[“La Vénitienne”, “La Veneziana”] is just about the longest of Nabokov's stories. It was mostly written in the September of 1924, but was never published during Nabokov's lifetime. It appeared comparatively recently in collections of stories, translated into French and Italian (1990 and 1992 respectively), and the story then lent its name to the collections' titles. The English translation (by Dmitri Nabokov) appeared in 1995 in
The Penguin Collection, and from the same year was included in Nabokov's
Collected Stories(see Penguin, 1997, pp. 90-115).
The story is imbued with references to the pictorial arts. The title is inspired by the lady portrayed by Sebastiano del Piombo in one of his most famous paintings, Giovane romana detta Dorotea (c. 1512). Nabokov's next
1686 words
Citation: De Vries, Gerard J.M.. "Venetsianka". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 January 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21605, accessed 21 November 2024.]
