Nothing happens in this book! Rambling descriptions that go on for literally pages that make you forget the topic of the paragraph(s). Sentences that contain parentheticals that themselves last for half a page. All this in the service of literally no plot. NO PLOT. I hated this book. ( )

For the first time I've skimmed and skipped Nabokov's prose. The audience he had in mind for this novel must have been exceedingly small, the couple thousand people among the 3 million Russian refugees, perhaps, who made up the self-identified audience of a Russian emigre writer in Germany as stated in an imagined conversation herein. Or perhaps he wrote it thinking only of his own amusement, as the last of his nine novels written in Russian and published in the Russian emigre press while he lived in Germany, giving a last farewell to that by now well trod provincial world. From here on out it was to America, and the English language, opening his work to a far wider audience, and the development of a theme introduced here - about an older man desiring an adolescent girl...

For me this novel gets a star a chapter for the first three, and a shake of the head for the last two. There first was enough scaffolding present for this particular 21st century American (unread in Pushkin and Gogol, alas, though at least he's familiar with those names) to proceed willingly along with Nabokov's twisting densities of language and mess of narrative, but the fourth chapter was far too unsteady to hold him up (him to whom the name Nikolai Chernyshevsky meant nothing, denying support - may any other wandering readers stumbling this way be more fortunate), and having tired by the time of reaching the fifth, he lacked the stamina required to do much more than cling to scattered footholds, unappreciative of the thick scenery.

( )

I liked chapters 1, 3, and 5. For chapter 4 I didn't know enough about Russian literature to enjoy it. By chapter 5, to be truthful, I had become impatient (I think Nabokov is a *little* self indulgent with his paragraphing here), and missed a lot of beautiful writing. I really should go back and re-read the first chapter as I'm pretty sure I missed a lot. ( )

Difficult to grapple with if you start reading Nabokov with this novel, as I have done. Reading "THE GIFT" caused me to realise how ignorant I am about Russian literature.
After looking at some criticisms of the novel, I found I could adopt a viewpoint from which some better understanding of it might be reached. The idea of the quiddity of things has been suggested as one possible source from which we might attempt a better appreciation of what Nabokov has undertaken in writing this novel.
The Gift is vaguely autobiographical, about Fyodor (gift from God), a Russian emigré in Berlin and his developing talent as a writer. There are five chapters; each one takes a different point-of-view to create a multiplicity of aspects and so, a unique story.
Chapter One starts with the publication of Fyodor's first volume of poems; they generate barely any interest. He bides his time about what to do and does so rather unproductively except for an awakening to Russian literature.
Chapter Two is a wonderful reminiscence of his father, a renowned lepidopterist who disappeared on an expedition in Central Asia. This was elegiac, a fabulous interlude full of admiration for nature.
Chapter Three is centred on the decision to write a critical biography of Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevski, the 19th Century materialist social critic, lionised by the early communists. Fyodor (Nabokov) debunks him in Chapter Four and thus the chapter becomes a book within a book.
Chapter Five describes the success of the biography, more due to the scandal it raises. Fyodor is at last freed from sharing his living space with his landlords and can concentrate his love affair with like-minded Zina. She has encouraged his writing, and so Fyodor sets about planning a novel about his passions and his life. This proposed novel will be similar to the one we are just finishing. And so it goes
Bewildering at times, overwhelming me with my ignorance of so many things, but riveting in its inventiveness.

62. The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov
Translation: from Russian, by Michael Scammell, with the author, 1963
published: 1937
format: 391-page paperback
acquired: June
read: Nov 25 – Dec 23
time reading: 17 hr 45 min, 2.9 min/page
rating: 4½
locations: Berlin
about the author: 1899 – 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922. Lived in Berlin (1922-1937), Paris, the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).

This is slow, but good stuff. As I work through Nabokov‘s novels, this was easily the weighty-est so far. There is a lot in here, like everything - poetry, Pushkin, Gogol, a complete biography of Chernyshevsky (!), literary commentary, critics, death, love, language, commentary on Nazi Germany - all here. It was also his last Russian language novel.

The novel is about a young Russian émigré author who just published his first book in Germany, a book of Russian poetry that sells a few dozen copies. He works as a language tutor, mostly for Germans learning English, which gives him just enough money, when he's responsible, to rent a room. As our book progresses, he interacts with literary émigrés in Berlin, meets a girl, Zina, who loves his book of poetry and falls for him and helps him write a biography Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. What? You haven't heard of Chernyshevsky? He was part of the Russia intellectual community in the 1860's, an era of reform in Russian, and when all that great Russian literature was appearing. Chernyshevsky was a proto-Communist, noted by Marx, and highly regarded by Lenin. Despite his caution, he was arrested, given a mock execution and sent to life-long exile in different parts of Siberia. Our protagonist is maybe less than reverential of his subject, making for some curious reading (the entire biography of Chernyshevsky is contained within), and ruffling many features throughout the fictional émigré community. His sales go up.

But this is just the surface. This book itself becomes an introspective look at misunderstood poetry, and at language, a love letter to certain era and mentality in a lost Russia, and a love story - all this with parallels to Nabokov's own life, even if he strongly denies the resemblance in his introduction. The opening chapter, a long musing on poetry, is some work for the reader to hack through. But then he switches to the narrator's lost father, a disconnected obsessive butterfly collector. This is also slow, but beautifully written and rewarding as his admiration pores out. Later the love story makes for simply great reading. Nabokov, in his translation introduction, claims a heavy influence from the Russian greats. He calls one chapter "a surge toward Pushkin", another a "shift to Gogol", and he claims the book's "heroine is not Zina, but Russian Literature." (with a capital 'L').

When one his favorite older émigré acquaintances dies, Nabokov goes uncharacteristically almost spiritual talking about death and life. On death:

"Fear gives birth to sacred awe, sacred awe erects a sacrificial altar, its smoke ascends to the sky, there assumes the shape of wings, and bowing fear addresses a prayer to it. Religion has the same relationship to man‘s heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game."

And on life:

"...the unfortunate image of a “road” to which the human mind has become accustomed (life is a kind of journey) is a stupid allusion: we are not going anywhere, we are sitting at home. The other world surrounds us always and is not at all at the end of some pilgrimage. In our earthly house, windows are replaced by mirrors; the door, until a given time, is closed; but air comes through the cracks."

This book mostly closes the chapter on Nabokov's Russian literary output, and it seems to know that, as it practically seems to take everything he neglected to put into his previous novels and collect it all in place here, a document of writer's life to this point (if not his protagonist's). Highly recommended for Nabokov enthusiasts, but for others I can only recommend this to the brave and those willing to hack through the slow stuff to find the beauty within. But it really does reward. I enjoyed this.

2020
https://www.librarything.com/topic/322920#7356522 ( )