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Poems and Problems
39 Russian poems, 14 English poems, and 18 chess problems.
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
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282 people want to read
About the author
Vladimir Nabokov
893 books15k followersVladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up trilingual, speaking Russian, English, and French in a household that nurtured his intellectual curiosities, including a lifelong passion for butterflies. This seemingly idyllic, privileged existence was abruptly shattered by the Bolshevik Revolution, which forced the family into permanent exile in 1919. This early, profound experience of displacement and the loss of a homeland became a central, enduring theme in his subsequent work, fueling his exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irretrievable past.
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 18, 2012
When I was living in the Bay Area a few years ago, we used to go shopping most Sunday mornings at the Mountain View Farmers Market. There were these two characters called Cello Joe and Airielle, whom you could often see busking on the corner of West Evelyn and Hope. Cello Joe played blues on his cello, and Airielle (I presume, his girlfriend) sat on the sidewalk and composed poems to order on an old manual typewriter. She'd write you a short free verse poem on any subject you cared to name while you waited, generally charging a couple of bucks a go.
I was curious to see how good she would be with a more challenging commission, and asked if she would compose a metaphysical sonnet on chess for $20. Here is the result - well, I'm sure it's possible to criticise it on several counts, but all things considered I'd say she did a pretty reasonable job.
The rest of this review is in my book If Research Were Romance and Other Implausible Conjectures
I was curious to see how good she would be with a more challenging commission, and asked if she would compose a metaphysical sonnet on chess for $20. Here is the result - well, I'm sure it's possible to criticise it on several counts, but all things considered I'd say she did a pretty reasonable job.
The rest of this review is in my book If Research Were Romance and Other Implausible Conjectures
November 24, 2011
Afflicted with the condition of loving all things Nabokov, my cup brimmed with tiddles at the prospect of delving into the famous synesthete's poetry. I was not disappointed. The English poems though more indicative of Nabokov's famous, lapidary prose, seem to pale in comparison (emotionally) to the Russian poems (though I couldn't help but shake the feeling that some things got lost in translation). Nevertheless, Nabokov fans as well as those interested in great poetry will find the prose exquisite, the imagery enthralling, and the chess problems utterly dispensable.
Read
July 9, 2023Lilith adds a dimension to Lolita, but not the dimension I have heard discussed. A very unusual dimension lol.
December 23, 2008
The English poems, I think, are better than the Russians. The English are at home in their skin while the Russian act as if they were ill at ease. The problems go far, far beyond my rude, my rudimentary understanding of chess. For better or whatever, this is the only Nabokov book with the answers in the back.
January 24, 2022
Poems...
Problems...
Mate in two moves
Composed in Paris, mid-May 1940 (a few days before migrating to America). Published Speak, Memory, 1951, and included by Lipton, Matthews, and Rice in Chess Problems, London, 1963. The irresistible try is for the bafflement of sophisticated solvers.
I still keep mute - and in the hush grow strong.
The far-off crests of future works, amidst
the shadows of my soul are still concealed
like mountaintops in pre-auroral mist.
I greet you, my inevitable day!
The skyline's width, variety and light
increase; and on the first, resounding step
I go up, filled with terror and delight.- I Still Keep Mute, pg. 23
* * *
The poet dealing in Dejection
to Beauty iterates: adieu!
He says that human days are only
words on a page picked up by you
upon your way (a page ripped out -
where from? You know not and reject it)
or from the night into the night
through a bright hall a brief bird's flight.
Zoilus (a majestic rascal,
whom only lust of gain can stir)
and Publicus, litterateur
(a nervous, leaseholder of glory),
cower before me in dismay
because I'm wicked, cold, and gay,
because honour and life I weigh
on Pushkin's scales and dare prefer
honour. . . .- An Unfinished Draft, pg. 67
* * *
No matter how the Soviet tinsel glitters
upon the canvas of a battle piece;
no matter how the soul dissolves in pity,
I will not bend, I will not cease
loathing the filth, brutality, and boredom
of silent servitude. No, no, I shout,
my spirit is still quick, still exile-hungry,
I'm still a poet, count me out!- No Matter How, pg. 127
Problems...
Mate in two moves
Composed in Paris, mid-May 1940 (a few days before migrating to America). Published Speak, Memory, 1951, and included by Lipton, Matthews, and Rice in Chess Problems, London, 1963. The irresistible try is for the bafflement of sophisticated solvers.
December 31, 2021
What a lovely book!
Predictably, the poems in the book are thought-provoking and complex but most of them are also very pleasing. Most were originally written in Russian and translated into English by the author himself, with a few original English works. One of them, Lilith, written in 1928, is considered a precursor to Nabokov's classic novel Lolita, written almost 30 years later. The book is the kind of volume a reader can just open randomly and find something worthwhile to chew on.
But my favorite part is focused on the problems -- a series of 18 chess conundrums, all of them elegant and, well, poetic.
Combining poetry and chess may be unusual, but in this case it makes great sense.
The book is very hard to find, but for lovers of either poetry or chess, it's worth a look. But for the small cross section of the reading public enamored with both Poems and Problems is almost a must-read.
Predictably, the poems in the book are thought-provoking and complex but most of them are also very pleasing. Most were originally written in Russian and translated into English by the author himself, with a few original English works. One of them, Lilith, written in 1928, is considered a precursor to Nabokov's classic novel Lolita, written almost 30 years later. The book is the kind of volume a reader can just open randomly and find something worthwhile to chew on.
But my favorite part is focused on the problems -- a series of 18 chess conundrums, all of them elegant and, well, poetic.
Combining poetry and chess may be unusual, but in this case it makes great sense.
The book is very hard to find, but for lovers of either poetry or chess, it's worth a look. But for the small cross section of the reading public enamored with both Poems and Problems is almost a must-read.
March 12, 2021
3 stars
I have a hard time understanding poetry... Nabokov doesn't make it any easier.
The chess problems were fun... though I only got a couple of them.
I have a hard time understanding poetry... Nabokov doesn't make it any easier.
The chess problems were fun... though I only got a couple of them.
December 17, 2024
Nabokov's writing is minutiously, obsessively calculated, and while I don't think that is criticizable per se, I resent the lack of sprezzatura. This is apparent also in his novels, but it bothers me less, it works better in prose. In poetry, however, it seems too artificial.
The Russian poems are understandably better than their English versions and the English poems, but I delighted in “An Evening of Russian Poetry” (1945, originally published in The New Yorker). It is not a great poem either, but it is a passionate and insightful love letter to Russian poetry, and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
The Russian poems are understandably better than their English versions and the English poems, but I delighted in “An Evening of Russian Poetry” (1945, originally published in The New Yorker). It is not a great poem either, but it is a passionate and insightful love letter to Russian poetry, and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
January 5, 2015
There are Russian and English versions of some poems. I can't even pretend to understand the chess portions.
What Happened Overnight
What happened overnight to memory?
It must have snowed: such stillness! Of no use
Was to my soul the study of Oblivion:
that problem has been solved in sleep.
A simple, elegant solution.
(Now what have I been bothering about
so many years?) One does not see much need
in getting up: there's neither bed, nor body.
--Mentone, 1938
A Day Like Any Other
A day like any other. Memory dozed. A chilly
and dreary spring dragged on. Then, all at once,
a shadow at the bottom stirred
and from the bottom arose with sobs.
What's there to sob about? I'm a poor soother!
Yet how she stamps her feet, and shakes, and hotly
clings to my neck and in the dreadful darkness
begs to be gathered up, as babes are, in one's arms.
--Ithaca, New York, 1951
What Happened Overnight
What happened overnight to memory?
It must have snowed: such stillness! Of no use
Was to my soul the study of Oblivion:
that problem has been solved in sleep.
A simple, elegant solution.
(Now what have I been bothering about
so many years?) One does not see much need
in getting up: there's neither bed, nor body.
--Mentone, 1938
A Day Like Any Other
A day like any other. Memory dozed. A chilly
and dreary spring dragged on. Then, all at once,
a shadow at the bottom stirred
and from the bottom arose with sobs.
What's there to sob about? I'm a poor soother!
Yet how she stamps her feet, and shakes, and hotly
clings to my neck and in the dreadful darkness
begs to be gathered up, as babes are, in one's arms.
--Ithaca, New York, 1951
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July 14, 2008This book is not readily available anywhere. But everyone talks about "Lilith" being the poem that inspired Lolita. It is WORTH EVERY EFFORT TO FIND THIS POEM. It's great. I think. My friend ultimately sent it to me via photos over her iphone. I can forward it to you if you'd like!
September 11, 2007
great! read "the snapshot" and it will bring the imagination to reality.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews