One of my aims during any of our club weeks is to read as many books as possible that I already own; and I actually think I may succeed with 1936! In today’s post, I want to focus on three short stories I’ve recently read by a prose master – Vladimir Nabokov. He’s another who’s often featured on the Ramblings, but I haven’t picked up one of his works for a while. There are no novels from 1936, but a rummage around online and in my very large “Collected Stories” volume revealed three short stories which are probably from our year. I say probably, because there’s always a vagueness about publication dates; however, these are identified as 1936 in several places so I’ve read them and shall count them!

The three stories are “The Circle“, “Spring in Fialta” and “Mademoiselle O“; the first two were written in Russian and translated (I believe) by Dmitri Nabokov and the author; the final story was originally written in French and I’m unclear about translation though it may have been by Nabokov himself.

One is always at home in one’s past…

Where to start with the stories? Nabokov is such a brilliant writer that I feel a little inadequate trying to cover his work, and these three stories may be short but they’re little gems of genius. The first two stories, in fact, have thematic similarities in that they’re both suffused with a sense of nostalgia and look at lost loves over a period of time. “The Circle” is quite marvellously constructed and explores a young man’s fascination with the daughter of local gentry, and how their lives touch again at a later date. In “Spring in Fialta“, the first-person narrator recalls his encounters over the years with the beautiful Nina, in the old country and then the various new ones. Each of these stories is dripping with atmosphere, full of longing for the past, and chock-full of emotions of exile. The final story, “Mademoiselle O“, is one that Nabokov acknowledges as drawing directly from his life, and is his portrait memoir of a governess who was with him and his family for a number of years.

…he particularly prided himself on being a weaver of words, a title he valued higher than that of a writer; personally, I never could understand what was the good of thinking up books, of penning things that had not really happened in some way or other; and I remember once saying to him as I braved the mockery of his encouraging nods that, were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely on memory, that long-drawn sunset shadow of one’s personal truth.

What the three stories have in common, apart from marvellous writing, is a really aching sense of loss. Nabokov and his characters are obviously haunted by their past, and it continues to control their present in many ways. But what hit me most when reading these stories was the sheer brilliance of Nabokov’s writing; his prose and descriptions are just stunning, the construction of the stories brilliant, and the way he deals with the time shifts in his stories magisterial. “The Circle” has a particularly clever structure, about which I will say nothing because I urge you to read his short stories – the man was a genius, dammit!!!

Reading short stories always presents problems, particularly when you’re faced with a massive collected volume; if you read the lot through, you risk losing the individuality of each story; but if you decide to just pick and choose randomly, you might lose focus or let the book slip off the immediate TBR. So having a reading event like the #1936Club was the perfect impetus to get me picking up Nabokov’s short works, and I’m so glad I did. These stories were absolutely stunning, and I shall have to try not to leave it too long before I get back to his longer works!