This is a nasty little gem of a novel written fairly early in Nabakov's career, when he was still writing in Russian. The copy I just read does not indicate who translated it, although I suspect it may have been his brother, who translated many of his earlier works. It also may have been Nabakov himself. Either way it doesn't matter.
It is the story of a well-to-do German, Albinus, with an inheritance, wife, child and sedate happy life. I am still not clear on what he does; he is apparently some kind of an art critic. He becomes infatuated with the beautiful but deceitful and manipulative Margot, a woman far too young for him. He leaves his wife and child for her, and as time slowly crawls by, loses everything else: his money, his happiness and his health. The young woman is assisted in her deceit by her lover, Rex, who pretends to be the protagonist's friend.
Yes, we've heard this tale before, and will hear it many, many more times, but in the skilled hands of the great Nabakov, all of this is fresh, and very, very original. Rex is an astonishing character; completely, wickedly drawn: "He [Rex] watched with interest the sufferings of Albinus (in his opinion an oaf with simple passions and a solid, too solid, knowledge of painting), who thought, poor man, that he had touched the very depths of human distress; whereas Rex reflected--with a sense of pleasant anticipation--that, far from being the limit, it was merely the first item in the program of a roaring comedy at which he, Rex, had been reserved a place in the stage manager's private box." This little commentary follows shortly after the death of Albinus' only child. Yike! How lusciously, viciously evil! And the extent to which Rex follows his "muse" as the book goes along is almost breathtaking. This is horror, true horror; way beyond the conjurings of such mediocrities as our benighted Sir Stephen.
The girl's character is no less skillfully drawn. Banal, uneducated and dull--yet pretty--she is attracted to only the superficial: fame, pleasure, and money, and tolerates Albinus only for the period of time she is able to use him to get these things. She is as faithful as a cat, and as moral as a snake. But oh, does her black hair glisten in the sunlight, and does her thin body shimmer as it exits the blue Adriatic.
Finally we have Albinus. Not ugly, somewhat stolid, a little naive, his premarital romances had been "feeble." And alongside, "There had been hundreds of girls of whom he had dreamed but whom he had never got to know; they had just slid past him, leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is . . ." We know, soon, that he is the type of person to fall prey to such . . . things.
This is all marvelous, marvelous stuff, and written so early in his career. Amazingly, it doesn't even begin to match his almost unparalleled mastery of the novel form he would later exhibit in novels such as Lolita.
I'm not sure how to say this. If you love to watch tennis, you go to Wimbledon. If you love to drink beer, you go to Bohemia. If you love beautiful women . . . well, there are many places. And now that I am out of metaphors, I will simply say this: if you love literature, you must--you MUST--go to Nabakov.
