ABSTRACT
Vladimir Nabokov was born in the same year as Borges, 1899; literary tradition quickly linked them with each other and assigned Calvino to them as their younger brother. Although Nabokov belongs to no tradition or country, his memory is rooted in his beloved pre-revolutionary Russia, and the adult experiences he describes are foreign and exilic. In a preface to the posthumous collected poems, Stikhi, Nabokov’s widow, Vera, to whom all his books are dedicated, announced that his “chief theme” was Potustornnost, which means the other world, the beyond, or the hereafter. Nabokov nevertheless attaches the fictions of Pale Fire to “reality” in a notable way, and, in the reality shared by both author and reader, exilic obsession and loneliness are effectively portrayed. Like all Nabokov’s fiction, Pale Fire takes as its main themes time and death, and the violence that they impose. Nabokov’s instinct toward ardor and the imprint of newness is his most salient mark as a writer.
