Sounds (short story)

In the story, the narrator recounts to an old flame a date they once had, whilst her husband was away, where they visited a friend, Pal Palych, in the country. From the very beginning, it is revealed that the narrator is an aesthetic individual, prone to epiphanies. For him, the world seems "homogeneous, congruent, bound by the laws of harmony".{{cite book | last = Nabokov | first = Vladimir | title = The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov| year = 2008 | publisher = Vintage Books | page = 14}} Whereas the narrator is prone to communicate his epiphanies in the language of sound, the woman is "habitually untalkative".{{cite book | last = Nabokov | first = Vladimir | title = The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov| year = 2008 | publisher = Vintage Books | page = 15}} When the narrator must venture back to Palych's house to retrieve his date's cigarette-holder, he finds his friend bleary eyed and suggests that he get outside more. Towards the end, the woman tells the narrator that she'd leave her husband to be with him. The reader by now already suspects that something is up, as the narrator has revealed that he loves not only her, but the entire world: "it was not you alone who were my lover but the entire earth".{{cite book | last = Nabokov | first = Vladimir | title = The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov| year = 2008 | publisher = Vintage Books | page = 15}} In the end, the narrator rides his bicycle home, stopping along the way to sit on a park bench where he notices a woman he plans to talk to, as well as seeing Palych fishing.

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{{Vladimir Nabokov}}

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Category:Short stories by Vladimir Nabokov

Category:1923 short stories

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