---
created_at: '2014-06-23T18:26:16.000Z'
title: The Gay Nabokov (2000)
url: http://www.salon.com/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/
author: georgecmu
points: 79
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 18
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1403547976
_tags:
- story
- author_georgecmu
- story_7933513
objectID: '7933513'

---
Nabokov was fascinated by doubles, and his work is full of them --
mirrors, twins, reflections, chance resemblances. Sergei was his
brother's double, a "shadow in the background," as Nabokov put it. All
his life Vladimir would be the golden wordsmith, the master of language;
Sergei was afflicted with an atrocious stutter that would only get worse
as he got older. He idolized Napoleon and slept with a bronze bust of
him in his bed. He also loved music, particularly Richard Wagner, and he
studied the piano seriously. Vladimir, by contrast, was almost
pathologically insensitive to music, which he once described as "an
arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds." He would creep
up behind Sergei while he was practicing and poke him in the ribs --
something he remembered with bitter remorse in later life. "They were
never friends when they were children," says Sikorski. "There was always
a sort of *aversion."*