The book would benefit from more of the kind of synthesis provided at the conclusion of section seven.

For some instances she provides some interpretation of their meaning, but she has generally chosen to cover the ground rather than to examine the implications of her data. Berdjis has done a huge amount of work cataloguing images. The material Berdjis marshals seems sufficient to suggest that Nabokov has a religious view of the universe, which 238 Nabokov Studies the summarizing paragraph interprets with delicate accuracy: 'Nabokov's imagery stresses the alternatives of gaining detailed knowledge of nature and of appreciating art intellectually and emotionally in a way that grants hints at the presence of the divine' (370). The least investigated tiieme to emerge is religion, which scholars have been hesitant to explore because of Nabokov's strong opinions on the subject. The role of language in defining a character's artistic perception of the world and hence 'the status of a fictional character's personality' (182) may be applied to everything Nabokov ever wrote. An overview of Nabokov's themes emerges from the compilation of tiiese many images. The themes encompass sets of from three to twelve topics, which are followed through Nabokov's works, in chronological order. The following eight chapters examine specific imagery by theme: Metamorphoses, Language Games, The Development of Artistic Talent, The Power of Vision, Art and Nature, Numbers, Forms and Ideology, and Religion.

The Introduction gives a summary of each work witii the data of its composition and publication, using Michael Juliar's, Jane Grayson's and Brian Boyd's work and quoting Nabokov's forewords to his English translations it also provides a five-page chart which might have been sufficient. The book, Berdjis's dissertation, details die imagery in Nabokov's works through The Gift in both their original Russian and their English translations. Imagery in Vladimir Nabokov's Last Russian Novel (Dar), Its English Translation (The Gift), and Other Prose Works. Nabokov Studies 4 (1997) Reviews Nassim Winnie Berdjis. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The gift by vladimir nabokov