The Nabokov Creation

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) is one of the outstanding novelists in the world literature of the 20thC, and his reputation reached its peak in 1960s and 1970s. Among his numerous works, Lolita and Pale Fire have been regarded as classics. Since the first comment on his poems by a Russian journalist in 1916, the study on Nabokov in the west has been 80 years. However the introduction and translation of Nabokov in mainland has just been carried out in the early 1980s. While many of his works have been translated into Chinese, the research work is still inadequate and requires for further deepening. This paper is tentative to make an inquiry about Nabokov' s viewpoints on fiction and creations, and hopes that the study on him in the mainland can benefit from it.All his life, Nabokov has created abundantly in diversified styles, which include poem, essay, drama, translation, critic and novel. However, it is his novels especially the long ones that laid the foundation for his great reputation in literary circle. Being a most distinctive novelist, he is famous for his excellent literary concepts, solid literary foundation, distinctive individuality as well as his key and imaginative characteristics. All of these contribute a lot to his unique artistic world and cannot be separated from his special life experiences, literary accomplishments and artistic tastes. Two in thirds of his whole life was occupied by exiles, which made up a special grain of his life, and fundamentally had influenced his views on world, reality, time, consciousness and so on, later his viewpoints on fiction. Nabokov is a bilingual writer with a dual cultural identity, so his creations are trans-cultural. This cultivated him into a writer with distinctive grains and paved the way for his artistic personality in literary world. The two identities as writer and expert at butterflies find a perfect unity on Nabokov so that he considered science with an artistic thinking, and examine art with a scientific thinking. The calm attitude and the observing methods of scientists also have an important influence over his novel creation.Not intending to construct a theoretical system, he showed no interests even detestation in any things related to theories. But, as a novelist with great success in practice of creations, he still had a very strong sense of theory. Being a novelist who advocated pure art, he elevated his novel creations into such an artistic realm that can stimulate readers' inspirations and aesthetic fascinations. He believed that literature is creation; fiction is fabrication; and good fictions are all mythologies. In his opinion, story itself is not as important as telling story, and the way story is told is more important than telling story. The function of fictionis not enlightening. Instead, it should bring readers joys and aesthetic fascinations. He also pointed out that art creation should be the most humanistic activity, for it helps human obtain order and endows him with certain purposes. His viewpoints on fiction find a full practice and embodiment in his works. In his novels, he adopted such artistic techniques as unreliable narration, parody, allusion, across-word puzzle, and symbolism, thus generated a challenging mirage-like artistic word.As a world novel master, Nabokov and his novel creations have the enlightenments and significances to the Chinese contemporary literature.