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Look At the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. A novel (from Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new" "news" or "short story This page is about the novelist For his father the politician see Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.

Contents

Plot summary

Look At The Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N. An autobiography, from the Greek αὐτός autos "self" βίος bios "life" and γράφειν graphein "to write" (VV), a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. VV is born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and raised by his aunt who advises him to "look at the harlequins" "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!". Saint Petersburg ( tr: Sankt-Peterburg,) is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River After the revolution, VV moves to Western Europe. Count Nikifor Nikodimovich Starov become his patron (is he his father?). He meets Iris Black who becomes his first wife. After her death - she is killed by a Russian émigré -, he marries Annette (Anna Ivanovna Blagovo), his long-necked typist. They have a daughter, Isabel, and emigrate to the United States. The marriage fails, and, after Annette's death, VV takes care of the now pubescent Bel, formerly Isabel. They travel from motel to motel. To counter ugly rumors VV marries Louise Adamson while Bel elopes with an American to Soviet Russia. After the third marriage fails, VV marries again, a Bel look-a-like (same birthdate, too), referred to as "you", his final love.

VV is an unreliable narrator giving sometimes conflicting information (i. In literature film theatre and music an unreliable narrator (a term coined by Wayne C e. death of his father), and indicates to suffer from some form of peculiar mental affliction: When making a full turn while walking - mentally that is - and tracing his steps back, he is unable to execute the reversion of the surrounding vista in his imagination. He also has the notion that he is a double of another Nabokovian persona.

Criticism

Doppelgänger vs. Parody

Literary criticism has weighed in on both sides of this debate, some even claiming that Vadim is both a parody and a double (or Doppelgänger) of Nabokov. A parody (ˈpɛɹədiː US, [ˈpaɹədiː] UK) in contemporary usage is a work created to mock comment on or poke fun at an original work its subject A doppelgänger ( or fetch is the ghostly double of a living person a sinister form of Bilocation. For example, Nabokov’s Lolita is acted out by the narrator of Look at the Harlequins! through his fondling of the nymphet Dolly VonBorg. Lolita (1955 is a Novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author A narrator (or the extremely rarely used female equivalent narratress) is within any story (literary work movie play verbal account etc Nabokov’s infamous string of adulterous affairs becomes for the narrator a string of wives incomparable with his final wife, "You," who parallels Nabokov’s wife, Véra. Véra Nabokov (January 5 1902 - April 7 1991 was the wife Muse, editor, and Translator of Vladimir Nabokov. Herbert Grabes is among the critics who believe that Vadim is Nabokov’s “parodic double” (151). Pekka Tammi agrees: “any fictive [narrator] can be, even at best, only a ‘parody’ of the artist who is responsible for the ultimate fiction” (289). Lucy Maddox calls Look at the Harlequins! “an oblique, satiric self-portrait” (144).

Bungled Biography

One popular explanation for Vadim’s personal and literary similarity to Nabokov is that Vadim is a parody of bungled biographical renderings of the author. The composition of Look at the Harlequins! followed on the heels of Andrew Field’s biography Nabokov: His Life in Part, a biography that eventually resulted in the termination of Nabokov’s relations with Field and in the novelist’s failed attempt at legal suppression of the biography. A biography (from the Greek words bíos (βίος meaning "life" and gráphein (γράφειν meaning "to write" is an account Nabokov felt that Field had created a character named Vladimir Nabokov in his biography—a character whom the real author could not recognize (Johnson, 330). Nabokov “had already perfected the role of his own biographer—in a series of mock biographies that began with a game he invented in adolescence, and that continued in his memoir Speak, Memory (1966) and his fiction. for other uses see Memoir (disambiguation As a literary Genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire Speak Memory (ISBN 0375405534 is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. The encounter with Field, his first real-life biographer, produced. . . [the] parodic text. . . Look at the Harlequins! (1974). . . ” (Sweeney 295-6).

The book begins with a list of "Other Books by the Narrator" (that is, Vadim rather than Vladimir Nabokov). Many (if not all) of these titles appear to be doppelgangers of Nabokov’s real novels.

Bibliography

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