普宁 (1957)

《普宁》（英语：Pnin）是俄罗斯裔美国作家弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫用英语书写的小说。小说大部分内容最初在《纽约客》连载，单行本后于1957年在美国出版。该小说是继《洛丽塔》之后又一部以美国为背景的小说，描述一个名叫铁莫菲·普宁的俄国教授流亡美国在一所大学教书的故事。《普宁》在美国出版获得成功并使纳博科夫在美国文坛崭露头角。

Pnin (Russian: Пнин, pronounced [pnʲin]) is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States helped establish Nabokov's literary reputation there. The novel's title character, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born assistant professor in his fifties who lives in the United States. The character is believed to have been based partly on Nabokov's colleague Marc Szeftel and partly on Nabokov himself. Displaced by the Russian Revolution and what he calls the "Hitler war", Pnin teaches Russian at the fictional Waindell College, loosely based on two institutions where Nabokov taught: Cornell University and Wellesley College.

Plot summary

Chapter 1

Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, the title character, is a professor of Russian at Waindell College; "ideally bald" with a "strong man torso," "spindly legs," and "feminine feet". Pnin is on a train from Waindell to Cremona, where he is to give a guest lecture. He is persistently bothered by the fear that he may lose his lecture papers, or mix them up with the student essay he is correcting. He discovers he has boarded the wrong train and gets off. When he tries to board a bus to Cremona, he suddenly realizes he has lost his luggage (with his papers) and has a seizure. He finally arrives at Cremona by truck, having recovered his papers, and is about to give his lecture when he experiences a vision, seeing his dead parents and friends from before the Russian Revolution in the audience.

Chapter 2

Laurence Clements, a fellow Waindell faculty member, and his wife Joan, are looking for a new lodger after their daughter Isabel has married and moved out. Pnin is the new tenant, informed of the vacancy by Waindell's librarian, Mrs. Thayer. The Clementses grow to enjoy Pnin's eccentricities and his idiosyncratic phrasings. There follows the history of Pnin's relationship with his ex-wife Dr. Liza Wind, who manipulated him into bringing her to America so that she could leave him for fellow psychologist Eric Wind. Liza visits Pnin, but only wants to extract money from him for her son, Victor. Although Pnin is aware of her nature, he obliges out of love for her. After she leaves, Pnin weeps at her cruelty, shouting "I haf nofing left, nofing, nofing!"

Chapter 3

Pnin is alone at the Clementses' as they have gone to visit Isabel. The narrator describes Pnin's past lodgings and his idiosyncratic English. Pnin lectures his Elementary Russian class, then goes to the library, where he ignores Mrs. Thayer's attempts at small talk as he tries to return a book requested by another patron, but the record shows the requester to be Pnin himself. Pnin does research for his book on Russian culture, then attends the showing of a Soviet propaganda film, which causes him to weep. The chapter ends with the return of Isabel, who has left her husband. Pnin will have to find new lodgings.

Chapter 4

Fourteen-year-old Victor Wind dreams of a foreign king who refuses to abdicate and is exiled (foreshadowing Pale Fire). In his fantasy, this king, rather than Eric Wind, is his father. Victor is depicted as an intelligent, nonconformist boy with a great talent for drawing. His parents have him psychoanalyzed, and are incapable of understanding his artistic talent, much to the boy's chagrin. Victor has little respect for his teachers at St. Bart's except for Lake the art teacher, "a tremendously obese man with shaggy eyebrows and hairy hands". Victor is to meet with Pnin at Waindell bus station, and Pnin hurriedly buys him a soccer ball and the Jack London novel The Son of the Wolf. Victor is not interested in soccer, and Pnin takes the entire encounter as a failure, unaware that Victor holds him in great admiration.