The Title
A "bend sinister" is a heraldic device: a bar drawn from the upper left to the lower right on a coat of arms (from the point of view of the person wearing the shield). A "bend," the standard stripe on a coat of arms, is the opposite, from the right shoulder of the wearer diagonally down to lower left. A bend can be referred to as a "bend dexter" to distinguish it from the bend sinister. In an edition in 1963, Nabokov explains, "This choice of a title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life."
There is a great deal of wordplay in the novel, concerning leftward (or sinister) movements.
Read more about this topic: Bend Sinister (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“That title of respect
Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It was his title that killed me. I had never spoken to a lord before. Oh, me! what a fool, what a beast I have been!”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)