Reverse Nostalgia-A Study On Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels In Sirin Period

In the early years of Vladimir Nabokov’s exile, He expatriated in Berlin, Deutschland and wrote ten Russian novels under the name of Vladimir Sirin. These novels already got enough attention by that age’s readers and critics of Russian exiles in West Europe. Although the novels of Sirin period was not widely known as his novels published in America, nor triggered that massive upsurge of critic and comment as Lolita did, they are in fact very significant not only because of their artistic achievement, but also for the origin feature of his late works.Since Mary in 1926 till The Gift in 1938, Nabokov gradually formed its own unique style in this period of more than 10 years of Russian novels creating and started to show his strong identity that buried deep in all his works. His heroes in completely different lives presented essentially identical exile characteristics, the experience of exile of the author himself was scattered in all the life details elaborated in realistic or odd life fragments and scenes. These early works also indicates what may present when his novel skill reaches the acme. Ganin in Mary set the keynote of all his later heroes’ lives, the doppelganger relationship of Herman and Felix in Despair was a rehearsal of Humbert and Quilty in Lolita, Fyodor in The Gift derived his contrast figures in parallel worlds, V(The Real Life of Sebastian Knight) and Pnin( Pnin). The unpublished Enchanter hidden in many manuscripts in this period was the predecessor and the prototype of Lolita.These novels contained all the themes, ideas and narrative styles in his late novels, and had already shown maturity. These early works is the key to understand the whole literature creation of Nabokov precisely because the extreme identity of his works. This paper will systematically analyze the novels of Sirin, combining the social and cultural background of his time, to reveal the characteristics of both themes and poetics, then discuss the inner relationship between the novels and the exile lifestyle of the author, reveal the distinctive exile awareness of this “atypical Russian exile” Sirin. By seeking the inheritance and expansibility in his American novels, this paper shall establish an accurate position for Sirin Era in Nabokov’s entire creative career, and give the novel artistry of Vladimir Nabokov an overall revelation.