Look at the Harlequins!
Encyclopedia
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
written by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.
Plot summary
Look At the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiographyAutobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N. (VV), a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov.
VV is born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and raised by his aunt, who advises him to "look at the harlequins" "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!". After the revolution, VV moves to Western Europe. Count Nikifor Nikodimovich Starov become his patron (is he VV's father?). VV meets Iris Black who becomes his first wife. After her death - she is killed by a Russian émigré - he marries Annette (Anna Ivanovna Blagovo), his long-necked typist. They have a daughter, Isabel, and emigrate to the United States. The marriage fails; and, after Annette's death, VV takes care of the pubescent Isabel, now known as Bel. They travel from motel to motel. To counter ugly rumors, VV marries Louise Adamson while Bel elopes with an American to Soviet Russia. After the third marriage fails, VV marries again, a Bel look-a-like (same birthdate, too), referred to as "you", his final love.
VV is an unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
who gives conflicting information (e.g., on the death of his father) and seems to suffer from some psychological affliction. When making a full turn while walking - mentally that is - and tracing his steps back, he is unable to execute the reversion of the surrounding vista in his imagination. He also has the notion that he is a double of another Nabokovian persona.
Doppelgänger vs. Parody
Literary criticism has weighed in on both sides of this debate, some even claiming that Vadim is both a parodyParody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
and a double (or Doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
) of Nabokov. For example, Nabokov’s Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
is acted out by the narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
of Look at the Harlequins! through his fondling of the nymphet Dolly VonBorg. The attribution to a string of wives to the narrator must be understood in the context of Nabokov's life: After the publication of Lolita the wider public and many critics thought that its author must be some "sexual daredevil". With the serial polygamy related in Look At The Harlequins!, Nabokov can be seen to be poking fun at these perceptions. V.V.'s final wife is simply addressed as "You", which parallels Nabokov’s addressing his wife, Véra
Vera Nabokov
Véra Nabokova was the wife, muse, editor, and translator of Vladimir Nabokov.-Early life and immigration:...
, simply as "you" in his autobiography Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov.-Scope:The book is dedicated to his wife, Véra, and covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in...
. The fact that V.V.'s final love is a spitting image of her predecessor "Bel" must be understood in the light of Humbert Humbert, the main character of Lolita, searching a nymphet just like his first love "Annabel", his first love when he himself was aged 12.
If V.V. is afflicted by feelings of being the double of another Nabokovian persona, this is because he bears in fact significant resemblances to the main character of the novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight from 1941.
Herbert Grabes is among the critics who believe that Vadim is Nabokov’s “parodic double” (151). Pekka Tammi agrees: “any fictive [narrator] can be, even at best, only a ‘parody’ of the artist who is responsible for the ultimate fiction” (289). Lucy Maddox calls Look at the Harlequins! “an oblique, satiric self-portrait” (144). In Speak, Memory, Nabokov had written that much of his own life had appeared in his fictional works in the past, and that he felt as though he had lost these memories as they were crystallized into text, abstracted into fictions. His thoughts on the inevitably autobiographical nature of fiction seem to manifest, playfully, here.
Biographical reading of the novel
One popular explanation for Vadim’s personal and literary similarity to Nabokov is that Vadim is a parody of bungled biographical renderings of the author. The composition of Look at the Harlequins! followed on the heels of Andrew Field’s biography Nabokov: His Life in Part, a biographyBiography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
that eventually resulted in the termination of Nabokov’s relations with Field and in the novelist’s failed attempt at legal suppression of the biography. Nabokov felt that Field had created a character named Vladimir Nabokov in his biography—a character whom the real author could not recognize (Johnson, 330). Nabokov “had already perfected the role of his own biographer—in a series of mock biographies that began with a game he invented in adolescence, and that continued in his memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov.-Scope:The book is dedicated to his wife, Véra, and covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in...
(1966) and his fiction. The encounter with Field, his first real-life biographer, produced. . .[the] parodic text. . .Look at the Harlequins! (1974). . .” (Sweeney 295-6).
The book begins with a list of "Other Books by the Narrator" (that is, Vadim rather than Vladimir Nabokov). Many (if not all) of these titles appear to be doppelgangers of Nabokov’s real novels.
- Tamara (1925), relates to MaryMary (mother of Jesus)Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...
- Pawn Takes Queen (1927), relates to King, Queen, KnaveKing, Queen, KnaveKing, Queen, Knave is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov , while living in Berlin and sojourning at resorts in the Baltic in 1928...
combined with The DefenseThe DefenseThe Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates... - Plenilune (1929), relates to The DefenseThe DefenseThe Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates...
- Camera Lucida (Slaughter in the Sun), relates to Laughter in the DarkLaughter in the DarkLaughter in the Dark is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov and serialised in Sovremennye Zapiski released in 1932....
(UK title, "Camera Obscura") - The Red Top Hat (1934), relates to Invitation to a BeheadingInvitation to a BeheadingInvitation to a Beheading is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian in 1935-1936 as a serial in Contemporary Notes , a highly respected Russian émigré magazine...
- The Dare (1950), relates to The Gift ("Dar", in Russian) and GloryGlory (novel)Glory is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov between 1930 and 1932 and first published in Paris.The novel has been seen by some critics as a kind fictional dress-run-through of the author's famous memoir Speak, Memory...
- See under Real (1939), relates to The Real Life of Sebastian KnightThe Real Life of Sebastian KnightThe Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939, and published in 1941 by New Directions Publishers.-Composition:...
, combined with Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are... - Esmeralda and Her Parandrus (1941)
- Dr. Olga Repnin (1946), relates to PninPninPnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957.-Plot summary:The book's eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born professor living in the United States...
- Exile from Mayda (1947), a short story collection, relates to Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
or Spring in Fialta and Other Stories - A Kingdom by the Sea (1962), relates to LolitaLolitaLolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
- Ardis (1970), relates to Ada or Ardor