Left Side of the Moon: Nabokov’s Personal Terminology of Homosexuality

Abstract

In Nabokov’s works we find homosexuals, unhappy, highly enigmatic people, often associated with the moon, as in The Gift and Pale Fire. Nabokov probably drew this metaphor from Rozanov’s People of the Moonlight. This essay traces the various references to this metaphor that can be found throughout Nabokov’s oeuvre