An Evening of Russian Poetry

Nabokov’s poetry is dense and full of fluid analogies. “An Evening of Russian Poetry” is all about his love for the Russian language—a love that is somewhat romanticized since he is no longer in Russia, but in the US. He writes the poem in English, which seems to suggest he wants the English readers to understand why Russian is so important to him. As English readers, most will never know Russian as he does, but those readers will see Russian as a harsh language.

Nabokov starts the poem off with saying everyone loves his or her native tongue, but sometimes the love of the language isn’t understood. “The subject chosen for tonight’s discussion is everywhere, though often incomplete” (158). His discussion seems to be toward children, for he addresses “Emmy,” “Cynthia” and “Joan,” which gives the poem a sort of lecture quality (something Nabokov did regularly); “project my name or any such-like phantom in Slavic characters upon the screen” (158). In the lecture, he seems to be giving a presentation to the three about the origin of Russian, what makes it unique and why it’s special to him.

Russian derives from Greek, giving it a simple quality; “reshaped the arrows, and the borrowed birds” (158). The words that make up Russian are round, so they flow together nicely and create beautiful literature. “Not only rainbows—every line is bent, and skulls and seeds and all good worlds are round, like Russian verse, like our colossal vowels” (158-9).

He twice brings up a child sleeping. He first talks about the sound: “most rivers use a kind of rapid Russian, and so do children talking in their sleep” (158). Russian has a harsh sound, but is still beautiful; one has to look closer to see the real attractiveness. When one looks at a river or a sleeping child murmuring there is a kind of beauty paired to it. Both also move without thought; for Nabokov, Russian is natural. He again brings up the child toward the end. When he thinks about Russia, he feels as if he is a kid again, dreaming in his sleep. “It came, that sudden shudder, a Russian something that I could inhale but could not see. Some rapid words were uttered—and then the child slept on, the door was shut” (162). Even while he sleeps, he still finds it all nostalgic. 

As a foreign language, Russian “could not rouse the limp iambus,” so it’s poetry could not be understood (159). But, as a known language, the poetry can’t be ignored. “It makes a very fascinating noise: it opens slowly, like a grayish rose in pedagogic [teaching] films of long ago” (159). And, like other languages, it has many homonyms, which creates wordplay (something Nabokov loves) and poetry. “Love automatically rhymes with blood, nature with liberty, sadness with distance, humane with everlasting, prince with mud, moon with a multitude of words, but sun and song and wind and life and death with none” (159). All of the words he chose in that passage are subjects Nabokov likes to write about, however, it seems surprising he didn’t add the word “game.” Nabokov finishes this section with a sadness that he is unable to speak and hear Russian anymore since he moved across the ocean; he now has to use a second, foreign language that he doesn’t think is as beautiful.

He then goes on to talk about his hatred for poets who make beauty banal by being too obvious with their words, or their Russian language. He likes to play games with his reader, and he especially like to make them dig deep for the meaning. Just as one has to find the beauty in Russian, one should have to find the beauty in poetry; it should be genuine and hidden.

Nabokov then says being a Russian poet is to be exiled and unneeded, even though all they want is greatness within literature. “We want the mole to be lynx or turn into a swallow by some sublime mutation of the soul. But to unneeded symbols consecrated, escorted by a vaguely infantile path for bare feet, our roads were always fated to lead into the silence of exile” (161). Nabokov was, however, a famous English writer.

For Nabokov, Russian will always be his elusive language; “the mystery remains intact” (162). He writes about Russian in a nostalgic way and seems to romanticize his love for the language. Since he wrote it in English, he is somewhat saying his readers will never know the beauty of the world because they speak English; if they knew Russian, they would be able to understand his analogies.