Description

Curso de literatura Rusa / Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

Lecciones magistrales en las que Nabokov, un genio de la literatura, indaga en la obra de los grandes escritores del pasado. Vladimir Nabokov, exiliado de su pa s y con pocas esperanzas de regresar alg n d a, estaba capacitado como nadie para introducir a sus alumnos en la obra de los grandes maestros rusos: G gol, Turgu niev, Tolst i, Gorki, Dostoyevski o Ch jov. Esas lecciones apasionadas y pol micas, reconstruidas por Fredson Bowers a partir de los apuntes del escritor, son una ocasi nnica para asistir a sus clases y releer a fondo la literatura rusa del siglo XIX. A lo largo de casi dos d cadas, antes de saltar a la fama con Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov imparticursos de literatura en las universidades estadounidenses de Wellesley y Cornell, y sus clases se han vuelto legendarias. No es frecuente que los estudiantes tengan por maestro a uno de los mejores autores del momento, pero tampoco que un novelista a ada a su talento una vocaci n did ctica tan n tida y eficaz, y tan libre de convencionalismos acad micos.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
The acclaimed author presents his unique insights into the works of great Russian authors including Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, and Chekhov. In the 1940s, when Vladimir Nabokov first embarked on his academic career in the United States, he brought with him hundreds of original lectures on the authors he most admired. For two decades those lectures served as the basis for Nabokov’s teaching, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, as he introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. This volume collects Nabokov’s famous lectures on nineteenth-century Russian literature, with analysis and commentary on Nikolay Gogol’s Dead Souls and The Overcoat; Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons; Maxim Gorky’s On the Rafts; Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilych; two short stories and a play by Anton Chekhov; and several works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Possessed. This volume also includes Nabokov’s lectures on the art of translation, the nature of Russian censorship, and other topics. Featured throughout the volume are photographic reproductions of Nabokov’s original notes.