Cloud, Castle, Lake

Okay, another obligatory post on Nabokov (obligatory because of the title of the blog). I have recently finished reading five stories by Nabokov collected under the title of one of them, Cloud, Castle, Lake. Actually the book is published by Penguin as a part of its seventieth anniversary which falls this year.

As is typical of any Nabokov writing, there is lot of "showing off" in each of the stories (which I mean totally as a compliment), in terms of word games, striking imageries, metaphors and literary allusions. One story that really struck me in particular was the first one called "The Admiralty Spire". The narrator of the story, who remains unnamed, is writing a letter to the author of a sentimental, romantic novel (called "The Admiralty Spire") to protest, as he claims, against the fictional use of his own love affair, that he once was involved in, in his youth. In process he indulges in literary criticism which is sometimes very curious and at other times very enlightening. For example he claims that he can identify the correct gender (behind the male pseudonym) with the way the sentences in the novel always "button to the left"! At other places he expounds further on Russian and French authors and poets and questions her uses of images and symbols which he claims are derivative and cliched. He then explains his own love story (which he does wonderfully) to correct the "misrepresentations". In the end the narrator reveals or at least claims that the writer of the novel is no one else but Katya herself, the girl he loved, which only mystifies the story further. Very nicely done overall. I totally forgot the dreariness of the two-hour Bangalore-Calcutta flight journey because of the story. Yes, it took me two hours to read the six-seven pages. But then which other writer will use words like "chatoyant" in a casual description of an evening in a garden!