In his introduction to the novel "Bend Sinister" Nabokov wrote: "The term 'bend
sinister' means a heraldic bar or band
drawn from the left side (and popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to denote
bastardy). This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by
refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a
sinistral and sinister world. The title's drawback is that a solemn reader
looking for 'general ideas' or 'human
interest' (which is much the same thing) in a novel may be led to look for them in this one."
Nabokov's observation disconsidering
the heraldic sign of bastardy seems to be authoritative but
wherever I checked I always met the description of "a diagonal
line across a shield signalling a bastard line." The title for Nabokov's
novel, in German, is unambiguous: "Das
Bastardzeichen."
Bend Sinister was
written in America and its plot is centered about events in a totalitarian
state, as VN described it "a sinistral and sinister world" and its main
character, Krug, is a widower.
Bend Sinister was
written after TRLSK, a novel sometimes associated to the story
about an illicit affair.
In "Lust in Translation" (journalist Pamela
Drucker's book about how marital infidelity is seen, practiced or
described in various countries) there is a list of how these liaisons are
named and we learn that the Japanese "leave the road",
the Brazilians "jump the fence", the Irish "play to the right" whereas
Swedes and Russians "take a turn to the left." I don't have access to the
original popular terms in Japanese, Irish or Russian. A "turn to the
left", indicating adultery, suggests a "sinister bend".
I wonder if Nabokov bore this association in mind when
he chose the title for his novel or if the expression was used at the time
he wrote it.