Vladimir Nabokov Stories

I have always loved Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire where a rival takes over the manuscripts of a dead poet. Some say the poetry is pastiche, but I find it moving and exquisite.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the fake azure of the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I’d let dark glass,

Hand all the furniture above the grass,

And how delightful when a fall of snow

Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so

As to make chair and bed exactly stand

Upon that snow, out in that crystal land.