Nabokov’s Canon: From “Onegin” to “Ada”

Marijeta Bozovic, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures

(Northwestern University Press)

Vladimir Nabokov’s translation of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and its accompanying “Commentary,” along with “Ada, or Ardor,” his densely allusive late English language novel, have appeared nearly inscrutable to many interpreters of his work. If not outright failures, they are often considered relatively unsuccessful curiosities. In Marijeta Bozovic’s study, these key texts reveal Nabokov’s ambitions to reimagine a canon of 19th- and 20th-century Western masterpieces with Russian literature as a central, rather than marginal, strain. Nabokov’s scholarly work, translations, and lectures on literature bear resemblance to New Critical canon reformations; however, Nabokov’s canon is translingual and transnational and serves to legitimize his own literary practice. The new angles and theoretical framework offered by “Nabokov’s Canon” help to understand why Nabokov’s provocative monuments remain powerful source texts for several generations of diverse international writers, as well as productive material for visual, cinematic, musical, and other artistic adaptations.