Nabokov
is sun-licked now
Upon
the beach at Grunewald
Brilliant
and naked just
The
way that authors look
In a scene towards the end of
Nabokov's novel The
Gift, the main character, Fyodor, goes
bathing in the nude in a Grunewald forest: “The
sun bore down. The sun licked me all over with
its big smooth tongue.” Bowie's application of
Nabokov's imagery demonstrates an interest in
Nabokov that extends beyond a mere reading of Lolita. In fact,
the line that emphasizes "the way that authors
look" reveals a possible attentive reading of
the The
Gift, since Nabokov's text implies the
nude bather Fyodor's self-authorship.
However, it is more likely,
as
Chris O'Leary points out, that he never
read
The
Gift, but rather knew the description from
Otto Friedrich's
Before
the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s.
This book, which quotes Nabokov's scene, is
included in Bowie's
list
of "must-read books", which also includes
Nabokov's
Lolita
and other books that show an interest in Russian
culture more generally (Orlando Figes's
A
People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution,
1890-1924, Peter Sadecky's
Octobriana
and the Russian Underground, Mikhail
Bulgakov's
The
Master and Margarita, and Anthony
Burgess's
A
Clockwork Orange)
I'm uncertain whether Nabokov was
aware of Bowie's homage or not.
Joseph Schlegel
PhD Candidate
University of Toronto
Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures