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From the Bookshelf of Nabokov in Three Years…

Glory

Vladimir Nabokov,

Dmitri Nabokov (Translator)

Start date: December 1, 2011

Finish date: December 31, 2011

Discussion: Glory

Discussion leader: Jason Lundberg

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Glory

Initial Impressions
By Jason · 1 post · 5 views

last updated Dec 13, 2011 12:02AM

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Jun 24, 2012 Inderjit Sanghera rated it really liked it · review of another edition

‘Glory’ slightly precedes Nabokov’s ‘golden period’ (stretching from ‘Despair’ in 1937 to ‘Pale Fire’ in 1962), a period iridescent with with the glow of Nabokov’s genius, but whose brightness and beauty flickers only intermittently in comparison to the incomparable beauty of his greatest works.

The story follows Martin Edelweiss, a sensitive yet strange young man, and his experiences as an emigre firstly in Cambridge and later in Berlin and various other locations around Europe. Nabokov himsel ‘Glory’ slightly precedes Nabokov’s ‘golden period’ (stretching from ‘Despair’ in 1937 to ‘Pale Fire’ in 1962), a period iridescent with with the glow of Nabokov’s genius, but whose brightness and beauty flickers only intermittently in comparison to the incomparable beauty of his greatest works.

The story follows Martin Edelweiss, a sensitive yet strange young man, and his experiences as an emigre firstly in Cambridge and later in Berlin and various other locations around Europe. Nabokov himself admitted that it was some time before he grew used to acclimatised America and was able to coherently recreate it within his novels, and in many ways ‘Glory’ reads like an incipient writer trying to make sense of and recreate the world around him-and for a writer as original as Nabokov this leads to many beautiful passages and quotes;

“The crickets kept crepitating; from time to time came a sweet whiff of burning juniper, and above a black alpestrine steppe, above the silken sea, the enormous, all engulfing sky, dove gray with stars, made one’s head spin, and suddenly Martin again experienced a feeling he had known on more than one occasion as a child: an unbearable intensification of all his senses, a magical and demanding impulse, the presence of something for which alone it was worth living.”

Indeed it is Nabokov’s ability to take delight in the world, in its limitless sounds and smells, the child-like glee of delighting in every moment which sets him above other writers-he will never be an explore of human psychology like Proust, but instead Nabokov explores the miracle of consciousness. The secondary characters within the novel are perhaps the most ‘human’ (in the positive sense) of all Nabokov’s novels. There are no outright brutes or rogues-Martin himself may often display a kind of aloofness which we often see in Nabokov’s male protagonists (with the exception of Pnin) but is essentially a kind, if high individualistic, character. The coquettish Sonia can be seen as being somewhat heartless and Martin’s friend, Darwin, descends into a vague kind of vapidity by the end of the novel, yet one senses that it is the peripheral characters, such as the Russophile Archibald Moon, or Martin’s mother Sofia, whose inner lives make the greatest impression on the reader. However, Nabokov’s cruel characters often serve a moral purpose, like Humber or Hermann, are Nabokov’s attempts to upend the reader via cruel and capricious characters whose outward ‘charms’ often mask the monstrous personality lurking within-the ‘moral’ of Glory lies within Martin’s desire to achieve a great ‘deed’, something which will allow him to transcend the everyday and achieve something glorious. ...more

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Apr 13, 2014 Publius rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, re-read, nabokov, russian

One of the few Nabokov novels where he does not chase his protagonist up a tree and throw rocks at him. Martin Edelweiss is a semi-autobiographical Nabokov in his youth and while certain portions of the novel are quite beautiful, the overall premise is pretty boring.

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