"A Nursery Tale" () is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single 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 old ...

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

first published in the expatriate Russian newspaper ''Rul''' on 27 and 29 June 1926 and in the book form in '' The Return of Chorb'' in 1930. The English translation by the author and his son,

Dmitri Nabokov Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov (; May 10, 1934February 22, 2012) was an American opera singer and translator. Born in Berlin, he was the only child of Russian parents: author Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Véra; they emigrated to the United State ...

has appeared in 1975 in collection '' Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories''.

Plot summary

Erwin, the protagonist, is shy and “collects” an imaginary harem of women by tagging them mentally when looking from the

streetcar A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some include s ...

. One day, he encounters the

Devil A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conce ...

in the shape of a German middle-aged women, Frau Monde, who tells him he can have all the women he can “collect” before midnight provided their number is uneven. Erwin tries to do so but ultimately fails.

Comments

The story makes reference to a teenage girl as one of the women Erwin tries to make part of his collection, an early reference to the theme of

hebephilia Hebephilia is the strong, persistent sexual interest by adults in pubescent children who are in early adolescence, typically ages 11–14 and showing Tanner stages 2 to 3 of physical development. It differs from pedophilia (the primary or exclusi ...

that is later spun out in ''

Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession ...

''. This may be the earliest reference in Nabokov's work to the attraction of pubescent girls.

Notes

References

*''Fantasy, Folklore, and Finite Numbers in Nabokov's "A Nursery Tale"'' by Susan Sweeney, The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 511–529. 1926 short stories Short stories by Vladimir Nabokov Works originally published in German newspapers {{1920s-story-stub