Andrei Babikov’s article, “Art’s Precious Brittleness,” is devoted to Nabokov’s last novel, The Original of Laura. В этом очерке «Искусства милая скудель. «Лаура» Набокова и ее публикация» Андрей Бабиков по записным книжкам Набокова прослеживается история его работы над последним романом, рассматриваются особенности русского издания «Лауры» и дается предварительный сопоставительный анализ текста «Лауры» с другими незаконченными произведениями Набокова: набросками к продолжению «Дара» (1939), романа “Solus Rex” (1939-40) и повести «Сцены из жизни сиамских уродцев» (1950). NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Marijeta Bozovic’s article “Love, Death, Nabokov: Looking for The Original of Laura” argues that love and death are leitmotifs in all of Nabokov’s works, but in The Original of Laura, a quantitative difference becomes qualitative. Not only is Laura expressly about the coupling of Eros and Thanatos, to name the formula, but the topos is even theorized. The metaphor turns literal in the experiments of the brilliant and mad Wild. Why imagine that death and ecstasy are one, when you can experience it? This paper envisions the Original of Laura as a brilliant parody of and response to all things Eros and Thanatos, and posits as one potential source – the psychoanalytic origin is, of course, Freud – Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Trevor Jackson in his essay “Dying is Apposite: Possibilities of Self Discovery and Patterns of Completeness in The Original of Laura” claims that the profuse level of detail woven into Nabokov’s fiction has been well attested to. Despite its fragmentary state, The Original of Laura is no exception. In his final novel, Nabokov employs metafictional games and patterned character repetition to include the audience in his design. The repeated characters are united by death and only the main two gravitate toward breaking through the construct of the fiction into the metafictive awareness that might afford them freedom. While Philip Wild engages in the process of self-erasure, effectively reversing the process of his fictional creation by the author, Flora, having My Laura in her hands to leaf through as she pleases, is provided with the key that will allow her to become aware of her existence as a fictional creation. The former succeeds in his escape; the latter fails. The pattern at play seeks nothing more than to complete itself by bringing about the death of the characters as their purposes are fulfilled at the will of the author. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Julia Vaingurt’s “Unfair Use: Parody, Plagiarism, and Other Suspicious Practices in and around Lolita,” explores the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Nabokov’s modernist novel, in Pia Pera’s postmodern parody of it, and in Dmitri Nabokov’s remarkable lawsuit against the latter. The essay demonstrates how parody probes and reassesses not only the aesthetic value of the original, but also the very concept of aesthetic value. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
The article by Erik van Ooijen is entitled “Ogling Lo: For An Erotics of Literary Description,” and it focuses on erotically charged passages of literary description in Lolita and their relation to the representation of character. The author argues for formalist erotics of literary description, liberated from moralistic concerns, by contrasting theories of simulationism or make-believe (reading character as possible persons) from theories of poeticity (reading character as pattern or figure): only through the latter are we able to avoid what has been termed the thesis of “norm-equivalence”, i.e., that a similar set of joint ethical norms apply to fictional and actual situations. Erik van Ooijen questions the definitional understanding of description as a text-type identifying the properties of objects by considering Nelson Goodman’s non-denotational understanding of fictional description as representation-as rather than representation-of: since fictional objects do not exist, descriptions become a matter of composition rather than reference, and analysis of a question of aesthetical affect rather than veracity. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Ksenia Egorova's publication, “Kirill Nabokov, the Poet from Prague, ” concerns Nabokov's younger brother, Kirill (1911-1964). Ксения Егорова в материале «Пражский поэт Кирилл Набоков» утверждает, что творчество Кирилла Владимировича Набокова (1911-1964), младшего брата и крестника Владимира Набокова, практически не исследовано. Кирилл Набоков, литературная карьера которого началась в 1930-е годы ХХ в. и совпала с переломным моментом в жизни русской диаспоры в Праге, являлся представителем последнего поколения «скитников», чье творческое мировоззрение формировалась под влиянием руководителя объединения А.Л. Бема и вобрало в себя наиболее характерные черты пражского литературного пространства. Характеристика литературной судьбы Кирилла дает богатый материал для анализа социо-культурного пространства русской Праги на излете правительственной акции поддержки русской общины, получившей название «русской акции». NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Marijeta Bozovic’s article “Love, Death, Nabokov: Looking for The Original of Laura” argues that love and death are leitmotifs in all of Nabokov’s works, but in The Original of Laura, a quantitative difference becomes qualitative. Not only is Laura expressly about the coupling of Eros and Thanatos, to name the formula, but the topos is even theorized. The metaphor turns literal in the experiments of the brilliant and mad Wild. Why imagine that death and ecstasy are one, when you can experience it? This paper envisions the Original of Laura as a brilliant parody of and response to all things Eros and Thanatos, and posits as one potential source – the psychoanalytic origin is, of course, Freud – Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Trevor Jackson in his essay “Dying is Apposite: Possibilities of Self Discovery and Patterns of Completeness in The Original of Laura” claims that the profuse level of detail woven into Nabokov’s fiction has been well attested to. Despite its fragmentary state, The Original of Laura is no exception. In his final novel, Nabokov employs metafictional games and patterned character repetition to include the audience in his design. The repeated characters are united by death and only the main two gravitate toward breaking through the construct of the fiction into the metafictive awareness that might afford them freedom. While Philip Wild engages in the process of self-erasure, effectively reversing the process of his fictional creation by the author, Flora, having My Laura in her hands to leaf through as she pleases, is provided with the key that will allow her to become aware of her existence as a fictional creation. The former succeeds in his escape; the latter fails. The pattern at play seeks nothing more than to complete itself by bringing about the death of the characters as their purposes are fulfilled at the will of the author. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Julia Vaingurt’s “Unfair Use: Parody, Plagiarism, and Other Suspicious Practices in and around Lolita,” explores the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Nabokov’s modernist novel, in Pia Pera’s postmodern parody of it, and in Dmitri Nabokov’s remarkable lawsuit against the latter. The essay demonstrates how parody probes and reassesses not only the aesthetic value of the original, but also the very concept of aesthetic value. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
The article by Erik van Ooijen is entitled “Ogling Lo: For An Erotics of Literary Description,” and it focuses on erotically charged passages of literary description in Lolita and their relation to the representation of character. The author argues for formalist erotics of literary description, liberated from moralistic concerns, by contrasting theories of simulationism or make-believe (reading character as possible persons) from theories of poeticity (reading character as pattern or figure): only through the latter are we able to avoid what has been termed the thesis of “norm-equivalence”, i.e., that a similar set of joint ethical norms apply to fictional and actual situations. Erik van Ooijen questions the definitional understanding of description as a text-type identifying the properties of objects by considering Nelson Goodman’s non-denotational understanding of fictional description as representation-as rather than representation-of: since fictional objects do not exist, descriptions become a matter of composition rather than reference, and analysis of a question of aesthetical affect rather than veracity. NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
Ksenia Egorova's publication, “Kirill Nabokov, the Poet from Prague, ” concerns Nabokov's younger brother, Kirill (1911-1964). Ксения Егорова в материале «Пражский поэт Кирилл Набоков» утверждает, что творчество Кирилла Владимировича Набокова (1911-1964), младшего брата и крестника Владимира Набокова, практически не исследовано. Кирилл Набоков, литературная карьера которого началась в 1930-е годы ХХ в. и совпала с переломным моментом в жизни русской диаспоры в Праге, являлся представителем последнего поколения «скитников», чье творческое мировоззрение формировалась под влиянием руководителя объединения А.Л. Бема и вобрало в себя наиболее характерные черты пражского литературного пространства. Характеристика литературной судьбы Кирилла дает богатый материал для анализа социо-культурного пространства русской Праги на излете правительственной акции поддержки русской общины, получившей название «русской акции». NOJ, Vol. V, 2011.
