A Guide to Berlin | A Guide to Nabokov’s A Guide to A Guide to Berlin
In the following excerpt, Johnson offers an
interpretation of Nabokov’s use of mirror images in
‘‘A Guide to Berlin,’’ noting connections between
imagery and theme in the story.
The eight-page sketch ‘‘A Guide to Berlin’’ was Nabokov’s fourteenth published story and was first published in the Russian emigre newspaper Rul’ on Christmas Eve, 1925. At the opening of the story the nameless narrator, an emigre Russian writer, sits in a Berlin Bierstube and describes the sights of his wholly unremarkable day. This seven-line mise en scène is the first half of a frame which is completed at story end by a longer, present tense episode set in the same pub. The piece consists of five numbered vignettes which range in length from a single...
[The entire page is 2738 words long]
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