An absence of morality would be understating the spiritual content of the characters in this triangle of marital infidelity. They only want. They only will. Out of those desires comes a funny, intricate farce in which the things of this world possess more humanity than the humans. Nabokov's observations stun. In the scenes he paints, he misses nothing.

Dreyer, the businessman and cuckhold, walking by a seaside rack of picture postcards:

"The most frequent object of their derision was human obesity and its necessary object, Herr and Grau Matchshin of Hungerburg. A monstrous bottom was being pinched by a red crab (resurrected from the boiled)" [Note: that parenthetical comment is a good example of Nabokov's vision and humor. A live crab would not be red, if it is red a miracle has taken place], but the nipped lady beamed, thinking it was the hand of an admirer. [Note: this was the level of humor found in many seaside postcards during most of the twentieth century. Nabokov pinches the joke with "admirer." It's doubtful such postcards continue to be sold]. A red dome above the water was the belly of a fat man floating on his back. There was a 'Kiss at Sunset.' emblemized by pair of hugh pygal-shaped impressions left in the sand. Skinny, spindle-legged husbands in shorts accompanied pumpkin-bosomed wives. Dreyer was touched by the many photographs going back to the preceding century: the same beach, the same sea, but women in broad-shouldered blouses and men in straw hats. And to think that those over-dressed kiddies were now businessmen, officials, dead soldiers [ah, the book was written in 1927], engravers, engravers widows."

I see Nabokov standing in the sea breeze jotting notes on his famous index cards.

The novel is wonderfully plotted. Nabakov's set-ups slip by the reader as something whimsical until she reaches the payoff, payoffs that build to subsequent payoffs.

The theme? Make your reservation for Westworld.

کتاب چیز خاصی برای من نداشت و ارتباط خوبی با داستان برقرار نکردم. یک داستان تراژی-کمدی که حاوی خیانت های یک زن و شوهر است. نه صحنه پرداژی درست و مناسب، نه شخصیت پردازی مناسب و نه داستان مناسب.
خیانت شوهر داستان از خیلی قبل شروع شده است و خیانت زن داستان هم با ورود یک فرد غریبه و بدون هیچ دلیل خاصی شروع می شود و داستان همین طور ادامه پیدا می کند. همین.

‘King, Queen, Knave’ represents the first flowering of Nabokov’s genius, the petals of which fall deciduously and deliriously throughout the novel. From Franz’s impressions of Berlin as a whirlwind of colours after he loses his glasses, to the little details only Nabokov is able to imbue his novels with, to the farcical and solipsistic characters, hopelessly tangled up in the web the writer, who twice makes and appearance, weaves around the novel, entrapped by the caprices of their creator. In many ways ‘King, Queen, Knave’ is the most quintessentially Nabokovian written in Russian aside from ‘The Gift’ the sense of whimsy mixed with vituperation he is able to create is only really replicated in some of his English language novels such as ‘Pnin’ and ‘Pale Fire’.

Essentially ‘King, Queen, Knave’ follows the story of Franz, Dreyer and Martha, a trio caught up in a love triangle so banal that one of them is blissfully unaware, the other vaguely indifferent and the other caught up in a passion which can only be explained, as with Emma Bovary, with the excitement of the affair rather than the attractiveness of her lover. Yet, beneath the banality Nabokov is able to constantly weave beauty, from the delicate flickers of sunlight on the street pavement to the impressionistic renderings of a city from the point-of-view of a half-blind Franz:

“Franz reached a plausible street corner. After much fussing and squinting he discovered the red blur of a bust stop which rippled and wavered like the support of a bathhouse when you dive under it. Almost directly the image of a yellow bus came into being”

‘King, Queen, Knave’ is worth reading if only for the chance to become accustomed to Nabokov’s brilliance and to the aesthetic ideas which formed the base of all his art and which he continued to explore in his other novels.

Utterly enjoyed it. Easily my favourite from the early Nabokov I have read so far. The style is playful, the prose brilliant. The theme of Martha’s dominance over Franz develops as subtly and imperceptibly as the phenomenon of dominance in real-life. His glimpses of awareness are touching and poignant and give a grotesque portrayal of his real emotional reaction to Martha as pure disgust. The robust, self-assured and life-affirming existence of Kurt stands in stark and healthful contract to the informing pathology, somehow making him impervious to Martha’s hate and stratagems.

Или аз не бях в кондиция за тази книга или друго, но не ми се видя толкова хубаво колкото Себатиан Найт.

What kind of car I drive, the girls I used to date, personal hygiene: these are all things for which I’ve never really had high standards. A book by Vladimir Nabokov, now that’s a different story. For a good portion of my reading, I was seriously considering giving this a mere two stars. It takes way too long for the plot to develop—because of this the pacing is off and parts are simply boring—and one can really see the artist behind the book. By that I mean that some of Nabokov’s brushstrokes are a little too heavy to make this a masterpiece. For one, the irony is laid on thickly, even when he tries to invert it. Take, for example, in mid tryst one adulterous lover to another mentioning “Imagine if [your husband] were suddenly to come in now—just like that” and she reassuring him “Oh he won’t be coming home for a week yet. That’s as sure as death” (155, 157). All the while, of course, the reader knows that he is returning early. The sounds of someone entering the house downstairs make both the reader and the lovers nervous, nervous enough in the latter’s case to call it a night. But it’s only a false alarm—a close call—for despite the setup, the husband does not arrive until the lover has safely left. After all, “[the husband] was too naively self-centered to realize how thoroughly those sudden returns had been exploited in ribald tales” (154). Then there’s the later chance encounter that the husband has with an ex-lover of his. Without knowing anything, she tells him his wife is likely cheating on him, which he faithfully scoffs at. At least Nabokov sums this one up accurately: “On the whole, an unnecessary encounter” (176). Then there’s the time when the husband is walking home imagining/inventing all of the horrible secrets/misdeeds that every person he passes must hide, thereby warping these people’s images to him. That is, until he finally arrives home and feels “a pleasant relief at seeing at last two familiar, two perfectly human faces” (209). Finally, there’s the ultimate irony of the ending that I’m not even sure can rightly be termed “irony” because it is clear enough what will happen, thereby preventing it from actually upsetting one’s expectations.
Another Nabokovian staple that is a bit too heavy-handed are all of fate’s subtle coincidences. Because they are not so subtle and because they don’t really contribute to the story, I find them a bit superfluous. There is the coincidence of the “meeting” on the train; the coincidence of the inventor staying in the same hotel room as Franz (107, 253); there are the numerous parallel car crashes (49, 115, 129). These are Nabokovian, but they just don’t achieve what I have come to feel are Nabokovian standards. (That really makes sense since this is one of his earlier works and it’s one of his final works that I’m reading.)

Want some unexpected irony after all that complaining? I also nearly gave this four stars. “Why?” you may ask. Well I’m glad to tell you: this book really made me think. Here’s what I’m thinking about: Is the story all a dream? Knowing whether or not it’s a dream wouldn’t change my enjoyment at all, but it presents a puzzle. And those are often my favorite parts of Nabokov books. This time, since I don’t have a definitive answer I’m stuck mulling it over. Anyone care to help?

If so, here’s reason for my hypothesis:
- It all starts with chapter 2, which begins with all that “false awakening, being nearly the next layer of a dream…and what seemed reality abruptly loses the tingle and tang of reality” stuff (20). That introduction ends with, what is to me, the central question: “Is this reality the final reality, or just a new deceptive dream?” (21).
-So much depends on how one reads the following: “And in order to free himself from this gold-tinted vagueness still so strongly reminiscent of a dream, he reached toward the night table and groped for his glasses. And only when he touched them, or more precisely the handkerchief in which they were wrapped as in a winding sheet, only then did Franz remember that absurd mishap in a lower layer of a dream” (21). In that mishap he broke his glasses. How does one read “were wrapped”? Are the glasses STILL wrapped there? If so then he did not break them and not only was that but everything subsequent is a dream. If they aren’t there, then he did break them…but I think everything could still be another layer of the dream.
-The rest of the chapter he’s relatively blind without his glasses, giving everything a dream-like quality. There are soooo many examples to pick from this chapter alone, I’m just listing the chapter. What follows is all from other chapters.

Here’s my evidence:
-“The workmen were moving as in a dream” (52)
-“suffering as if in a dream” (63)
-“With dream-like unexpectedness they emerged” (69)
-“moving with the slow motion of a sleepwalker” (74)
-“sleep, with a bow, handed him the keys to the city” (74)
-“already lost in a dream” (76)
-“how much will you pay me for dreaming” (89)
-“I am duty-bound to believe in a dream but to believe in the embodiment of that dream—Puh” (90)
-“Your dream is enchanting” (90) A description of this book???
-“Stop harping on dreams, sir” (90) Advice to me????
-“maybe I’ll see your invention in my next dream” (91)
-“when the express pulls out of a dreamy station” (97)
-“everything changed. As happens in dreams…every time we dream of it” (104)
-“noble slowness of a sleepwalker’s progress” (109)
-“Franz, too, tried to shake off this strange drowsiness” (111)
-“despite her long-standing dream” (113)
-“he could not remember afterwards how he said good-by, or put on his overcoat, or reached the street” (128)
-“Let’s dream a little” (134)
-“One cannot deposit dreams at the bank” (135)
-“Franz was oblivious to the corrosive probity of his pleasant daydreams” (138)
-“he lay supine on his bed not knowing whether he was asleep or awake” (153)
-“He would dream at night of a treacherous handshake. Half-awake, he would recoil” (162)
-“she could not rid herself of the dream of magic powders” (168)
-“trying to persuade himself that it was only a bad dream” (186)
-“some kind of atrocious dreamland was encroaching upon her” (197)
-“a curious debility blurred his movements as if he were existing only because existing were the proper thing to do” (200)
-“ephemeral glints of consciousness; he would instantly revert to semi-existence. Then at night in his drugged sleep” (202)
-“fatal veil between him and every dream that beckoned to him” (224)
-“But he still saw it all as if through a dream” (245)
-“like a recurrent dream image or a subtle leitmotiv” (254)
-“Barely awake and still blinking” (256)
-The very end.

My Conclusion (maybe):
-This is like the end of Bend Sinister, where the author breaks through and it becomes clear that it was a book. It’s just more subtle. There’s the weird-ass landlord who decides everything is a story of his creation (226-228), and there’s the (directly mentioned leitmotiv) “foreign girl in the blue dress with a remarkably handsome man in an old-fashioned dinner jacket…Sometimes the man carried a butterfly net” (254). Thus, Franz’s adventure is nothing more than a dream, a magician’s invention, an author’s story.

• Pubblicato nel 1928, questo racconto è una delle prime opere di Nabokov, scritto in un periodo in cui la voce unica dell'autore si stava ancora affinando. Tuttavia la sua capacità di intrecciare trama, linguaggio e psicologia dei personaggi è indiscutibilmente evidente.

• La storia ruota attorno a un triangolo amoroso tra Franz, un giovane provinciale che si trasferisce a Berlino, la bella e manipolatrice Martha, e il marito di lei nonché zio di Franz, il ricco e ingenuo Dreyer. Nabokov ci guida attraverso questa relazione intricata con grande precisione e attenzione per i dettagli, esplorando le dinamiche di potere tra i personaggi, ma anche il gioco di apparenze e illusioni che ciascuno di loro costruisce.

• Ciò che mi ha colpito di più è stata la rappresentazione di Martha che, dipinta come una femme fatale, mostra innumerevoli fragilità nascoste. Sebbene sembri la burattinaia, orchestrando gli eventi con astuzia, anche lei è intrappolata nel proprio gioco dimostrando la complessità dei ruoli di genere e la sottile linea tra manipolatore e manipolato.

• Franz è un personaggio di cui è difficile avere simpatia. La sua passività e la sua incapacità di comprendere appieno ciò che lo circonda lo rendono quasi un simbolo dell'uomo comune, facilmente influenzabile. Ma la sua evoluzione da vittima inconsapevole a partecipante attivo (sebbene in modo, diciamo, maldestro), mi ha fatto riflettere sul potere delle circostanze e delle decisioni individuali: quanto, tutto, può cambiare un semplice dettaglio.

• Il vero genio di Nabokov, però, risiede nel modo in cui gioca con il linguaggio e la narrazione. La prosa è ricca di metafore, giochi di parole e immagini suggestive che aggiungono strati di significato alla trama. Ho apprezzato in particolare la sua capacità di bilanciare umorismo e tragedia, creando un tono che è sì leggero ma profondamente inquietante.

• Nonostante questo romanzo non raggiunga la complessità delle opere successive, come "Lolita" o "Pnin", è comunque intrigante e niente affatto banale, interessante il modo in cui Nabokov gioca con le aspettative del lettore sovvertendo spesso i cliché del romanzo sentimentale e trasformando una storia apparentemente semplice in un'indagine profonda sulla natura umana.

• Archetipi che si dissolvono in un mazzo di simulacri, dove il gioco è solo un pretesto per decostruire il potere.

• "Una gaiezza motivata e un pizzico d'eccitazione caratterizzavano ora le piogge. Non sgocciolavano più a caso: respiravano, parlavano. Cristalli violetti si scioglievano come sali da bagno nell'acqua piovana. Le pozzanghere non erano più fatte di fango liquido, ma di limpidi pigmenti che formavano splendidi quadri rispecchiando facciate di case, lampioni, staccionate, un cielo bianco e azzurro, un collo di piede nudo, un pedale di bicicletta"

• "Oh, lo so bene come ti comporti con tua moglie. L'ami e non t'accorgi neanche di lei. L'ami - oh, con ardore - e non ti preoccupi di sapere che cosa ha dentro. La baci e ancora non ti accorgi di lei"

• " [...] ogni giorno, in ogni istante, tutto quello che mi sta attorno ride, luccica, insiste perché lo si guardi, perché lo si ami. Il mondo sta lì come un cane che supplica perché lo si faccia giocare"

This is one of the best crime novels I've ever read, along with Crime and Punishment, Lolita, and Pale Fire. I will be thinking about Martha, Dreyer, and poor Franz for years to come. How can a writer be so precise and so loose at the same time? He was only twenty-eight when it was published, yet it contains all the seeds of his mature work. Nabokov himself said of it, "Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest."

خیلی من و یاد خنده در تاریکی می انداخت انگار درون مایه شون یه طور بود به نظرم.. و اینکه از همون سرفه ی اول مارتا می دونستم که آخرش می میره. فقط توقع داشتم اون فرانتز بی خاصیت هم خودشو از پنجره بندازه پایین..

کتاب ۳ شخصیت اصلی داره: درایر تاجر ثروتمند،مارتا همسر زیبا درایرو فرانتس قوم و خویش درایر.
داستان از جایی شروع میشه که فرانتس از محل زندگی خودش برای کار کردن پیش درایر میاد و با مارتا آشنا میشه. فکر میکنم تا همینجا هرکسی میتونه حدس بزنه موضوع داستان چیه.
کتاب توصیفات قشنگی داره ولی راستش بعضی جاها دیگه خسته کننده میشه شخصیت درایر و مارتا به خوبی پرداخته شده ولی فرانتس انگار به حال خودش رها شده و شل و وله.
کتاب هیچ موضوع جدیدی رو بیان نمیکنه و اگه نوشته ناباکوف بزرگ‌ نبود شاید اصلا در این حد شناخته نمیشد.
این نسخه ای که من داشتم چند صفحه وسط کتاب نبود که خب صد در صد به علت سانسور هستش.
از کل کتاب فقط پایانشو دوست داشتم انگار نویسنده تمام انرژیشو برای پایان کنار گذاشته بود
به نظرم امتیاز ۲ کافی بود ولی به خاطر پایان بندی جداب ۳ میدم

She was no Emma, and no Anna

Anyone who loves literary game-playing and spot-the-allusion should read this: it's a cornucopia of intertexts and literary inversions. Martha may be no Emma (Bovary) or Anna (Karenina) however much she follows them in 'the adultery plot', but her make-up does include elements of Terese (Raquin) as well as the femmes fatales of many a noir potboiler. And poor Franz has his Raskolnikov moments as he imagines being followed by a police inspector and pursued by letters from his anxious mother... There are even foreshadowings of later iconic scenes "Take the oar, hit him" reminded me irresistibly of The Talented Mr Ripley.

All this combined with the glittering prose style for which Nabokov is famous makes this compulsively readable, though I'd say the pleasures are almost all cerebral in comparison with some of his other books. There isn't the dark undertow of tragedy that we find in Pale Fire, for example, which gives emotional ballast to all the linguistic fireworks.

There's a lovely conceit which plays out throughout the novel of inanimate objects having emotions, life and agency ('the platform will begin to move past, carrying off on an unknown journey cigarette butts, used tickets, flecks of sunlight and spittle') which serves to disorient us delightfully as well as act as a contrast to the deliberately flattened characters of the human protagonists. The presence of 'automannequins', mechanical automatons that made me think of Coppelia, add to this spectrum along which sit predetermined movements and free agency. The characters are deliberately over-determined by their roles as prescribed by literary forebears: that 'king', 'queen', 'knave' of the title.

So this is perhaps the most playful of Nabokov's novels that I've read, though alert to issues of authoritative compulsion as Martha pushes Franz almost to his limits. I almost thought it was going to end in a certain way and that it was all going to be a dream  but Nabokov pulls back. Sparkling, erudite, alive to literary elements from 'high' culture to pop fiction Martha learns about poisons from her reading of crime fiction and, given the original date of writing, I couldn't help but think Agatha Christie, this doesn't have the tragic payoff of Pale Fire but is exuberant entertainment encased in scintillating prose.

شاه بي بي سرباز
ولادمير ناباكوف
رضا رضايي
نشر ثالث
ولادمير ناباكوف نويسنده اي بسيار مشهور است و تقريبا هيچ اهل كتابي وجود ندارد كه نام او را نشنيده باشد .ناباكوف درطول زندگي اش ١٨رمان و پنجاه و يك داستان كوتاه به رشته تحرير در اورده است و هر كدام از اين اثار در تاريخ ادبيات ،به عنوان شاهكاري محسوب ميشوند .شاه بي بي سرباز دومين رماني است كه ناباكوف جوان در سن بيست و هشت سالگي و به سال١٩٢٨در المان به رشته تحرير در اورد .
شاه بي بي سرباز مربوط به زماني است كه ناباكوف هنوز به روسي رمان مينوشت(از دوره اي به بعد رمانهاي ناباكوف همگي به زبان انگليسي نوشته شدند)و هنوز ردپاي ادبيات روسي بويژه تولستوي دراثار او بوضوح ديده ميشود.
داستان كتاب ، حكايت يك مثلث عشقي است .فرانتس شخصيت اصلي داستان به تصادف وارد زندگي زوجي ثروتمند ميشود و روابط عاشقانه اي ميان او و بانوي خانواده شكل ميگيرد .اما داستان تنها اين روابط عشقي نيست ....
داستان ماجراي تازه اي ندارد و به نوعي تحت تاثير اناكارنيناي تولستوي و همچنين مادام بواري فلوبر است اما چيزي كه اين رمان را از ديگر رمانهاي عاشقانه از اين نوع متمايز ميكند،نثر و تكنيك منحصر به فرد ناباكوف و بوجود اوردن فضاي توامان كمدي و تراژدي در داستان است (كاري كه احتمالا از فلوبر اموخته است).شباهت هاي بسياري ميان اين اثر و رمان امريكا از كافكا حس ميشود هر چند كه كافكا در زمان نوشته شدن اين كتاب هنوز ناشناخته بود و حتي امريكا ي او منتشر نشده بود .
تاثير اين رمان بر اثار بعدي ناباكوف مثل نااميدي،خنده در تاريكي و لوليتا و همچنين تاثيري كه بر اثار سينمايي چون فيلم چاقو در اب از رومن پولانسكي و همچنين بعضي اثار وودي الن گذاشته است كاملا روشن است .
كتاب شايد غناي اثار متاخر ناباكوف را نداشته باشد اما از نظر من از بهترين رمانهاي دهه پر شاهكار بيست شمرده ميشود .ترجمه كتاب بسيار عالي است و خواندنش را لذت بخش ميكند .