— Vladimir Nabokov, from the Foreword
Father’s Butterflies
Nabokov’s “Father’s Butterflies” is viewed as a later written afterword to The Gift. It was translated by his son and published posthumously, incorporated as a chapter into Nabokov’s Butterflies.
Reception
The Gift is considered by some “the most original, unusual and interesting piece of prose writing” of Russian emigre writing (Simon Karlinsky) and the most “difficult” of Nabokov’s Russian novels. Initially the complex novel was not successfully received; it was either ignored or criticized as an incendiary attack on Russian literature. Earlier critics viewed it as a novel describing the development of an artist. Dolinin, instead, sees it as “a kind of declaration of love” – love of the creator for his creature, and of the creature for its creator, love of a son for his father, love of an exile for his native land, love for language and those who love it, love for the beauty of the world, and, last but not least, love for its readers”. Johnson maintains that the theme of The Gift is the gift of art that is played out, like a chess game, along two plot lines – Fyodor’s artistic development and his relationship to Zina.
The role of keys in the novel acts as a leitmotif. Many other motifs are present, including time, reality, nature, love, parents, Russia, literature, art, death, light, colors, dreams, travel, and exile. The novel contains embedded literature such as poems and the paradox of a “real” biography by an “unreal” writer. The narration weaves between first and third person, time between now and past, and dreams have the quality of reality. The novel is written in a circular fashion, like a Möbius strip (Dolinin), at its end the narrator/protagonist decides to write the novel the reader is reading.
Ben-Amos analyzed the role of literature in the novel, stating that it is “a central component, rather than a reflection, of reality”, consistent with Fyodor being both narrator and protagonist, also the love of Zina and Fyodor is inter-related to literature and unthinkable without it. Similarly, Paperno indicates that literature and reality interact on equal footing and are interchangeable. Another angle is provided by Boyd, who suggests that The Gift depicts Fyodor’s father’s life as a thesis “not quite yet earned”, the life of Chernishevsky – a life of frustration – its Hegelian antithesis, and Fyodor’s life as it plays out the synthesis: Fyodor realizes that his past frustrations are part of a larger design to link him to Zina and to develop his art.
Each chapter follows the style of a figure of Russian literature. There is a chapter written in Pushkin’s style, one in Gogol’s style, and the fourth chapter is in the style of Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.
