Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations: Primary Sources xi
Preface: Nabokov's Poetry: Seeing the Unseen xv
1 Introduction: Locating Nabokov's Poetry 3
2 Reading Nabokov's Reception: Nabokov, Poetry, and the Critics 32
The Émigré Reading of Nabokov's Poetry 35
Nabokov's English Poetry and the Critics 58
Nabokov's Russian Poetry and the Academics 69
Russian Literature and the Rediscovery of Nabokov's Poetry 82
3 Nabokov's Lyric Voice: The Poetry of This World and Another 90
A Paradigmatic First Poem: Rereading 'The Rain Has Flown' 94
Poetic Consciousness 98
The Metaphysical Nabokov and the Otherworld 102
Nabokov's Poetry: Five Themes 114
I Cosmic Synchronization 115
II Inspiration 119
III Love's Poetry 124
IV The Otherworld 136
V A Poet of the World - the Poetry of Trifles 163
Four Poems 184
i 'The Swift' 184
ii 'Fame' 187
iii 'Restoration' 191
iv 'The Ballad of Longwood Glen' 195
4 Staged Lyricism: The Play of Poetry and Dream-Logic in Nabokov's Drama 202
The Waltz Invention: The Lyric Consolation of Fantasy 225
5 Nabokov and the Short Story: The Lyric Heights of a Small Alpine Form 241
Finding 'Perfection': Nabokov's Lyricism and the Short Story 263
6 Lyricism and the Novel: Nabokov's Gift for Prose 277
The Gift: A Portrait of the Novelist as a Young Poet 284
7 A Novel Snatched from the Sun: Nabokov's Pale Fire 318
'Pale Fire' and the Poet's Pattern: Novelistic Text and Poetic Texture 329
Conclusion: In Place of an Ending 375
Notes 389
References 421
Index 435
