"The Aurelian" is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 first written in Russian as Pil'gram 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...

 during his exile in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in 1930. After translation by Nabokov and Peter Pertzov it was published in English in the Atlantic Monthly in 1941. The Aurelian is included in Nine Stories

Nine Stories (Nabokov)

Nine Stories is an English-language collection of stories written in Russian, French, and English by Vladimir Nabokov. It was published in 1947 by New Directions in New York City, as the second issue of a serial, Direction.The nine stories are:...

 and Nabokov's Dozen

Nabokov's Dozen

Nabokov's Dozen a collection of 13 short stories by Vladimir Nabokov previously published in American magazines. All were later reprinted within The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov....

.

Plot summary

The aurelian

Aurelian (entomology)

Aurelian is an archaic word for lepidopterist, one who is interested in butterflies. The term is derived from aurelia, meaning chrysalis, and relates to the golden color it may attain just before the butterfly emerges; the Latin word for gold is aurum.The Society of Aurelians in London, England,...

 is Paul Pilgram, an entomologist and butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 dealer who never left his native Berlin. His life is empty and dreary, his business dismal, and his marriage perfunctory. His dream has been to venture out on a collecting trip abroad, but lack of resources or interfering circumstances never allowed this to happen. He images to be in butterfly places such as Digne in France, Ragusa

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...

 in Dalmatia, Sarepta in Russia, or Abisko

Abisko

Abisko is a village in northern Sweden, near the Abisko National Park located 4 km west of the village. It had 85 inhabitants as of 2005.-Transportation:...

 in Lapland, or even catching them in the tropics, or following the lead of Father Dejean (a French missionary who worked in East Tibet). At last, by cheating a customer, he makes enough money to follow his dream and is prepared to abandon wife and business. As he departs, he suffers a fatal heart attack. The narrator, however, assures that Pilgram has achieved a state of happiness where he is visiting all the places he ever dreamt of and seeing “all the glorious bugs he had longed to see”

Comments

While many of Nabokov’s writings refer to butterflies, they achieve their strongest literary treatment in this short story, 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 Gift, and Ada

Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.Ada began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects: "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra." In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel...

. In this case, Pilgram is a dreamer and lives in his inner world, and is eventually overwhelmed by his obsession. Pilgram’s journey takes him from his pupa-like condition to a golden, "aurelian" threshold before he enters into a different state as he undergoes his metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...

. His death represents an example of Nabokov's theme of "potustoronnost" (transcendence, or reaching toward another world).

External links

• Atlantic Monthly Company: The Aurelian (text)