36 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
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."*
|