Vladimir Nabokov, Poseshchenie muzeia [The Visit to the Museum]

William Norman (University of Kent at Canterbury)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1939

Places

Russia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story

Resources

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Poseshchenie muzeia

[

The Visit to the Museum

], written in the autumn of 1938, was first published in the Russian language émigré review,

Sovremennye zapiski

[

Contemporary Letters

] in Paris, 1939. This Russian version later appeared in Nabokov’s collection,

Vesna v Fialte

[

Spring in Fialta

, 1956]. It was translated as

The Visit to the Museum

for the magazine

Esquire

in 1963, before being included in

A Russian Beauty and Other Stories

(1973) and

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

(Knopf, 1995, reprinted as

Collected Stories

, Penguin, 1997).

The Visit to the Museum is narrated in the first person by an enigmatic Russian émigré, whose bizarre experience in a provincial French museum forms the basis for the story. A friend of his requests that, on a visit to a particular town, he attempts to

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1265 words

Citation: Norman, William. "Poseshchenie muzeia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 April 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16885, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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