Subject
TT ref. from Christopher Link's dissertation proposal
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Chapter 5: Diabolical Evocations in Transparent Things
Nabokov's penultimate novel was a slim book; its poor initial critical
reception quickly relegated it to the status of an inferior, "minor" work.
Nevertheless, the odd, fascinating novella is, for all its brevity, a deeply
affecting allegory, pointing in new ways toward the same dark depths as
previous works. The story follows the oafishly clumsy, impotent, sleepwalking
Hugh Person, whose name connotes the mythic universality of an everyman ("you,
person"). By means of a neatly structured retrospective, dividing Person's
life upon four visits to Switzerland, the reader glimpses, in outline, the
whole of a life. [28] Throughout the novel, strange voices intrude upon the
narrative; Nabokov, frustrated by baffled critics, identified these peculiar
commentators as "ghosts"--most often, the ghost of one of the story's main
characters, a disagreeable novelist named "R." who dies toward the book's
conclusion. My chapter on Transparent Things will trace the strong demonic
theme which threads--from Edenic allusions to the book's infernal
conclusion--through Nabokov's most mythic, most allegorical, and most
undervalued work.
Nabokov's penultimate novel was a slim book; its poor initial critical
reception quickly relegated it to the status of an inferior, "minor" work.
Nevertheless, the odd, fascinating novella is, for all its brevity, a deeply
affecting allegory, pointing in new ways toward the same dark depths as
previous works. The story follows the oafishly clumsy, impotent, sleepwalking
Hugh Person, whose name connotes the mythic universality of an everyman ("you,
person"). By means of a neatly structured retrospective, dividing Person's
life upon four visits to Switzerland, the reader glimpses, in outline, the
whole of a life. [28] Throughout the novel, strange voices intrude upon the
narrative; Nabokov, frustrated by baffled critics, identified these peculiar
commentators as "ghosts"--most often, the ghost of one of the story's main
characters, a disagreeable novelist named "R." who dies toward the book's
conclusion. My chapter on Transparent Things will trace the strong demonic
theme which threads--from Edenic allusions to the book's infernal
conclusion--through Nabokov's most mythic, most allegorical, and most
undervalued work.