>Perhaps "metaphoric" is a term that is better
than "allegoric" in dealing with how VN uses his life in his work.
"Allegoric" is a prose term; "metaphoric" is a poetic one. We are, after
all, dealing with a poet here.
Kakoe b schast'e ili gore
Ni pelo v prezhnie goda,
Metafor, dazhe allegoriy
Ya ne chuzhdalsya nikogda.
Whatever happiness or grief
Would sing in the past years,
I have never shunned
Metaphors, or even allegories.
The first stanza of a Russian poem (the fifth
one in the cycle "Seven Poems") written in the nineteen fifties. There is
an allegory (or metaphor?) of death in the second (and last) stanza. I
apologize to Nabokov's shadow for my translation.
I also apologize to Borges' shadow for misspelling
the title of his story ("Aleph").
Alexey Sklyarenko