Morris, Paul D. Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice (review)

SEER, 92, 4, OCTOBER 2014 748 to Zamiatin’s archives and especially his voluminous correspondence has resulted in a full, balanced and meticulously detailed account of his life and work. Of particular value to scholars of this period are accounts of Zamiatin’s friendships and collaborations with Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Fedin, Annenkov, Kustodiev, Chukovskii and many other figures in Russian modernism. The photographs and illustrations included in the book add significantly to the story Curtis tells in this volume. It is a story that expands and enriches our understanding of early twentieth-century Russian and Soviet culture as a whole. Stetson University Karen L. Ryan Morris, Paul D. Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2010. xxv + 447 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $75.00. Vladimir Nabokov’s poetry was highly appreciated by many Russian émigré critics in the 1920s, yet only a small number of critics today believe that Nabokov’s lyric poetry matches his prose for ingenuity. In his book, Paul Morris challenges Alexander Dolinin’s opinion that ‘the verse exercises of the young Nabokov played an important role in the formation of his narrative style’ (p. 88) and aspires to demonstrate the centrality of poetry to Nabokov’s body of writing. Morris claims that ‘the lyric sensibility Nabokov developed in his verse pervades all of his writing’(p. xvii). As Morris indicates, the aim of his study is twofold: ‘to offer a comprehensive view of Nabokov’s poetry’ and to identify the role of the lyric sensibility in Nabokov’s drama, short fiction and novels (p. xvi), especially in The Gift (1937–38), in which many poems were written by that novel’s protagonist, and in Pale Fire (1962), which opens with a 999-line iambic pentameter poem in rhymed couplets. The book comprises the Introduction/chapter one that outlines the evolution of Nabokov as a poet and six chapters. Chapter two examines the reception of Nabokov’s poetry written both in Russian and in English; chapter three discusses in great detail Nabokov’s lyric voice and focuses on the presence of metaphysical traits in his poetry and identifies major themes used in his verse, including such topics as poetic inspirations, love, cosmic synchronization, encounters with the otherworld and the poeticization of everyday life; chapter four describes the lasting effect of poetry on Nabokov’s drama; chapter five explores the employment of Nabokov’s lyricism in short fiction, and chapters six and seven focus on Nabokov’s novels The Gift and Pale Fire. The strength of Morris’s study lies in its thorough investigation of Nabokov’s lyric consciousness and Morris’s awareness of its thematic and structural REVIEWS 749 complexitythatenhancesanunderstandingofthewritingsofNabokovaffected by that complexity. Yet Morris’s exploration of Nabokov’s poetic persona is far from being exhaustive. While Morris rightly detects several important allusions in Nabokov’s verse to the poetry of Keats, Blok, Fet, Tiutchev and Belyi, they are not explored in depth. The role of Nabokov’s parodies and translations of Russian poetry in the development of his narrative style is not mentioned at all. Some of Morris’s statements appear superficial and unsupported by references. For example, the statement that Nabokov’s short story ‘A Guide to Berlin’ ‘seems to be more a prose poem than a short story’ (p. 260) is not supported by any references to the tradition of prose poems as had been developed in Russia and in France. It would be appropriate at least to compare the above story to Turgenev’s prose poems which were inspired by Baudelaire’s Petits poèmes en prose. The latter marked the beginnings of the genre in the 1860s. While Turgenev the fiction writer sought to enhance and heighten the ideas of his earlier prose narratives in his prose poems, it can be argued that the fragmentary and impressionistic style of Nabokov’s story, ‘A Guide to Berlin’, develops some of the mnemonic imagery of his verse written in emigration. Many references to Nabokov’s links with Russian Symbolism are not given adequate consideration and are mentioned in passing. A good example of lumping Nabokov together with major European and Russian poets can be...

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