INTRODUCTION

Although this essay will only consider two major novels and a short story, Jewish characters, as well as authorial reflections on anti-Semitism, appear in much of Nabokov's fiction. In addition to a series of remarkable Jewish characters, Nabokov also populated his works with non-Jewish characters who exemplify an entire spectrum of attitudes toward the Jewish Other, from anti-Semitism to Philosemitism. Nabokov's interest in the Jewish question increased gradually under the influence of his upbringing, his marriage, and his contacts with Russian-Jewish exiles. His Jewish themes had evolved in his Russian fictions by the early 1930s to reach a crescendo in his third American novel, Pnin (1957). These themes were intensified by the rise of Nazism and given their ultimate shape by the Holocaust. Jewish characters are assigned distinct functions in Nabokov's works. Faced with peripeties of exile and catastrophes of the modern age, they confront death, ponder the post-mortem realm, and model immortality. They also enjoy a special relationship with art and facilitate the process of writing. Finally, the deaths of Jewish characters in the Nazi Holocaust, as well as encounters with anti-Semitism, compel their non-Jewish friends to modify their ethical and metaphysical beliefs.

Nabokov's father, V. D. Nabokov, was an outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism in pre-1917 Russia, famous for his reporting on the Beilis trial (SM, 176 [ch. 9]).