatever that is) but to develop a new understanding of the novels and to promote a richer aesthetic appreciation of them.

The participants in this seminar with have to be conversant with Nabokov’s fiction but will need no prior knowledge of Lacanian theory. The concepts will be explained when required for the understanding of the texts. The emphasis will be on three novels which belong to three different periods in Nabokov’s career, King, Queen, Knave, Invitation to a Beheading and Lolita.

Corpus

King, Queen, Knave. New York : Vintage.

Invitation to a Beheading. New York: Vintage.

The Annotated Lolita. New York: Vintage.

Reading List

Alexandrov, Vladimir E. Nabokov’s Otherworld. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1991.

Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov, Vols. 1 and 2. London: Chatto & Windus, 1991 and 1991.

Couturier, Maurice. Nabokov, ou la tyrannie de l’auteur. Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1993.

-----------------------. Roman et censure ou la mauvaise foi d’Eros. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1996.

Freud, Sigmund. Three Esssays on the Theory of Sexuality. In On Sexuality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977.

Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Green, Geoffrey. Freud and Nabokov. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.

------------------. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

-------------------. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

Rabatté, Jean-Michel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

“After The Gift”

Alexander Dolinin

Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The course will focus on Nabokov’s work of the late 1930s which witnessed the author’s gradual transition from Russian into English.

Corpus

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

The Visit To The Museum

Tyrants Destroyed

Lik

Vasiliy Shishkov

Solus Rex

Ultima Thule

The Enchanter

Plays:

The Event

The Waltz Invention

The reading-list will be provided to the students after April 15.

LANGUAGE English is the main language of the program. All classes and guided tours will be conducted in English.

TUITION Students are required to pay their own tuition, travel costs, and living expenses (food and lodging). The Nabokov 101 tuition cost is $400, which will cover participation in seminars, coffee-breaks, handouts, use of museum computers and Internet access at the Nabokov Museum, use of museum library.

GRADES AND CERTIFICATES After completing the program, the students will receive a Nabokov 101 Certificate and, if required, a personal letter of recommendation from the professor.

TIME AND CURRICULUM Seminars will begin on August 2 (Monday) and continue through August 10 (Tuesday) with one day-off in the middle of the program. There will be 8 days of seminars in all, with two 1 ½ hour seminars every day. In addition, guided tours of Nabokov sites and other literary points of interest in St.Petersburg, trips to museums and galleries, and other sightseeing activities will be offered every day. On Saturday, August 7, students and teachers will have a chance to go on a day-long guided tour to the Nabokov Estates near St.Petersburg

SCHEDULE

10:00-11:30 Prof. Couturier’s seminar.

11:30-12:00 Coffee-break

12:00-13:30Prof. Dolinin’s seminar.

13:30-14:30 Lunch(optional)

14:30-18:00 Guided tour (optional). Work at the library, homework, individual research.

PROGRAM COSTS

· Tuition $ 400

· Visa invitation processing $35

· Accommodation in St.Petersburg *

Private apartment or pension $15-60 a day

Hotel $60-100 a day

· Housing registration (applicable for private

apartments and small hotels) $25

· Lunches (optional) $3-8 a day

· Guided tours (optional) $5-30 per tour

*Accomodation will be arranged by the Museum at the student’s request.

APPLICATION AND PAYMENT

Students can apply by writing to Tatyana Ponomareva, Museum Director at vnabokov@mail.wplus.net

The payment can be made in cash or in traveler’s checks on student’s arrival in St.Petersburg. No advance payment is required but the students who cancel their participation after the visa invitation has been issued for them will have to reimburse the museum for its cost ($35).