Nabokov
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The short story, “That In Aleppo Once…” by Vladimir Nabakov, is typical of Nabakov’s work in that it has sexual preoccupation as one of its chief concerns. Further, it also illustrates his tendency to illustrate characters who are aware of one reality and then suddenly find themselves thrust into another. Such a character is the narrator of “That In Aleppo Once…,” who realizes in the final paragraph of the work that, “Somewhere, somehow, I have made some fatal mistake,” (Nabakov, 1958: 153). He is referring to the act of leaving his wife and this paper will theorize that the reason he left his wife is because he had his illusions of love all mixed up with his illusions of sexuality, loyalty and fidelity. This paper will analyze these three aspects of the narrator that eventually combine to make him leave his wife, a decision he realizes too late is a fatal mistake. A conclusion will address the significance of “That In Aleppo Once…” where readers applying its lessons to their modern lives is concerned.The beginning of the short story is very significant because it shows the narrator remembering of the days when he was filled with idealism, illusion and the hope, curiosity and fascination with all things worldly that can only occur in youth. He reminds his friend, “of the days when we wrote our first udder-warm bubbling verse, and all things, a rose, a puddle, a lighted window, cried out to us: I’m a rhyme! Yes, this is a most u
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ions, until, at the end, when he is approached by the Doctor, he realizes she was an illusion, yet one he cannot get out of his mind or see as much more than that now that she is gone from his life, “Although I can produce documentary proofs of matrimony, I am positive now that my wife never existed. You may know her name from some other source, but that does not matter: it is the name of an illusion,” (Nabakov, 1958: 142).
Yet, for all his professed misery from leaving his wife, the narrator realizes in retrospect that perhaps he misses her more than any other reason because of his sexual desire for her. As he admits early on, “It was love at first touch rather than at first sight,” (Nabakov, 1958: 142). Later on in the play the narrator says, after some deliberation that she may have been attracted to him for just as superficial of reasons, because of his poetry. Once he tore a hole through the myth of fidelity and loyalty in sexual matters and marriage he could love her no more. She, on the other hand, bore holes through his artistic veneer, in his own mind at least, and could not love what she found as the man behind the verse, “I she has remained a phantom to me, I may have been one to her: I suppose she had been so
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1391
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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