Loving and giving in Nabokov’s the gift

Abstract

Hamrit employs poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, and Derridean approaches to illuminate philosophical concepts such as love and giving in Nabokov’s last Russian novel, The Gift. The chapter identifies the main characteristics of love in this novel, focusing on various relationships-often expressed as triangles-involving friendship, unrequited passion, filial affection, desire, and artistic creativity. It also describes the endless plenitude suggested by “the gift.” After establishing these concepts, “Loving and Giving in Nabokov’s The Gift” analyzes the human and ethical dimension of love as a source for moral action. Hamrit argues that love illuminates what is good in life, acting as if it were writing the world anew; love leads, therefore, to moral action characterized by what Nabokov and Derrida both call “the possibility of its impossibility.”.