Look at Valdemar! (a beautified corpse revived)

Abstract

Imagine, if you will, complicitous reader, a magic mirror standing upright on one edge at the year 1940 along an imaginary time line of Vladimir Sirin-Nabokov's life and work. Gazing into the glass from the prewar side we might just discern, through the mists of conjured time, the reflections of Sirin's Russian novels—their Englished counterparts. For some of these spectral pairs, such as Mashen'ka (1925)/Mary (1970)2 and Priglashenie na kazn' (1938)/Invitation to a Beheading (1959),3 the reflected and reflection would be almost as alike and as indistinguishable one from the other as Tweedles Dum and Dee. But for one of them the superficial resemblances of similar titles and parallel plots would be treacherously misleading. A hasty or careless gazer might easily mistake the English "version" for a double of the original Russian, the earlier incarnation would be obliterated by the later and a duality misapprehended as a unity which in reality does not, and never did, exist.4 It has become a commonplace in Nabokovian criticism to say King, Queen, Knave to mean King, Queen, Knave/Korol', dama, valet. Two reasons for this imprecision come to mind: not all of Nabokov's commenta-