Nabokov is a phenomenon the Nabokovian is a unique concept that encompasses a multitude of phenomena. Rather I will regard the 'Nabokovian' (nabokovskoe) as a principal category of Russian aesthetics and metaphysics.

It is not my intention to talk about Nabokov per se in some general literary terms.

These middle categories, semi-terms and semi-names, do not impose a general concept on an author's creation, but derive this concept from the uniqueness of his personality. The discrepancy between general concepts and individual works is an inevitable evil of literary criticism this gap between the theory and its subject, however, can be bridged by using the concepts immanent to the authors' names. These theoretical categories derived from proper names have some advantage before the abstract concepts when they are applied to concrete authors. But the Pushkinian is also broader than Pushkin and can be found in Mandelstam or Nabokov. The phenomenon of Pushkin is broader than the Pushkinian because one can find in Pushkin something Derzhavian or Zhukovskian. The Pushkinian (pushkinskoe) is not identical to Pushkin, its meaning is broader and narrower at the same time. Although these categories refer to individual qualities, they have general significance and cannot be reduced to their namesakes. I believe that more important categories are designated by proper names: the Pushkinian, the Gogolian, the Dostoevskian, or the Tolstoian.

Most categories of literary criticism are expressed in common notions such as 'poetry', 'novel', 'plot', or 'metaphor'. My life is a perpetual good-bye to objects. by Gene Barabtarlo and Charles Nicol, New York: Garland Publishers (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Vol. In A Small Alpine Form: Studies in Nabokovs Short Fiction, ed. Good-bye to Objects, or, the Nabokovian in Nabokov,

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