Customer Reviews

Glory (Twentieth Century Classics)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Edelweiss? Noble White, the shy alpine flower that so quickly vanishes after spring. Are we readers to look for meaning in Nabokov's choice of the name Martin Edelweiss for his focal character? A good deal is said about the name early in the book, and we're reminded of it at crucial moments throughout. Just a few pages of Nabokov's so-carefully-crafted prose inclines this reader to suppose that nothing in "Glory" is merely incidental, that every detail is laden with pertinence. Whatever else one says about this novel, the first fact is that it's gloriously written. Every sentence snaps the reader's mind into focus. Every description is a poem in itself. Every characterization is a full dramatic portrait of individual flesh and blood.

Martin Edelweiss is a frivolous young man embedded among Russian emigres utterly trivialized by the Bolshevik Revolution, about which we hear only frivolous rumors and reports in ephemeral newsprint. The only position Martin's querulous society seems to take toward the momentous events in their homeland is to wish they hadn't happened, but make no mistake, this a novel about the Revolution, seen through a lens of irrelevance. This is also a novel about the meaning of being Russian, though Nabokov conveys his meaning through the subtlest indirection. There's no ambiguity whatsoever about the ending of the novel. The meaning is as clear as plasma and as ominous as a drum-roll to a prisoner awaiting execution, but I do not choose to pre-empt anyone's reading excitement by declaring the obvious.

At the same time, "Glory" is a coming-of-age novel, similar to other such novels about young men going off to college. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" and E.M. Forster's "The Longest Journey" might offer interesting comparisons. In all three, a sensitive young man confronts the tawdriness of the intellectual life, slips into depression over his own mediocrity, falls hopelessly in love with a disdainful beauty while at the same time exploring lust with more accessible lasses, and wrestles with the identity of a seemingly more well-prepared friend. Martin, however, isn't a titan waiting to be awakened to his own worth at the end of the novel. Nabokov takes pain to show us that Martin is NOT a poet, not a budding genius of any sort, just a modestly intelligent everyman of no particular bent. In fact, Martin's only talent seems to be at tennis. Like a young George Orwell, Martin stumbles into a brief romance with the simple life of honest toil, dwelling incognito for a 'chapter' in a wine-growing village in southern France. But, like most of Martin's experiences, this pastoral interlude sinks quickly into the chasm of memory. Above all, this is a novel about memory. It begins with Martin's memories of childhood. Martin's perceptions are all foreshadowed, and his actions are all predetermined, by his memories. Even the passing moment is no more than a memory.

Martin doesn't tell his story in the first person. Nabokov clings to Martin's shoulder like a personal daemon, or to be blunt, like a 19th C omniscient narrator. When suddenly, in the last chapter, the novelist shifts his perch to another shoulder, it's both a brilliant literary trick and a lucid statement of Martin's fate.

"Glory" is a translation from Russian of an early novel by a writer who went on to create far more famous books in English. Perhaps that explains why it's less widely read than the Forster or Fitzgerald novels mentioned above. It's the best book of the three by far, and proves beyond a doubt that Nabokov could write traditional narrative as brilliantly as the more idiosyncratic interior surrealism for which he is famous.

I always pick up one of the "Russian" novels by Nabokov with a certain thrill of anticipation. Not only is the reader about to be thrust into the Russian emigre population that moved into the large European cities following the Revolution of 1917, but is also to me made party to the evolving literary genius of the young Nabokov.

In this book, which the author describes as soaring "to the heights of purity and melancholy that I have only attained in the much later Ada," he deals with the themes of alienation and the romantic musings which accompany the lives of the lonely and unspectacular individuals who make their way through this world. For Martin Edelweiss, the main character of the book, life has become a series of romantic possibilities: "a necklace of lights" seen from a train in the French night, the woman who throws a brief glance in his direction, footpaths dissolving into a forest - all these become possible "gallant feats," if only in his mind.

Although Nabokov downplays the similarity between the background of Martin and his own, there is a great deal in this book that is autobiographical. The author's years of emigre life in various European cities, his university days at Cambridge, and his period of manual labor in the south of France all find their way into this novel. Perhaps because of the author's emotional involvement with the book, Glory brings to life a softer Nabokov, one who is content to let the book follow its own winding path and who refrains from interjecting the tautness of his earlier efforts.

As a stylist, Nabokov is incomparable and to read one of his books is an experience of sheer wonder. If this book does not rank with his highest achievements, it certainly demonstrates a more mature author at work, one who is on the brink of greatness.

I wanted to read fairly short, impressive book during my winter break/holidays. So, Nabokov came to my mind. I picked up "Glory" and I was taken from the moment I started reading. Book about young Martin Edelweiss, of Swiss and Russian heritage, follows his quiet life from his early childhood to his life of the grown up, young man. His parents divorce during his childhood, and Martin's father dies soon afterwards. Martin's mother re-marries to his uncle who sends young Martin to the Cambridge University. Here, Martin acquires new friends and even falls in love with Sonia, ruthless daughter of the Russian emigre editor. Sonia seems to enjoy seducing young man but is ever so easy in discarding them in order to avoid long term commitment. Martin is no exception. And after college days are over, Martin decides to travel around Europe: England, Switzerland, Germany. His uncle/stepfather is concerned about Martin's lack of desire to find suitable position in order to ensure steady flow of income. And while Martin's friends are building their careers in journalism, writing and other "honorable" professions, he seems to rather enjoy doing manual labor in order to find his true self. Until one day - he goes away. Forever. Very powerful novel. It made me Nabokov's fan in a matter of moment.

This novel was first published in Russian in 1932 and was much later translated into English by the author and his son Dimitri. In his interesting introduction to the book, Nabokov states that his original working title was "Romanticheskiy Vek", or "Romantic Times"; this was later changed to "Podvig", which can be translated as "gallant feat" or "exploit".

The hero of the book is Martin Edelweiss, a young Russian of Swiss ancestry. Like Nabokov's own family, Martin and his mother are forced to leave Russia following the Communist revolution of 1917, and take refuge in Switzerland, where Martin's mother marries his Uncle Henry, a cousin of his late father. Martin is sent to be educated in Cambridge; after graduating, he refuses to find a profession for himself, but travels around Europe, taking casual employment in Berlin and the south of France. The book ends with Martin performing the "exploit" of the Russian title, a clandestine crossing of the Soviet border from Latvia, but the ultimate outcome of this deed is left obscure.

Nabokov's two Russian titles for the work are both significant. Martin is a man of artistic temperament but without artistic gifts. He is bored and restless, something he has in common with the "superfluous men" of earlier Russian literature, such as Eugene Onegin or Pechorin from Lermontov's "Hero of our Times" (a novel Nabokov translated). (There is also, possibly, an echo of their obsession with duelling and honour in the rather ridiculous boxing match between Martin and his Cambridge friend Darwin). There are, however, important differences between Martin and these earlier anti-heroes. Their restlessness and boredom lead them into cynical, callous nihilism; Martin's lead him into a search for sense of purpose, something he remains optimistic about finding. As another reviewer has put it, he sees life as a "series of romantic possibilities." Whereas their sense of purposelessness is internal, arising from something in their characters, Martin's is external, deriving from his situation as an involuntary exile, cut off from his country by political events. It is notable that when he goes to Cambridge he chooses to study Russian literature and culture, rejecting Henry's advice that he should follow a vocational course. Memories of his childhood take on great importance for him; he chooses, for example, to live and work for a time in a particular French town because of the (mistaken) belief that it was the town whose lights he once briefly glimpsed during a night-time train ride as a boy.

Although the story is told in the third person, it is similar to a first-person narrative in that the whole of the action (except the last few pages after he has disappeared) is told as it appears to the central character. One of the most striking features of the work is the vividness of its descriptions of the physical world. Whether the scene is set in the Crimea, Greece, Switzerland, Cambridge, Berlin or Provence, there are plentiful references (at times in almost every sentence) to not only the sights of the locality but also to its sounds, smells, tastes and sensations. Martin is highly sensitive to the beauty of the world around him (something else, incidentally, that he shares with Pechorin)- lights seem from a train, the moon shining on the sea, a jay flying through blue sky above a snow-covered forest, or the scents of a Crimean summer.

Because Martin is so much at the centre of the book, the other characters are less prominent, although there are one or two sharp portraits- Uncle Henry, whose cautious pragmatism contrasts with Martin's romanticism, Martin's first love, the married Decadent poetess Alla Chernosvitova, Sonia Zilanova, the fickle, flirtatious daughter of another émigré family with whom he later conducts an on-off romance, and Darwin. (Darwin, incidentally, is not a fop, as some have called him. "Fop" seems an odd word to use about a winner of the Victoria Cross, and he often seems more practical and down to earth than Martin himself).

The motivation for Martin's "gallant feat" is left as obscure as its outcome. Was it some secret mission on behalf of his fellow émigrés? A desire for adventure? An attempt to impress Sonia? Nostalgia for his native land? Simple bravado? Nabokov provides no definitive answer to this question. Unlike some other reviewers, however, I did not find that the book was spoilt for me by the deliberately vague ending. In literature, as in life, mystery and ambiguity can be as interesting as precision and hard fact. Certainly, "Glory" is not a novel of the traditional sort, with a well-rounded plot with a beginning, a middle and an end, and should not be read as such. The fun of "Glory" lies elsewhere (to quote its author in a different context). The sensuous prose and the memorable portrait of a romantic young man in an age when romanticism was perhaps not in fashion make this a superb novel.

This is essential Nabokov. If this weren't one of his earlier works, I'd say that the master has done it again. Still, all the brazen overtness in prose has been polished away since Mary and The Defense. All the little prose games that make Nabokov a joy to read (relegating plot, sometimes even character to the background) is already well in place, though perhaps because it is in translation, the prose does not sparkle as it does in his English works.

A word about the plot, it is very interesting when read against Kerouac's Vanity of Duluoz, both stories about drifterdom after college. Of course, the ending is inconclusive, but how? That's left as a surprise.

Glory is the comic/tragic tale of a young man whose fantasies of heroism come to replace reality and eventually lead to his downfall. The theme is simple, but because the novel is set between WWI and WWII, Glory might be best described as a somewhat cynical allegory about the plight of the "Lost Generation"--those ex-patriots who retreated to Paris during the 20s and 30s. Martin, our protagonist, while not an American in Paris, most certainly is lost. Having been forced into exile during the Russian Revolution, Martin, who is a highly Europeanized hybrid, finds himself adrift in Europe, wandering from Switzerland, to England, to Germany in an aimless pursuit of what to do with himself. Eventually he falls in love with the sulky, dark-eyed temptress, Sonia. But that, of course, solves nothing. Martin does not know who he is, where he has come from, or where he is going. Falling in love merely heightens his anomie.

If this sounds somewhat uninspiring as a plot, you are right! There is very little action of note, and even less character development (which, in any event, Nabokov disdained). The appeal of this book is the sheer force of Nabokov's gorgeous writing. His exquisite attention to detail, his amazing insights into states of mind set him above all other writers. Perhaps you think I am overstating, but who else can take you to a river in Cambridge, make you smell the air, see the sky, feel as Martin feels, so deftly, so economically and with such great sensitivity? Nabokov, a synthaesthete, has a chef's awareness of how to spice his novels. A dash of this, a hint of that - he knows which sensations to describe in order to create a harmonious whole. There are passages in this book which I read and re-read, astounded by the clarity, the precision, the sheer beauty of Nabokov's prose.


Glory is a literary delicacy, best savored slowly. Take your time consuming it, and you will be thoroughly satisfied.

"Russia is our Motherland. Death is inevitable". - Epigraph to "The Gift", another Nabokov's novel.

Why did Martin Edelweiss march off towards his glory?

The complete population of Nabokov's novel - Martin's mother, his uncle, his best friend, his lady acquaintance (Sonya is not really his girlfriend, is she?), her relatives, the adventurous Gruzinov, unafraid to boldly go into blood-soaked Soviet Russia through secret passageways - all of them cannot find an answer to this question.

But let's rephrase it. Could Martin *not* march off towards his glory?

Strictly speaking, yes. Should Sonya agree to come to Provence and lead a peaceful rustic life with him, among snakes, heat and garlic. But she had refused, and Martin ran out of options.

He couldn't really spend his life working as a tennis coach in Berlin, throwing balls to elderly pupils - the balls he so deftly held in his hand, five at once.

Nabokov gave to Martin the precious droplets of his own experience, something that was called the happiest childhood of Russian literature. He gave him the anglophile tradition, the old Cambridge ramparts, the glow of Riviera sand, the hot afternoon hours of Southern France, the smell of petrol in Berlin. He allowed him to lose his virginity easily and happily - before that, all Russian classical writers had bashfully neglected this crucial moment - probably none of them happened to be so lucky as Martin. Who else in Russian literature dared sleep with a prostitute with a feeling of such freshness and vigour, and no remorse at all? There is no overlapping in Martin's sexual and romantic life; tough luck, sure; but in contrast to a multitude of other Russian fictional characters, he does not turn it into a tragedy, or renounce both in a fit of despair.

Having endowed his hero with nobleness, health, intellect, sense of humour, Nabokov did not give him any vocation. Martin never wrote anything longer than a postcard. Butterflies flip-flap their wings around him from time to time, but not a single one is given a name in the novel. He plays tennis well enough, but still he's only an amateur; he doesn't seem to play chess at all. In Cambridge, at first, he wants to do everything, but then he chooses the easy way and goes into Slavic studies, losing an excellent tutor on the way because of the latter's sexual preferences (squeamish, isn't he). Nabokov consistently denies his creation all of his own great passions. Even Martin's university studies are only mentioned fleetingly; they are not of real interest to anyone, to Martin himself in particular.

Martin with a gift - that is the character of Nabokov's later novel, "The Gift", the writer Godunov-Tscherdyntsev. His future fiancée would have dog-eared the book of his poetry before even meeting him. But what is left to Martin, who does not write any poetry? "Without a profession, he'll go nuts", says uncle Heinrich.

So he did.

This was Nabakov's fifth novel. This is the fifth book of his I've read. Vladie is starting to sound like a grown-up.

His first three novels were alientating stories of brilliant youth, bitter and obsessed over their awkward superiority to others. The Eye was a kid's afterlife story, all cute and smug and everything racked with some sort of glory.

Then comes Glory.

The protagonist is an arrogant, shiftless swan, kind and naive, but convinced he's worth something special. In point of fact, he isn't. All of his friends seem to be proving their worth and rising to the glorious peaks everyone always seemed to think he was supposed to attain. A sucker for grunt work, Martin decides to outdo everyone with a physical feat. But he's dumb, he's too self-absorbed, he's so full of himself that there is no idea of consequences or the future.

Nabakov tosses off his previous experimentation and forges ahead to what looks to be an open door of brilliant, brilliant ideas. Each passing chapter builds more excitement and enthusiasm as you wander along just as aimlessly as poor, benighted Martin himself. I believe this to be an honest book--the first honest book of Nabakov's career--and the menacingly self-depreciating tone of everyone towards everything gives us an ideal perspectivist slant on the narrative, feeding along in a world where, regardless of private likes and dislikes, everyone pretty much reacts exactly the same. Life proves to be competitive and each player attempts to one up everyone else in the world.

It's actually a 4 and a half star book, and I feel guilty about words stated in my previous review for The Eye, but I STILL round it down because of the obnoxious, tedious, and wantonly swaggering introduction Vladie scribbled in a self-congradulatory way to tell you that his idea is just too brilliant for you to appreciate fully. Perhaps so. What have I lost?

In some ways, the more Nabokov I read, the more confused I get. I suspect that Nabokov might actually be glad to hear that.

I mention it in connection with "Glory" because this novel has so many autobiographical elements in it, yet the author himself warned us not to take it too literally. Maybe he's just playing games with us, as he often did. Or maybe we've just become accustomed to thinking that novels always reveal the author's actual past. Are authors really that unimaginative? Some might be, but not Nabokov.

"Glory," like a lot of this author's Russian novels, deals with a group of Russians who have fled the Revolution and find themselves in Europe. Martin Edelweiss, as his name suggests, has the good fortune to be part Swiss, so he and his mother have somewhere to go when the Communists take over (his parents are long since divorced and his father dead). They start in the Crimea, then move up to Switzerland, and Martin heads to Cambridge for university. Despite an interlude as a rural farm worker in France that gives him some peace, he finds himself longing to perform some daring exploit to impress a flirtatious girl named Sonia who refuses to marry him. So he decides to sneak over the border back into Russia.

So much for the plot, which isn't the purpose of the novel anyway. In his introduction, Nabokov tells us two things. First, he says that "Glory" is his only novel with a purpose, and that that purpose is not the novel's story - rather, it's the opportunity to watch his character enjoy the generally normal and insignificant events of his life. Second, he informs us that the fun of reading "Glory" is to pick up on its various patterns, repetitive imagery, echoes along the time of Martin's life, and things like that.

Well, I read the novel with these claims in mind, and it sort of works. For instance, Martin's endless searching for something new can get a little annoying until you recall that each of those searches follows a pattern established at the novel's start, when Martin as a child in the nursery becomes fascinated by a watercolor painting of a path disappearing into a forest. This image isn't so much a symbol of adventures as a calling for Martin, a way for him to explain why his life doesn't go the way he wants it to. He seems to think that if he stops looking around for mysterious paths, he won't be worthy of much, certainly not Sonia's love.

Here's the thing - in almost any other novel, this early pattern of mysterious forest paths would likely lead to something easily explainable. Other authors, even excellent ones, might produce a story in which Martin learns to forget about such romantic notions, settles down and lives happily ever after. Or perhaps they might produce a story in which Martin insists upon the search for mystery and adventure, and either triumphs over all adversity and becomes a hero, or goes down to tragic disgrace. Some archetypal adventure story, in short. Be forewarned - Nabokov couldn't possibly care less about such things. He's interested in the pattern, not where it leads. He told us this quite clearly, so read "Glory" as he instructed us to. Do not expect him to tie up all the loose ends, or even any of the loose ends. Nabokov didn't seem to believe that there's such a thing as a loose end anyway. The pattern is what it is - the fact that it's carefully planned doesn't mean it has to be circular.

As far as I know, "Glory" isn't considered to be a major Nabokov work. Nevertheless, it raises some interesting questions, and it's worth reading for that reason alone. For instance, as I said, Martin embarks on his quest to cross the Russian border to attract Sonia's attention, and to make himself feel worthy (at least that's what he tells himself). Just about everyone in his life, whether they find out about this project before Martin initiates it or afterwards, thinks that it's just about the dumbest idea they've ever heard. The author himself, if you read the novel closely, appears to agree that Martin's got no business endangering himself as he does (most of the time I don't bother you with the author's opinion of his own work, but Nabokov injects himself into his stories so often that it's worth considering). On the other hand, if Martin's search for glory is so idiotic, why bother writing a novel about it?

Well, yeah, Nabokov says it's worthwhile because of the enjoyment we get from following the patterns the story produces, but that still leaves open the question of whether or not Martin's little jaunt actually gets him the glory he seeks. That's just one of those things that this author leaves up to you and me. It's probably a better idea to read Martin's search for glory as just another element in the pattern of "Glory" and let it go at that.

Benshlomo says, If you play the game seriously, it might even get you what you want.

I read this once, mostly out-loud, so I definitely won't claim to understand it on the deeper level of some of the other reviewers. What great translation! So much to learn about language - I can hardly believe sometimes that the sentences weren't originally written in English, they come out so naturally, with such an extremely high quality of aesthetic sound. Certainly a rather autobiographical novel ... as I get back to reading other stories by Nabakov I am confident I understand them better, getting a much better sense of the man by reading this one.