Vladimir Nabokov, Volshebnik [The Enchanter]

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The Enchanter

was written in Russian in Paris in the autumn of 1939, under the title “Volshebnik”. After Nabokov's arrival in America, the text was thought to have been lost, or indeed destroyed. A few years later the basic idea of the novella was to be transposed to an American setting and it grew “in secret the claws and wings of a novel” (13), to become the much longer and far richer

Lolita

. However, in 1959 a typescript of the work turned up and Nabokov reread it “with considerably more pleasure than I experienced when recalling it as a dead scrap during my work on

Lolita

”, suggesting to his publisher that, as “a beautiful piece of Russian prose”, it “could be done into English by the Nabokovs” (16). Probably for reasons of time, this project was then taken no…

1046 words

Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Volshebnik". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=963, accessed 29 March 2024.]

963 Volshebnik 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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