"Signs and Symbols" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born ...

, written in English and first published, May 15, 1948 in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' and then in '' Nabokov's Dozen'' (1958:

Doubleday & Company Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...

Garden City, New York Garden City is a village located on Long Island in Nassau County New York. It is the Greater Garden City area's anchor community. The population was 23,272 at the 2020 census. The Incorporated Village of Garden City is primarily located within ...

). In ''The New Yorker'', the story was published under the title "Symbols and Signs", a decision by the editor Katharine White. Nabokov returned the title to his original "Signs and Symbols" when republishing the story.

Plot summary

An elderly couple tries to visit their mentally ill son in a sanatorium on his birthday. They are informed that he attempted to take his life and they cannot see him now. After their return home, the husband announces his decision to take him out of the sanatorium. The story concludes with mysterious telephone calls. The first two apparently misdialed calls are from a girl asking for "Charlie"; the story ends when the phone rings for the third time. In the course of the story the reader learns many details of the unnamed couple's life: they are

Russian Jews The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest pop ...

who went into exile after the revolution; depend financially upon the husband's brother, Isaac; had a German maid when they lived in Germany; had an aunt, Rosa, and many other relatives who were murdered in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ar ...

; and have a nephew who is a famous chess player. The elderly man is in bad health. The son suffers from "referential mania", where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence". "Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme". Real people are excluded from this

paranoia Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concer ...

, and the condition is worse the further he is away from familiar surroundings. The son's condition is based on a real condition—compare

ideas of reference Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidences and believing they have strong personal significance. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the ...

Textual changes

The ''New Yorker'' wanted to make many changes. Nabokov objected strongly, supported by his friend

Edmund Wilson Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...

, and the story was printed mostly as he wrote it. However, the ''New Yorker'' version still contained four editorial changes that Nabokov eliminated in later publications. One was that the title was reversed as mentioned above. The second was that instead of numbers for the three sections, the sections were separated by ellipses. The third was that two paragraphs were joined into one. The fourth was that "beech plum" for a kind of jelly was changed to the correct " beach plum". Alexander Drescher has argued that Nabokov intended the latter two points to be among the story's "signs and symbols". With his paragraphing, the story's sections have 7, 4, and 19 paragraphs, indicating the year it takes place, 1947. (Drescher credits this connection to Anthony Stadlen.) In the ''New Yorker'' version, the last section had 18 paragraphs. To support his claim that the connection to 1947 is intentional, Drescher notes that in Nabokov's novel ''

Pnin ''Pnin'' () 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 launched Nabokov's career into literary prominence. Its eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovic ...

'' (1957), Pnin complains that a librarian has changed volume 19 to volume 18 and gotten the wrong year in his request for a book from 1947, saying, "They can't read, these women! The year was plainly inscribed." Regarding "beech", Drescher argues that it is the husband's misreading of the label, "an example of typographical

free indirect discourse Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech; it is also referred to as free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or, in ...

," and is one of the story's many references to the

, specifically the

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally ' beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or s ...

concentration camp. ''Buchenwald'' means "

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engle ...

woods", and Pnin thinks of "Buchenwald" and "beechwood" (for cremation) together.

Interpretations

In a letter to Katharine White, Nabokov said that "Signs and Symbols", like " The Vane Sisters", was a story "wherein a second (main) story is woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one." He did not say what the main story was. Some critics have argued that the story's many details can be deciphered into a message—for instance that the son has committed suicide, or that he is in an afterlife and free from his torments, or that the third phone call is from him, saying that he has escaped from the asylum. However, the predominant interpretation is that the story inveigles the reader into an attempt at deciphering the details and thus "over-reading", which is "another, milder form of referential mania".

References

External links

Full text as originally published in ''The New Yorker''
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Signs and Symbols Short stories by Vladimir Nabokov Works originally published in The New Yorker 1946 short stories Short stories set in New York City Doubleday (publisher) books

Plot summary

Textual changes

Interpretations

See also

References

External links