Как правило - я не большой поклонник «творчестве о творчестве», поэтому все литературные труды о сотворении книги или голивудские фильмы о самом себе как правило мне не нравятся.
«Дар», несмотря на то, что в прямолинейном смысле является именно творчеством о творчестве (главный герой - молодой поэт и писатель живущий в эмиграции в Берлине и в книге мы следим за его эволюцией, как автора - от поэта, вдохновленным Пушкиным к прозаику), благодаря своей много(мульти?)гранности держал меня с собой до самых последних строк.
Будучи мета-романом, романом в романе, публицистикой в романе, потоком сознания в романе и «много чего еще другого» в романе, он, наряду с, порой, вычурным богатством языка Набокова, оставляет место для каждого читателя. Лично меня «держали» Прустовского толка воспоминания о детстве и о российской природе, описания граничащие со сном и пробуждающие собственные воспоминания похлеще известной мадленки. Книга полна образов и рефренов к другим произведениям Набокова - шахматы, закольцованность времени и композиции, красота юности и многое другое
Какие-то же части книги я пролистывал, практически, со скукой - при идеальной форме, вопрос содержания для меня порой оставался открытым. Но так как форма - непревзойденная, ты все равно читаешь до конца.

The Gift is a bit different from other Nabokov novels. Its closest contemporary is the earlier Glory, and to a lesser extent his memoir Speak, Memory. Instead of the tricky, complex and maze-like plots that structure most of his works, this one is a slow burn. It takes its time and doesn't necessarily lead anywhere, but instead provides its pleasure in the beautiful density of the prose and the wonderful observations and sly jokes. Granted, those are aspects that make a large part of all of N's novels, but here they are pushed to the fore. It's a very slow read, but not because it lacks interest. The Gift is like fresh cream, it's delicious, but it's so rich that you can only take a little bit at a time. And while it is slow-moving, there's a very subtle and very pleasing payoff at the end. Maybe the Chernyshevski section drags on a little long, but that's really my only complaint here. Also it lacks a little something to push it over the hump from really good to being a masterpiece.

I really can't praise the prose enough. I tend to rib on certain writers who I think lack evocation in their writing (Hi, Hemingway! Hi, McCarthy!), so I want to take a second to point out the work of a master to contrast with that. From page 292 of my edition: "Fyodor sat between the novelists Shahmatov and Vladimirov by a wide window behind which the night gleamed wetly black, with two-toned (the Berlin imagination did not stretch to any more) illuminated signs - ozone-blue and oporto-red - and rumbling electric trains with rapidly and distinctly lighted insides gliding above the square along a viaduct, against whose architvolts below slow, grinding trams seemed to keep butting without finding a loophole." See that? "The night gleamed wetly black"!!! See how simply and perfectly that brings the scene to life?

To digress slightly for a second, I want to point out how lucky we are with Nabokov. There's a long list of great writers who produced very little great material, either due to early death, late start, slow output, quitting, or continuing to write but falling off (or in some cases suddenly jumping from mediocrity to greatness). Nabokov, however, wrote steadily from his 20s until his death at 78. He wrote 17 novels (plus two more published posthumously; once complete and one in very rudimentary stages), a memoir, and six hundred pages of short stories, not to mention essays, poems, plays and lectures. Not one of those novels (except the unfinished one that never should have been published) was less than good, most of them are very good to great, and at least three of them are masterpieces. Being a Nabokov fan is like being treated to a seemingly never-ending treasure trove, and there are not many writers you can say that about.

The other wonderful thing about dear old N is that reading his work isn't the only joy he provides. While he would no doubt object to the idea that any of his works have a message, if you did decide to derive one, it's that art is all around you. The most consistent theme in his work is the observation of the little details in all aspects of life, and that those details are what bring true joy. He teaches you to become a connoisseur of your own world, to separate the common and mundane (another major theme of his is an utter distaste for the common) from the truly exceptional and artistic in all areas your surroundings. It's not something that jumps out immediately upon reading his work, but the more you immerse yourself in it, the more you will find yourself making the very types of observations that he would.

P.S. If you have his collected short stories, "The Circle" is a sort of companion piece to The Gift and is worth reading afterwards.

Though less than 400 pages this seemed like a long book, or several books. Possibly because it moves from a book about a book of poems, to a memoir of Fyodor's father, to a biography-of-sorts of Chernyshevskii, with literary criticism and imagined conversations and many lines of poetry throughout. I couldn't quite find the thread, the plait, the tide, though many wavelets were mordant, bilingually punning, or finely wrought.

VN even puts a foretaste of Lolita in the mouth of one of his most poshlii (vulgar) characters, Shchyogolev: "'Imagine this kind of thing: an old dog--but still in his prime, fiery, thirsting for happinesss--gets to know a widow, and she has a daughter, still quite a little girl--you know what I mean--when nothing is formed yet but already she has a way of walking that drives you out of your mind--A slip of a girl, very fair, pale, with blue under the eyes--and of course she doesn't even look at the old goat. What to do?....Eh? D'you feel here a kind of Dostoevskian tragedy?'" (186)

Shchyogolev, of course, having married one Marianna Nikolaevna, a widow with a pale young daughter.
What to do, of course, being the then-common title of Chernyshevskii's big novel, What Is To Be Done.
Dostoevskii, of course, being Dostoevskii.

Avrei dovuto dare quattro stelle perché ho trovato leggermente ostico il quarto capitolo; tuttavia, la splendida scrittura di Nabokov ha avuto la meglio.

Lê-se pelo puro deleite da beleza de certas frases. Apesar de nao ter gostado dos cap. 2 e 4, por razoes diferentes - um maçador outro por ser uma critica desalmada - os restantes compensam, em suma  este livro é maioritáriamente maravilhoso!

(It is read for the pure delight of the beauty of certain passages. Although I did not like chapters 2 and 4, for different reasons—one being tedious and the other for its ruthless criticism—the rest make up for it. In short, this book is mostly wonderful!)

• науковий прорахунок художнього тексту, що от-от, і ти вже читаєш нон-фікшн

• роман про творчість, філологічна розвідка натхнення

• автор каже, що натхнення – це розмова з тисячею співрозмовників, де тільки один – справжній

• у цей текст треба провалюватися глибоко, але порційно

Este livro foi a minha primeira incursão na bibliografia de Nabokov, e não posso dizer que tenha sido uma experiência memorável. Não estou, no entanto, a dizer que o livro é mau; muito pelo contrário, acredito que seja um livro ótimo - mas quem, como eu, não está familiarizado com a cultura russa e, especificamente, com a sua literatura (que no meu caso desconheço completamente com a exceção de um par de livros de Fyodor Dostoyevsky e outro de Leo Tolstoy) fica necessariamente completamente perdido. Desde as infindáveis discussões sobre as valências literárias Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol e Alexander Pushkin, à minibiografia (altamente crítica) do escritor e pensador Nicolaï Tchernychevski, este livro é uma declaração de amor à sua pátria e às suas letras maternas. Declaração de amor cujas nuances se perderam completamente, inegavelmente pela minha falta de conhecimento no campo. Aparentemente cada um dos cinco capítulos foi escritos no estilo de um notório autor russo - Pushkin, Gogol, entre outros - facto do qual permaneci completamente ignorante até ter acabado a leitura e começar a ver algumas avaliações no Goodreads.

A história resume-se rapidamente: centra-se no personagem principal, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, um escritor em início de carreira no seu caminho para o reconhecimento literário. Uma trama lateral descreve também o seu romance com Zina, filha dos seus senhorios e incansável apoiante dos seus projetos.

Fiquei sem dúvida com vontade de explorar mais Nabokov (da próxima vez talvez um romance que não requeira conhecimentos profundos da literatura russa). Apesar de estar perdido durante quase toda a duração do livro, é um livro que tem os seus momentos. O estilo de escrita é bastante complicado mas altamente cativante, e apanha-se-lhe o jeito passado algum tempo de ambientação . Talvez me dedique ao Lolita, da próxima vez.

This book is undoubtedly a literary masterpiece, chronicling the writer’s journey to discover their place and style in literature. It is a challenging read, whose beauty can only be fully appreciated if you can tolerate Nabokov’s intellectual arrogance and his penchant for page-long sentences.

I was reading this because I am planning to read Dolinin's book of comments, and I needed to refresh my memory. How many times have I read it already? At least two. I think this is my favorite among Nabokov's oeuvres, though of course the unpleasantness of the author (and, to a certain extent, of the protagonist, who, whatever Nabokov is trying to say in the American postscriptum, is very much Nabokov himself) is rather evident.

Что-то не складывается у меня с Набоковым, как будто отдельно текст, полный метафор ради метафор и красоты ради красоты, а отдельно сюжет, не желающий складываться в историю ((

My goodness-gracious, this book is one hell of a monster.

It is the ultimate Russian nesting doll of and about art, memory, satire, and "Art". If I wasn't already a huge fan of Nabokov, I probably would have thrown this book across the room.

Nabokov wrote this novel as a tribute to his native language and is the last, and undeniably brilliant, of that period. It is a prime example of a supremely self-satisfied intellectual engorgement. Beautiful turns of phrase, rich and belligerent in its knowledge of the Russian Greats, it waves itself under the noses of anyone who might dare to understand it.

Look. I know my fair share of the greats of Russian Literature, but aside from my Dostoyevski, I'm like a babe in the woods against my Pushkin and Gogol. Coming up against The Gift makes me flail like a flensed man hung from a gibbet. Or like the remaining skin of a man. In Siberia. If I wasn't a dedicated fan of the writer and his gorgeous prose, the brilliant structure, the way he nested his prose within prose within prose and went ALL META on me in a way that made my head spin, I probably would have cut off his self-satisfied intellectual engorgement and thrown it out the window of a moving car.

I both loved and hated this book. I wanted to DNF it because I couldn't follow so much of it. I didn't know enough of any of the poets of the period, let alone a sufficient number of the greats, to know whether Nabokov was MAKING THEM UP OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH a-la Possession. I guess I could look it up, but frankly, I'm happy I'm done and I want to move on. :)

It's definitely going to be right up your alley if you A: love Russian literature, B: love to hear about writers crafting their magnum opuses, C: are tolerant of monstrous egotists. :)

Vladimir Nabokov writes poetry in his prose and The Gift is as good as an example as any. His deep attachment to poetry is pretty evident and recurring in this one. This book is about an immigrated Russian author who moves to Berlin and dreams of writing a book that will set his place in this world. Right from the very beginning, the readers realise that the book they are reading is (to quite an extent) the very book our protagonist envisions as his literary offspring. With such a setting, the book explores various themes of alienation and nostalgia for one's homeland while being a foreigner in some place which never truly registers itself as one's own. More so prominent and personal is the theme of the challenges of a creative process like writing. The responsibility to create something which leaves an impression of significance and evocation of appreciation becomes a moral responsibility of any author. Achieving that in one's lifetime is the fortune of few and pursuit of so many. Unlike other fields like science, an author does not get the luxury to stand on the shoulder of giants in my opinion. Instead, to ever get noticed and remembered in the landscape of literature, one has to scale mountains of creation, originality and beauty, to the orders of magnitude that has already been witnessed and ever-present in our history: works under whose glorious shadows we bask and the greats whom we revere. It also coherently connects with a love for Russian fatherland that the protagonist declares time and again, which brings this dually laded expression. The first being related to literature where he revels in the prodigies that Russia has produced, like Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevski - expressing this feeling of insignificance in front of the giants whom one admires and feels challenged by at the same time. The plot consists of a significant portion dedicated to the history of one such particular literary critic that the protagonists makes an object of his literary pursuit to produce. The second expression being of feeling a misfit in a place which is literally far and excluded from the place which cultivates and admires the beauty in life that one values. This particular portion relevant to Russian history would have been amazing for somebody familiar with it; and since unfortunately, my literary experience and historical knowledge has been very limited in this respect, I unfortunately found this part the most trying.

On the other hand, there is one part which I absolutely enjoyed and appreciated for Nabokov’s vivid imagination and mastery of expression. As a major component of this story, the protagonist often talks about his famous father, who was a naturalist by profession and whose speciality and scientific contribution was in the research and classification of butterflies (Lepidoptera is the scientific term for them that I came to know thanks to this). Like any child with a fortunate, wonderful childhood, one comes to admire one's parents and the protagonist's infatuation with his father resulted for his love for him and his profession, coupling both these loves in an inseparable manner. While he did not come to follow his father's footsteps, his memories always beckoned him to the times spent in his father with butterflies. The story also deals with protagonist's dream of writing a perfect book about his father which would be worthy and respectable enough of the fame and success he garnered as a naturalist. It also inherently relates to the internal responsibility that children face to live up to their parents, even when they move out of their lives and beyond the umbra of their expectations. Nabokov's lyricism in prosaic form is a delight delivered first-hand through his words. Although I don't feel equipped with the vein that pulsates with poetry, I could not fail to appreciate the beauty that lies with the expression, as much as with the idea, in the words written here.