Selected Poems, Vladimir Nabokov
Selected Poems, Vladimir Nabokov
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Selected Poems

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Narrator: Christopher Lane

Unabridged: 4 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/08/2012

Categories: Fiction


Synopsis

Though we know Vladimir Nabokov as a brilliant novelist, his first love was poetry. This landmark collection brings together the best of his verse, including many pieces that have never before appeared in English. These poems span the whole of Nabokov’s career, from the newly discovered “Music,” written in 1914, to the short, playful “To Véra,” composed in 1974. Many are newly translated by Dmitri Nabokov, including The University Poem, a sparkling novella in verse (modeled on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin) that constitutes a significant new addition to Nabokov’s oeuvre. Included too are such poems as “Lilith,” an early work which broaches the taboo theme revisited nearly forty years later in Lolita, and “An Evening of Russian Poetry,” a masterpiece in which Nabokov movingly mourns his lost language in the guise of a versified lecture on Russian delivered to college girls. The subjects range from the Russian Revolution to the American refrigerator, taking in on the way motel rooms, butterflies, ice-skating, love, desire, exile, loneliness, language, and poetry itself; and the poet whirls swiftly between the brilliantly painted facets of his genius, wearing masks that are by turns tender, demonic, sincere, self-parodying, shamanic, visionary, and ingeniously domestic.

About Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for the United States, where he wrote some of his greatest worksb — Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962) — and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Olga

It seems to me that for Nabokov his poetry was not only a way of expressing himself but rather some sort of a secret place where he could escape from all the grief and hardships of the exile and be himself and go where he always longed to be - in his Paradise lost, filled with happy chilhood memorie......more

Goodreads review by Nuri

REMEMBRANCE Like silent ships we two in darkness met, And when some day the poet’s careless fame Shall breathe to you a half-forgotten name— Soul of my song, I want you to regret. For you had Love. Out of my life you tore One shining page. I want, if we must part, Remembrance pale to quiver in your......more

Goodreads review by David

In prose-poesy, Nabokov is sui generis, part of the movement to reinvent the language of the novel along with other modernist stylists: Joyce, Woolf, Proust. He is remembered as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, and rightfully so for his creative re-conceptualizing of the novel......more

"One day he turned off toward the unknown and left for good; beyond lies night, silence, and mystery." Silvery voice. Sparkling souls. Star dusted heaven. Sleepless silence. V.N is magic.......more