Visual Arts In Nabokov’s Stories

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov(1899-1977)is one of the most important writers in the world of literature in the 20 th century.The incorporation between Nabokov’s novels and visual arts like paintings and dramas is concentrated by critics after 1920 s.The Chinese translation of Nabokov’s stories was finally published in 2018,which cause Chinese studies was far behind the international critics,and there are some blank in study of visual arts in Nabokov’s stories.The thesis will base on Nabokov’s fine arts education background,to discuss how he combine painting with literature to complete his own innovation.There are three parts in this thesis:The first part is the introduction.It combs studies domestic and overseas about Nabokov,and discuss the shortage of studies at home,so that to learn Nabokov’s stories through fine arts.The second part contains Chapter Two to Chapter Four.In the second chapter,it reappears the “color hearing” of Nabokov and his solid foundation of fine arts,which he brined into literary creation and became the source of inspiration background and metaphor of stories.Chapter Three focuses on the story Spring in Fialta,it analyses the “color description” in Nabokov’s stories,and he parodied The Last Supper to express his dissatisfaction of philistinism.Chapter Four discusses how Nabokov inherited the expression skills from Chekov,which liberate the “triangle desire”,a typical contradiction in traditional Russian literature,from a heavy mental conflict to an open ending and interpretation space.Nabokov further surpassed Chekhov on the structure of stories.He created a spiral visual puzzle by reflecting the way memories emerging into our brain,which is “picturtique”.The third part is conclusion,which summarizes the context of previous chapters.It states that Nabokov transformed the "instantaneous" of paintings into the advantage of "eternity",which is a confession of eternity,of art,and also of Russian literature.