Nabokov

Nabokov's Natasha quickly drew me in because of Nabokov's simple but revealing language and descriptions. Even adverbs used to describe the actions of different characters are somehow so telling, like they way Wolfe "thoroughly and satisfying washed and dried his hands". Nabokov's use of descriptive language in many ways helps shorten the distance between himself as the author and his audience by recreating the imaginary world in his own mind in the mind of the reader. However, while he chooses to use very expressive language in his narration of the story, the three characters' dialogue is kept simple and pretty brief, except for, interestingly, when they are lying. In addition, he narrator's task in Natasha is limited to setting up the physical surroundings and circumstances of the characters. The narrator here never reveals anything anything about the characters that a third person would not be able to discern, but instead narrates their physical reactions in order to give the reader insight about what they might be thinking. For example, When Wolfe brings Natasha out to the country for the day, there is a scene where he talks about his world travels to far and exotic places in detail, but I could still tell something about his stories was off because of the way that the Nabokov describes his physical actions in that scene. He falls silent, fiddles with a pinecone, touches his face, gives Natasha a strange look, and speak to her "in a cold, opaque voice". These are not the normal behaviors of someone who is reminiscing about probably the best experiences of his life. The relationship between the functions of the narration and the dialogue in Natasha made me think of the idea of "showing rather than telling" that is discussed in the Bahktin article. Natasha is definitely a polyphonic piece of writing because every voice; Natasha, Wolfe, Khrenhov, and the narrator; all are equally present and important to the story as a whole. The narrator is not meant to be omniscient here either, because if it was, the ending would have been written much differently (the narrator would have revealed that she did not really see her father outside) and would have had a drastically different effect. Also, importantly, the dialogue between these voices is never resolved or finished even at the end of the story, which I actually liked a lot. Nabokov easily could have continued the story indefinitely, but the fact that he ended it when one of the voices in the story was no longer able to contribute made it much more powerful.