Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics72 Vladimir Nabokov's Bilingual Poetry

The book offers the first comprehensive analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s self-translated poetry, examining texts from his novels The Gift and Lolita, stories, and collections to explore how bilingualism, memory, and poetic form intersect in a unique interlingual space central to his literary practice. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), author of such bestselling novels as Lolita and Pale Fire, was also an extraordinarily prolific poet, a poetry translator, and a self- translator. Yet, the intersection of these activities – Nabokov’s endeavour as a self- translator of poetry – remains largely unexplored to this day. This book represents the very first exhaustive analysis of the poems Nabokov self-translated for his novels, short stories, and poetry collections. The results of this study shed completely new light on Nabokov’s lifelong involvement with poetry and its translation by introducing self-translated poetry as an interlingual poetic space where the intricate connections between poetry, memory, and bilingualism can be solved.