SOGLIADATAI (1930) [THE EYE (1965)]

Here’s part of Amazon’s plot summary for The Eye:

“Nabokov's protagonist, Smurov, is a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin, who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife.”

1. In the introduction, Nabokov provides some background information about the novella. He shared that the story is set in 1924-5 Berlin and that the Russian expatriates in the book “range from paupers to successful businessmen”. He elaborated that Kashmarin, an elderly businessman, “judiciously directs the London branch of a German firm, and keeps a dancing girl.”

In addition, Nabokov subjectively shared in the introduction that his books have “a total lack of social significance” and that “It is unlikely that even the most credulous peruser of this twinkling tale will take long to realize who Smurov is. I tried it on […] the twelve-year-old child of a neighbor. The child was the quickest, the neighbor, the slowest.” 

One cannot infer that Nabokov had an affair with the nymphet next door, but who knew that he solicited literary feedback from a nymphet. And with how many other nymphets did he confer?

 

2. The novel Ariane, Jeune Fille Russe appeared twice in The Eye. Matilda persuaded Smurov to read the novel (5) and the novel appeared “spread-eagled and prone” next to a bowl of raisins and nuts. (58) Interestingly, Ariane is seventeen, and the IMDb plot summary for the 1932 film adaption of the novella states: “Arianne, a young Russian maid living in France, meets a man twice her age [whom] she falls in love with.”

3. Smurov was wounded during an exchange with the Reds. While “bleeding to death”, he made it to Yalta where he hid in the house of a good friend. Smurov related that his friend had a young daughter who nursed him “tenderly”. He didn’t elaborate, but he ended the vignette by stating elusively, “—but that’s another story." (47)

4. Uncle Pasha, an eighty-year-old “old goat”, recalled how he used to place Vanya, his niece, across “his knee and spank her.” (61) “Imagine,” Uncle Pasha had said, “the baby girl blossomed into a genuine rose. I’m an expert in roses […] But it really gives me a kick to think that there was a time when I used to give that lassie a good spanking on her bare little buttocks and now there she is, a bride. (63) “[…] we’ve had our fling, now let the others have theirs […]” (64) Uncle Pasha hadn’t seen Vanya in a long time. But when it was exclaimed, “Oh my goodness! It’s your niece!” “So it is, so it is,” said Uncle Pasha and added something outrageous about cheeks and peaches.” (66)

5. Lastly, Smurov “[…] set his sights on the Khrushchovs’ maid, a girl of 18, whose special attraction was the sleepy cast of her eyes. She herself was anything but sleepy. It is amusing to think what depraved devices of love play this modest-looking girl-named Gretchen or Hilda […] would think up when the door was locked […]” Smurov shared that the “indecent” events took place after he “[…] would reach her room by the back stairs, and stay with her a long time.” (72) 

Source:

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Eye.Translated by Dmitri Nabokov, Vintage Books, 1990

ZASHCHITA LUZHINA (1930) [THE DEFENSE (1964)]

Plot Summary: With the help of Valentinov, his manipulative manager, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin develops from a chess prodigy to a Grandmaster but becomes mentally unstable along the way.

1. Luzhin’s wife had never met anyone to compare him to but: “Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy. Here were her school reminiscences — the girls' school in St. Petersburg, with an unusual bit of ivy on its frontage that ran along a short, dusty, tramless street, and the geography teacher — who also taught in a boys' school — a large-eyed man with a very white forehead and tousled hair […] in love — they said — with one of the upper-form girls, a niece of the white-haired, blue-eyed headmistress”.

Thus, not only did her geography teacher, who was further described “as an extraordinarily amusing person”, catch “her fancy” but it was rumored that he was in love with one of the “upper-form” nymphets as well.

2. Valentinov requests that Luzhin be an extra in a film: 

“I wrote the script. Imagine, dear boy, a young girl, beautiful and passionate, in the compartment of an express train. At one of the stations a young man gets in. From a good family. Night descends on the train. She falls asleep and in her sleep spreads her limbs. A glorious young creature. The young man […] begins literally to lose his head. In a kind of trance he hurls himself upon her.' […] 'He feels her perfume, her lace underwear, her glorious young body... She wakes up, throws him off, calls out' […] 'the conductor and some passengers run in. […] The point is that from the very first moment — there, in the express — she has fallen in love with him, is seething with passion, and he, because of her — you see, that's where the conflict is — because of her he is being condemned to hard labor.”

Interestingly, the male is described as a “young man” but the female is a “young girl” - “a glorious young creature” with a “glorious young body”. 

Source:

 

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Defense. Translated by Michael Scammell, Vintage Books, 1990

KOROL' DAMA VALET (1928) [KING, QUEEN, KNAVE (1968)]

Plot Summary: Franz moves to Berlin to work in Dreyer's department store. Dreyer is Franz's wealthy relative, but that doesn't prevent Franz from having a love affair with Martha, Dryer’s beautiful wife.

1. During his train ride into Berlin, Franz “promised himself a lone treat that very night. He bared the shoulders of the woman that had just been sitting by the window, made a quick mental test (did blind Eros react? clumsy Eros did, unsticking its folds in the dark); then, keeping the splendid shoulders, changed the head, substituting for it the face of that seventeen-year-old maid who had vanished with a silver soup ladle almost as big as she before he had had time to declare his love” (18-19)

2. While scouting rooms to rent in Berlin:

Franz decided to act systematically. At the door of every third or fourth house a small notice board announced rooms for rent. He consulted a newly bought map of the city, checked once again the distance from Uncle’s villa and found he was close enough. A nice, new-looking house with a nice green door to which a white card was affixed attracted him, and he blithely rang the bell. Only after he had pressed it he noticed that the sign said “fresh paint”! But it was too late. A window opened on his right. A bob-haired, bare-shouldered young girl in a black slip, clutching a white kitten to her breast, peered out at Franz. His lips went dry in the arid blast. The girl was enchanting: a simple little seamstress, no doubt, but enchanting, and let us hope not too expensive. “Whom do you want?” she asked. Franz gulped, smiled foolishly, and said with quite unexpected impudence, by which he himself was at once embarrassed: “Maybe you, eh?” (59-60)

3. Two pictures of interest are mentioned in novel: 

“A picture above the bed showed a naked girl leaning forward to wash her breasts in a misty pond.” (61)

And in the room that Franz eventually rents: 

“Over the bed hung a picture. Puzzled, Franz stared at it. A bare-bosomed slave girl on sale was being leered at by three hesitant lechers. It was even more artistic than the bathing September nymph. She must have been in some other room—yes, of course, in the one with the stench.” (66)

The “big-nippled” slave girl is mentioned on three subsequent occasions until she is sold:

I. “They continued their planning when alone in the drab beloved little room, with the still unsold big-nippled slave girl above the bed and a brand-new expensive, unwanted tennis racket in its frame.” (225)

II. “The lewd bidders were appraising the big-nippled bronze-bangled slave girl for the last time.” (279)

III. “In fact, he himself could at any moment turn into a mousetrap, a mouse, an old couch, a slave girl led away by the highest bidder. Such magicians should be made emperors” (282)

Maurice Couturier wrote in Nabokov's Eros and the Poetics of Desire that the slave girl picture may have been an allusion to “The Bath of the Nymph” over the Bloom’s bed in Joyce’s Ulysses.

4. Lastly: "Once a young girl with bouncing breasts, in a short red frock, almost ran into [Franz] [...] and he fancied he recognized in her a janitor's daughter he had longed for many ages ago. (250)

Sources:
Couturier, Maurice. Nabokov's Eros and the Poetics of Desire. Palgrave 
        Macmillan, 2014. Kindle Edition.    
Nabokov, Vladimir. King, Queen, Knave. Translated by Dmitri Nabokov, 
        Penguin Classics, 2012. 

MASHEN'KA (1926) [MARY (1970)]

Plot Summary: Lev Glebovich Ganin immigrates to Berlin due to the Russian Revolution and subsequently moves into a boarding house where he learns that one of his house mates is Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov. It turns out that Alfyorov is the husband of Mary, Ganin’s first love. Consequently, Ganin breaks up with his current girlfriend, because he’s absorbed with memories of Mary.

Maurice Couturier added in Nabokov's Eros and the Poetics of Desire: "In Mary, his first novel, Nabokov represented the idyll of two adolescents discovering together the joys of sex and the seductions of love.” (272) 

Mary is an anomaly, because the novella doesn’t contain any clear examples of nympholepsy, which shouldn’t be surprising since it was Nabokov’s first book. However, Mary was written and first published when Nabokov was in his late twenties and according to Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, Mary is based on Valentina (Lyussya) Evgenievna Shulgin, a fifteen-year-old Russian nymphet. (112)

And in chapter six of Mary: “a student medical orderly at the local military hospital” had a “fifteen-year-old 'sweet and remarkable' girl". (60)

Sources:
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Vintage, 1993.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Mary. Translated by Michael Glenny, Penguin Classics, 2012.