Citation:
Date Published:
6 January 2024Abstract:
The search for the author(s) of Nabokov’s Pale Fire arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem of repetition and its relation to the question of origins, temporal and timeless. For insofar as an origin is a thing (res) that is not always already in the movement of repetition (identical or otherwise), however distantly removed from its source (finite or otherwise), there can be no finite or immanent origin in the book or in the world. There is only its sign, which incorporates and refracts within its generative gaze all the temporalities and identities as non-identical repetition. In Pale Fire such as sign is represented by St. Sudarg of Bokay’s triptych of bottomless light.
August 2023: Erik Eklund is a Research Scholar with the Northwestern University Research Initiative for the Study of Russian Philosophy and Religious Thought. He received his doctoral degree in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Nottingham, and teaches courses in English literature and religious studies at Northwest University. He is the recipient of the inaugural Dieter E. Zimmer Prize for Best Postgraduate Work from the International Vladimir Nabokov Society. He has written several articles on religious themes in the works of Vladimir Nabokov, as well as articles and book chapters on trinitarian theology and the influence of the medieval system on C. S. Lewis’ work and thought. His publications appear in Journal of Inklings Studies, Literature and Theology, Nabokov Online Journal, Nabokov Studies, The Nabokovian, Religion and the Arts and Religion & Literature (forthcoming).