Composition

Nabokov's work, especially in the early period, reflected the terrible catastrophe that he experienced in 1919 - emigration from Russia. The loss of the motherland, at home, was a heavy blow for him and subsequently became one of the fundamental themes of her works. Many of Nabokov's heroes are emigrants who, like the author, lost their homeland, but, like him, carefully preserved it in their memory.
This thought of Nabokov was reflected especially brightly in one of his first novels, entitled "The Gift". Some researchers consider it one of the most important works of Nabokov, and this idea is connected with the fact that here the author shows the life of the Russian emigration abroad, that for the exiles neither Soviet Russia nor the foreign land can become a new Fatherland. But, according to Nabokov, real Russia for them, it is no longer important. The main thing is that image of "eternal" Russia, paradise lost, which the hero took with him into exile.
The motive of the lost paradise will then continue in many of his works, acquiring only different forms. So, in his most scandalous work, Lolita, the childhood love of the protagonist Humbert for the girl Annabelle Lee will become the image of the lost paradise. II it is this love, this lost paradise, that he will look for in Lolita.
In his early work Nabokov pays close attention to many other themes and ideas. So, in many of his works, the theme of the relationship between art, creativity and the past life surrounding a person sounds. Man is creative, he leaves the real world for the world of his fantasies, fiction, games. This idea is described in detail by Nabokov in his novel The Luzhin Defense. In the center is a lone hero who has left the real world for the world of a chess game, where he feels like a virtuoso, a creator, a ruler. Everything around him is hostile - life, people, and circumstances - and only in the world of the game does he begin to live. real life. Only there all his clumsiness and helplessness disappears, his life becomes "harmonious, distinct and rich in adventures."
Luzhin's tragedy develops from a romantic confrontation between a genius and the crowd into a metaphysical tragedy of a man who has reached the pinnacle of his work and is faced with something that is beyond his control. Luzhin constantly seeks protection for himself: first from the outside world, then from Turati, then from chess itself. But all his attempts fail, and even at the end, when Luzhin commits suicide, he falls into "an abyss that breaks up into pale and dark squares", and sees "what kind of eternity obsequiously and inexorably spread out before him."
Many researchers believe that Nabokov's novels cannot be considered separately, that they all represent a complex "metatext". Such a conclusion can be drawn on the basis of the fact that many themes and images that are secondary in some novels become the main ones in others. Nabokov seems to continue an unfinished conversation, all the while finishing his thoughts. And our task as his readers is to understand what he wanted to tell us.

1922 - Nabokov graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Romance and Slavic languages ​​and literature. In the same year, the Nabokov family moved to Berlin, where his father became the editor of the Russian newspaper The Rudder. It is in Rul that the first translations of French and English poets, Nabokov's first prose, will appear.

1922-37 - Nabokov lives in Germany. For the first few years, she lives in poverty, earning a living by compiling chess compositions for newspapers and giving tennis and swimming lessons, occasionally acting in German films.

1925 - marries V. Slonim, who became his faithful assistant and friend.

1926 - after the release of the novel "Mashenka" in Berlin (under the pseudonym V. Sirin), Nabokov becomes literary fame. Then the following works appeared: "A Man from the USSR" (1927), "Luzhin's Defense" (1929-1930, story), "Return of Chorba" (1930; collection of stories and poems), "Camera Obscura" (1932-1933, novel) , "Despair" (1934, novel), "Invitation to execution" (1935-1936), "Gift" (1937, separate ed. - 1952), "Spy" (1938).

1937 - Nabokov leaves Nazi Germany, fearing for the life of his wife and son.

1937-40 - lives in France.

1940-1960 - in the USA. At first, after moving to the United States, Nabokov traveled almost the entire country in search of work. A few years later, he began teaching at American universities. Since 1945 - a US citizen. Since 1940, he began to write works in English, which he was fluent in from childhood. The first English-language novel is The True Life of Sebastian Knight. Further, Nabokov writes the works "Under the Sign of the Illegitimate", "Conclusive evidence" (1951; Russian translation "Other Shores", 1954; memoirs), "Lolita" (1955; was written by him in both Russian and English), "Pnin" (1957), "Ada" (1969). Moreover, it translates to English language: "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", the novel "Eugene Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin (1964; Nabokov himself considered his translation unsuccessful), a novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time", lyrical poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev.

1955 - The novel "Lolita" (Lolita), which four American publishing houses refused to publish, is published in Paris by "Olympia Press". In 1962, a film was made based on the novel.

1960-1977 - Nabokov lives in Switzerland. During these years, Nabokov's works were published in America (books "Poems and Problems" (Poems and Problems) (39 poems in Russian and English, 14 poems in English, 18 chess problems), 1971; "A Russian Beauty and Other Stories" (13 stories, some translated from Russian and some written in English) (New York) "Strong Opinions" (interviews, criticism, essays, letters), 1973; "Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories" (14 stories, some of which are translated from Russian, and some are written in English), 1975; “Details of a Sunset and Other Stories” (13 stories translated from Russian), 1976, etc.

1986 - the first publication of Nabokov in the USSR appears (the novel "Luzhin's Defense" in the magazines "64" and "Moscow").

Main works:

Novels: Mashenka (1926), Luzhin's Defense (1929-1930), Camera Obscura (1932-33), Despair (1934), The Gift (1937), Lolita (1955), "Pnin" (1957), "Ada" (1969),
"Look at the harlequins!" (1974)

The story "Invitation to execution" (1935 - 36), Collection of stories: "The Return of Chorba" (1930), Book of memoirs "Other Shores" (1951), Collection "Spring in Fialta and other stories" (1956), Poems, Research " Nikolai Gogol” (1944), Annotated prose translation of “Eugene Onegin” (vols. 1-3, 1964), Translation into English of “Words about Igor's Campaign”, “Lectures on Russian Literature” (1981), “Conversations. Memories (1966)

Nabokov's legacy

Following Nabokov

1. Writer's childhood

   Nabokov's poetry

   Roman "Mashenka"

   "Protection of Luzhin"

The value of Nabokov's work

I. Nabokov's legacy

For my essay, I chose the work of V.V. Nabokov, since the main problems of the literature of Russian abroad and this question needs a solution.

I believe that this topic is relevant and significant. Therefore, the purpose of my essay is to consider creativity and especially the innovative genre of Nabokov. I researched and studied the bibliography and works of this writer. I believe that the life and work of any writer are inseparable from each other.

Nabokov burst into the soulful chamber of the literature of the Russian diaspora with a refreshing whirling draft. “This boy pulled out a pistol and with one shot killed all the old people, including me ...” - I. A. Bunin responded so energetically at the end of the 20s to the appearance of Nabokov’s novels, who then wrote under the pseudonym Sirin: “Mashenka” (1926 ), "King, Queen, Jack" (1928), "Luzhin's Defense" (1930) ...

Born at the very end of the last century, on April 10 (22), 1899, in St. Petersburg and who died on July 2, 1977 in Montreux, Switzerland, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov to this day remains a phenomenon, an unsolved mystery, a kind of mysterious, in a deceptively mirage flickering luminaries, perhaps even some kind of imaginary sun in the literary firmament of our century. Isn't that why the range of assessments of Nabokov's legacy is so incredibly wide - from unconditional admiration to complete denial. I think in any case - and today it is undoubtedly - Nabokov is an unconditional phenomenon, and the phenomenon of two literatures at once: Russian and English, the creator of a special artistic world, an innovator - a stylist (primarily in prose). I want to note that the influence of his style, hypnotizing, bewitching gift is easily detected in modern literature, though mainly where bookishness, secondary culture, and a craving for elitism predominate.

I believe that Nabokov left behind, without exaggeration, a huge legacy. In Russian alone, he wrote eight novels and several dozen short stories (collections The Return of Chorba, 1930; Spy, 1938; Spring in Fialta, 1956), hundreds of poems, a number of plays (Death, Event ”, “The invention of the waltz”, etc.). To this must be added an extensive English-language work (since 1940) - the novels " real life Sebastian Knight", "Under the Sign of the Illegitimate", "Pnin", "Ada", "Pale Fire", "Lolita", "Transparent Things", "Look at the Harlequin!", autobiographical prose, a series of lectures on Russian literature, an interview book “Strong Opinions”, numerous translations of Russian classics (which is worth at least his translation of “Eugene Onegin” in four volumes, where three are appendices in which he, line by line, commented on the entire Pushkin novel).

The more significant is his "ambiguous fame and unambiguous talent." I think that in the consistently depleted literature of emigration, Nabokov remained an unusual, unique phenomenon. It is characteristic that he did not share the slow catastrophe that befell the majority of writers - emigrants of the so-called "second generation", which was also called the "lost" generation. In the 1920s and 1930s, Nabokov was in the center of attention, evoking enthusiastic praise or extreme blasphemy, but it seems that he did not leave anyone indifferent. And then, when emigrant literature began to fade away, like the first amphibious fish during a catastrophic climate change in a drying up reservoir, he managed to change even the very way of breathing, adapting his pulmometer to a different, English-speaking element and receiving - the only one among Russian writers in the entire history of Russian literature - recognition as an outstanding artist of the West.

It is characteristic, however, that from there, from the American shore, Nabokov is still served - after all, precisely as the greatest Russian writer, but - with a happy fate, for whom the change of the starry hemisphere was not a sad, extreme need (he fled in 1940 from France from Hitler, and guided by his own views, and saving his wife from the ghetto), but a pure gift from heaven. It is in the change of time zones, in the geographical, and at the same time spiritual advancement to the Far West (Russia - Germany - France - America) that Nabokov, in the interpretation of our overseas colleagues, grows into a grandiose figure: “In the entire history of Russian literature, there were only two prose writers, comparable to Nabokov in talent: Gogol and Tolstoy” (Andrew Field). Nabokov is the West's main stake in the struggle for Russian literature.

I think it makes sense to recall the main milestones of Nabokov's literary and everyday biography.

II. Following Nabokov

1. Childhood of the writer.

VV Nabokov was born into a well-born and wealthy noble family, with a long host of service ancestors. His grandfather Dmitry Nikolayevich was the Minister of Justice at the time of judicial reforms, at the end of the reign of Alexander II and the beginning of Alexander III. Nabokov recalled: “Grandfather is a naval officer, explorer of the new Earth (1817), where one of the rivers bears his name. Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, the writer's mother, was on one line the granddaughter of the famous Siberian gold miner Vasily Rukavishnikov, and on the other, the granddaughter of the president of the Imperial Military Medical Academy N.I. Kozlov.

The boy grew up in an atmosphere of enlightened liberalism, an abundance of material and spiritual wealth. His father, a lawyer who had abandoned his official career, was a principled Angloman and one of the leaders of the "People's Freedom" party, together with other Cadet leaders, verbally and in print defended the need for constitutional freedoms for Russia. He was the legitimate heir of the Russian liberal intelligentsia, which combined everyday nobility, the habit of contentment and comfort with sincere love of the people.

Excellent education, which V.V. Nabokov, from the very first steps, however, carried something from the Angloman - the father. He almost began to speak the language of Shakespeare earlier than the language of Pushkin.

Young Nabokov was brought up, first of all, as a "citizen of the world." He knew several languages ​​perfectly, was fond of tennis, cycling, chess, then - especially passionately and for life - entomology, continuing his education at the prestigious Tenishevsky School. Initial impressions, the feeling of Russia and everything Russian could not get around him. The motherland remained in Nabokov's soul, and nostalgic memories of it break through until the end of the writer's days.

Since 1919, Nabokov has never had a home ... Cambridge cells, rooms in boarding houses, rented apartments, professorial cottages, the luxurious Palace Hotel in Montreux.

Such a house, which Nabokov had, happens to a person only once. Petersburg, Rozhdestveno, Russia. And all his hobbies - butterflies, chess, sports - Nabokov brought from Russia, from his childhood. He took away childhood and youth, happy, like a prince, first poems, first love ... House on the Sea, summer in Yalta ... He left Russia, twenty years old - forever ... Butterfly's wing was reflected in its own wing.

2. Nabokov's poetry

The memory of Russia is especially strongly and directly felt in the verses. Here we will meet a Nabokov-style captivating Russian landscape, and a mental return to a happy and serene childhood, and a simple declaration of love under the short title "Russia":

You were and will be ... Mysteriously created

From the shine and haze of your clouds.

When the starry night splashes over me, I hear your roaring call!

You are in the heart, Russia! You are the goal and the foot

you are in the murmur of blood, in the confusion of dreams!

And should I stray in this age of off-road?

You still shine for me.

These sincere and unpretentious verses were written already after the crest of the great Tektoshon changes: in 1919 the poet ended up in London. He entered the University of Cambridge, where he studied French literature and entomology, and in 1922 he moved to Berlin. Here, poems and stories by a young writer under the pseudonym Sirin (the name of the bird of paradise) appeared on the pages of the Berlin newspaper Ruhl.

Nabokov's poems "Ticket", "To Russia", "Shooting" are filled with Russia:

There are nights: I just lie down,

a bed will float to Russia;

and now they lead me to the ravine,

lead to the ravine to kill.

But heart, how would you like,

For it to be like this:

Russia is a star, the night of the execution, and a ravine full of bird cherry.

Speaking about Nabokov, the poet, one must immediately stipulate that his poetry is part of the whole creative harmony of the writer. His poems are scattered throughout novels and short stories. There is even some originality in this technique: prose writers usually cite other people's lines of poetry in their books. Here is a poem from the novel "The Gift":

Love only what is rare and past,

What sneaks on the outskirts of sleep,

What angers fools, what is punishable by stinks;

As a motherland, be true to fiction.

Oh, swear that you believe in fiction

That you will only be true to fiction,

That you will not lock up your soul in prison,

You can’t say, holding out your hand: the wall.

In the matter of the verse, in its poetic substance, I feel the Pushkin-Blok designations of the mystery and freedom of art. Let us recall from Pushkin: “I will shed tears over fiction ...” and from Blok: “I enter dark temples ...”

Nabokov's poems in his epic works help him to hold together his own prose, as if to confirm the fidelity of the idea, because it is customary to understand poetry as the voice of God. But it still seems to me that this is a more complex process, even a metaphysical one. From his obscure, vague visions, the author grows and shapes an independent world. Then the game begins in this world.

Back in 1919, in Russia, Nabokov the poet says:

Greetings, my inevitable day.

Wider, wider distance, brighter, more diverse,

And on the ringing, on the first step

I ascend, filled with bliss and fear.

In 1920:

I rejoice, I remember

I create - and this light on your blindness

I own the invisible India (1923);

The Land of Poems Where the Gods Are Fair (1924);

The smile of eternity is innocent.

The world is inexplicable for the blind.

But for the sighted, everything is clear in the world,

and not a single star on the air,

perhaps not comparable to him (1928);

Air Island (1929).

From this chronologically arranged selection of Nabokov's titles and poetic quotations, it can be seen that he consistently developed his idea of ​​a special type of person who could materialize his dreams. The author also directly states that this is given only to selected people (one would like to say instead of “people” - beings, so Nabokov blurs the line between the image of a person and a person - something). It is unlikely that these artistic techniques are a continuation of the tradition of Russian classical poetry, for example, Derzhavin. In our classics, after all, the human soul, recognizable, always flew to other worlds. I would venture to suggest that Nabokov is already under the influence of Western culture, in which the type of superman was born, albeit in purely external manifestations. But it is not difficult for a talented Russian writer to breathe a life-giving spirit into any scheme. Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion.

From the clearly visible milestones of his work, I can see that his prose was the inspiration for his poetry. In the early thirties, Nabokov wrote the novel “Feat”, in which the country “Zoorlandia” invented by him appears (they say that the Normans mentioned it in ancient times), in fact, this is a kind of image of Russia, lost in time and space. Gradually, Nabokov begins to weave the theme of returning to Russia, Zoorland, into his poetic wreath. The hero is not going to resist the situation of absolute totalitarianism. Only one touching romanticism with which he “passportless shadow” makes his way to defend his “toys” from the savages: “There are nights: as soon as I lie down, a bed will float to Russia; and now they are leading to a ravine, they are leading to a ravine to kill.

While working on the novel "Feat", the poem "Uldaborg" was also written with the subtitle "Translation from Zoorlandic":

Laughter and music are banished. scary

Uldaborg, this city is silent.

No gardens, no bazaars, no towers,

and the palace turned into a prison:

the mathematician there is crying meek,

there is a great billiard player.

There is no embellishment on the lattice.

Oh, at least an iron flower.

If only someone would glorify with a song,

As in the square, dirtying the snow,

beheaded the royal children

their Torvalta is a strong man - a woodcutter.

But the last one was long gone.

The executioner burned the last violin,

and moved to Germany

violinist in scorched rags...

From the above passage it is clear that it is impossible to pass by his Zoorlandia and that it is in harmony with the author. But for some time the theme "Another country, other shores" has become Nabokov's usual, brilliantly practiced technique, with the help of which he revealed the life of his poetic and prose heroes. The poet Khodasevich wrote about Nabokov: "One of his main tasks is precisely to show how techniques live and work."

Nabokov published under the pseudonym "Sirin", which means a prophetic bird. The choice of a pseudonym, it seems to me, also explains a lot in his creative intentions and techniques.

You can talk about Nabokov's poetry for a long time, but you will still come to the conclusion that his poetry cannot exist outside of his prose, and the most important thing in Nabokov's work is his inner drama. Russia cannot be replaced by a Russian person by any invented or even real Zoorland.

In prose, Russian is also tangible - and more distinct in early works, but already forcedly constrained by bitter emigration within the limits of habitation: furnished, without comfort, Berlin rooms, ridiculous life. The furnished space of emigration allowed Nabokov to see Russia only as a dream, a myth, an unfulfilled memory. “Blind man, I stretch out my hands, and I touch everything earthly through you, my country. That's why I'm so happy." (to Russia).

3. The novel "Mashenka"

The most "Russian" of Nabokov's novels, of course, is the first - "Mashenka", this is a memory, the first attempt to return the lost paradise. The novel was written in 1926. Genuine Nabokov's paradise gave him the opportunity to painfully feel his later existence as an exile, in a much broader, and most importantly, deeper sense than emigration.

Expulsion from paradise is in itself a powerful psychic trauma, the experience of which forms the basis of Nabokov's Russian-language novels.

In the preface to the English edition of Mashenka, Nabokov wrote in 1970: “The well-known tendency of the novice author to invade his private life by deducing himself or his representative in the first novel is not due to the temptation ready theme what a sense of relief when, separated from yourself, you can move on to more interesting subjects. However, Nabokov was in no hurry, or, more precisely, could not get rid of himself. It is in "Mashenka" that the plot structure is formed, seeking a plot resolution, and the main lines of force of the conflict of the meta-novel "I" with the "ghostly", but very viscous world.

The conflict is built on the contrast between the “exceptional” and the “ordinary”, the “genuine” and the “inauthentic”, so that from the very beginning Nabokov faces the problem of creating an extraordinary hero and proving his extraordinaryness. In "Mashenka" this problem does not find an exhaustive solution; exclusivity is declared, but it does not completely "grow" with the inner "I" of the hero.

From the first lines of the novel, Nabokov's game of names begins: "- Lev Glevo ...

Lev Glebovich? Well, you have a name, my friend, you can dislocate your tongue ...

You can, - Ganin confirmed rather coldly ... "- and the plot of the novel realizes the hidden threat contained in this answer. The antagonist continues: “So: every name obliges. Leo and Gleb are a complex, rare combination. It requires dryness, hardness, originality from you. There is a hidden element of truth in this verbal nonsense.

Nabokov uses a third-party look at his hero to emphasize his "feature". To the hostess of the Russian pension, Ganin "seemed not at all like all the Russian young people who stayed with her." But the hero himself is well aware of his exclusivity, expressed primarily in the fact that he bears in himself the memory of the true world. For him, there is an original paradise, the symbol of which is "grandfather's park alleys" and his first love - Masha.

Upon learning that Mashenka is alive, Ganin literally wakes up in his Berlin emigration: “It was not just a memory, but life, much more real, much “more intense,” as they say in the newspapers, than the life of his Berlin shadow. It was an amazing romance, developing with genuine, tender care."

The hero turns out to be not at the height of his position, and, having lost paradise (combining the loss of his homeland and love), he falls into an atmosphere of vulgarity (Berlin emigration), the most striking embodiment of which is the antagonist, anti-hero Alferov - Mashenka's current husband.

Alferov's vulgarity is "densely" shown by the author in the very first chapter of the book (its plot begins with a scene in an elevator: the hero and the anti-hero get stuck between floors - "also, you know, a symbol ...", as Alferov notes). Everything went in Alferov: words, platitudes. In the concept of "vulgarity" Nabokov combines mediocrity and conformism, but the vulgarity, the writer adds, is also known for other properties. He loves to impress others and loves to be impressed. The cult of simplicity and good taste in old Russia, Nabokov believes, led to a precise definition of vulgarity. Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, in their search for simple truth, easily discovered the vulgar side of things, the crappy systems of pseudo-thought.

An important moment in the plot of the nascent metanovel is the hero's love affair with the pseudo-chosen one, whose role in Masha is assigned to Lyudmila, endowed with the features of a voluptuous woman and completely devoid of female intuition.

The heroes are trying to find the lost paradise: they refuse the pseudo-chosen one and are going to kidnap Mashenka from Alferov. At the same time, he commits an unethical act - he got his opponent drunk on the night before Masha's arrival and rearranged the alarm clock so that Alferov could not meet Mashenka, and he rushes to the station. He does not feel the slightest remorse and does not recognize the enemy's right to satisfy the offended feeling. In the world of shadows, the hero's conscience sleeps.

Ultimately, Ganin turns out to be a “dog in the manger”: he will not meet Mashenka either, realizing at the last moment that the past cannot be returned: “He exhausted his memory to the end, was completely fed up with it, the image of Mashenka remained ... in the house of shadows (boarding house ), which itself has become a memory. Having been ill with the past, the hero goes to another station, leaves for the future. The ending was reduced to the rejection of paradise, and "besides this image, there is no other Mashenka and cannot be"

Nabokov thought: “Why am I writing? To have fun, to overcome difficulties. At the same time, I do not pursue any social goals, I do not inspire any moral lessons ... I just love to compose riddles and accompany them with elegant solutions. In these words there is no posture, no quality. Nabokov's motto remains an all-consuming aesthetic service to art as such, and this involuntarily limited the already not so global memory of Russia in emigration.

In her excellent book In Search of Nabokov, the writer Zinaida Shakhovskaya draws attention to a number of significant circumstances. For example, what kind of native nature arises in his books. “The radiant, sweet-singing descriptions of his Russian nature,” she writes, “are similar to the delights of a summer resident, and not a person who is blood connected with the earth. The landscapes are estate, not rural: park, lake, alleys, and mushrooms. But it was as if Nabokov had never known: the smell of hemp heated by the sun, a cloud of chaff flying from the threshing floor, sparks flying under a blacksmith's hammer, the taste of fresh milk or a loaf of rye bread sprinkled with salt ... Everything that the Levins and Rostovs knew, everything that Tolstoy, Turgenev, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Bunin, all Russian noble and peasant writers, with the exception of Dostoevsky, knew as part of themselves. Even more revealing is another observation concerning Nabokov's Russia. “Nabokov's Russia is missing,” she notes, “and the Russian people, there are neither peasants nor philistines. Even a servant is a kind of accessory, but you can’t start a relationship with an accessory. The ball rolled under the nanny's chest of drawers plays a greater role than the nanny herself ... The lowest caste, reflected in Nabokov's work, is governesses and teachers. Nabokov's Russia is a very closed world, with three main characters - father, mother and son Vladimir.

The echo of the homeland continued to accompany the traveler, but in strict accordance with the acoustic law of distance from the sound source.

4. "Protection of Luzhin"

"Early" Nabokov (that is, Sirin) - a novel about a brilliant chess player "Luzhin's Defense" (1930) refutes by its very appearance the naive Ganinsky idea of ​​victoriously overcoming the past. Here the plot unfolds into a global metaphor and takes on an allegorical form, being realized in the life story of a chess genius. Luzhin is an unattainable example of dissimilarity, the absolutization of the creative "I". The novel begins from the moment the hero is expelled from the children's paradise, a symbol of which is the appeal to him by his last name: “What struck him most of all was that from Monday he would be Luzhin.” Surnames are an unbearable objectification of the “I”, violence against a person, enslavement. Instead of the paradise of childhood, the hero is offered "something disgusting with its novelty and obscurity, an impossible, unacceptable world ...". Found in the attic and expelled from paradise again, Luzhin only finds peace when he plunges into his absolute and impregnable world of chess. In this world, he is called to play the role of an eccentric and a genius. The competition between two opponents introduces with unexpected morbidity into Nabokov's world the theme of creative competition, rivalry. The hero turns out to be vulnerable, he is pushed off the pedestal, where, according to the logic of things, he should be alone. Luzhin's competitor is the Italian Turati, "representative of the newest trend in chess": "Luzhin has already met him once and lost..." Luzhin, who thoroughly developed the defense system, could not apply it in the tournament with Turati, because the opponent made an unexpected move. The defense developed by Luzhin "was in vain." Luzhin's mistake is a strong Nabokovian move that strikes the reader with its justified surprise, after which, however, the author makes a much weaker move, presenting Luzhin's behavior in his father-in-law's apartment as the behavior of a standard genius. In the end, Luzhin is crushed by his own genius: overwork, nervous exhaustion, madness - retribution for life beyond all rules. When recovery comes, Luzhin again finds himself in the world of childhood: “and suddenly something radiantly burst, the darkness broke, and remained only in the form of a melting shadow frame, in the middle of which there was a shining blue window. In this blue, small, yellow foliage shone ... "" Apparently, I got home, "- Luzhin said in thought ... "

Thus, there was a "castling": a genius castling with childhood, childhood - with a genius. “... The light of childhood,” continues Nabokov, “directly connected with the current light, poured into the image of his bride.” The idea arises that finding the lost paradise is possible in love. “... she felt in him the ghost of some kind of enlightenment that she herself lacked ...” But the point, of course, was not that she was disappointed (he calmly snored all the wedding night), but that Luzhin was not satisfied with family happiness, but since chess were banned, fate itself imposed a new “party” on him, pushing him to return to his favorite game.

There is a certain private moment in the evil pranks of the fate of the distraught Luzhin - this is the moment of violence against oneself. And, protesting against the obvious mockery of fate, Luzhin commits suicide.

III. The value of Nabokov's work

In general, this snob, this aesthete, this non-democrat, this non-immigrant has an amazing working life. The development of a writer in exile is a very complex and problematic problem. Nabokov did not continue, but began to write. These two works - Russian and English - are symmetrical, like the wings of a butterfly.

In the first years of his life in America (1940), the writer sometimes comes to despair, surviving with odd jobs, but patiently and purposefully builds his "American home", makes useful contacts in prestigious magazines.

Later he teaches at universities and writes a lot; his excellent book Other Shores (1954) does not go unnoticed, but only the scandal that erupted around the novel Lolita (1955), declared "pornographic" by censorship, paradoxically turns Nabokov into a world-famous writer "Lolita" Nabokov conquered the world. And with him the right to everything that he wrote "before" and everything that he writes "after". He also won peace. "Since my girl feeds me..."

In 1959 Nabokov returned to Europe.

He will also write "Pale Fire" and "Hell", "Transparent Things" and "Look at the Harlequins!".

If now in the West, despite the numerous reprints of Nabokov's works, the writer as a whole is treated calmly, if not indifferently and sluggishly, apart from, of course, a narrow circle of followers and admirers, then we now have a wide circle of readers "sick" Nabokov. From Nabokov's prose one learns not only the beautiful Russian language, but also human nobility, perseverance, service to culture. I consider it not just a fashion for a writer banned yesterday, although, of course, a forbidden fruit is always sweet, but rather an interest in genuine literary values.

“All I have is my style,” Nabokov said.

Since 1961 the writer lived in Switzerland, and only ten years after his death (he died in 1977) began his “return” to his homeland: belated, but already forever. On the grave of Nabokov in Montreux is a luxurious blue stone. No cross, no portrait, inscription in French: Vladimir Nabokov, writer, and years of life. You will not see a more aesthetic tombstone.

We cannot fail to pay tribute to the outstanding verbal talent of the writer. Z. Shakhovskaya said this well: “Something new, brilliant and strange entered Russian literature with him and will remain in it. He will - nevertheless, most likely - like Proust, a writer for writers, and not like Pushkin - a symbol and the breath of an entire people. And one more thing: “A king without a kingdom, a lonely exiled prince who “lost his scepter across the sea” (such a phrase is in Nabokov’s American poem “Kingdom by the Sea”) Nabokov – Solux Rex – a lonely king.”

Disputes regarding the depth and originality of Nabokov's socio-philosophical views, in my opinion, will continue, but recent years, without a doubt, have refuted the self-epitaph of the great master, which is not without a well-known game: “Across the dark sky of emigration, Sirin ... flashed like a meteor, leaving behind nothing but a vague uneasiness." Now everyone can see that it turned out just the opposite.

The recognition of the writer is expanding.

I believe that Nabokov is not an immigrant. This is his destiny. But not only. Fate is the line of one life, broken in any way, at any angle, even sharp, even reversed. For Nabokov, this is the afterlife.

In the afterlife they no longer live, but are present, not noticed by anyone, and everyone sees. The very transition from life to death in Nabokov is always a transition from feeling, rather blind and poor in detail, to vision, cluttered and oversaturated with it.

I think that death itself is easy and even funny. It's funny that a person will never know that he has died.

I believe that the significance of Nabokov's work for Russian literature lies primarily in the fact that he comprehended it in the novel The Gift. He made Russian literature the main character of the novel and personified it with the fatherland.

I came to the conclusion that in Russian literature of the 20th century, Nabokov's work is a spiritual challenge and a constant confrontation with the main Russian ethical problems.

Thus, V.V. Nabokov is original, interesting, - this is an innovator - a stylist, this is a phenomenon in literature. Since the literature of the Russian diaspora has not been fully studied, I believe that it is necessary to expand the program for the study of the Russian diaspora.

“My life is a continuous farewell to objects and people who often do not pay any attention to my bitter, crazy, instant greetings” (“In Memory of L. I. Shigaev”).

Everything was written, everything was performed.

The butterfly folded its wings.

As if on the still warm stone of the Crimea, which has not cooled down since 1919.

Bibliography.

Adamovich G. V. Vladimir Nabokov. //October

Bitov A.T. - Clarity of immortality - M. Modern Russia 1990

Erofeeva V.V. Russian prose of Nabokov - M: Pravda 1990.

Zalotussky I. Journey to Nabokov. // New world. 1996. №12.

Lebedev A. At the invitation of Nabokov. // Banner. 1989. No. 10.

1. Test >> Literature and Russian language

   and M.N. Lipovetsky3 and others. Creation L. Ulitskaya is an integral system ... on the pages of stories, essays, novels by V.V. Nabokov, I.A. Bunin, V.F. Khodasevich, A.T. Averchenko, ... and literary character. IN creativity Street Jews with their national...

2. Creation V G Sorokin

   Abstract >> Literature and Russian language

   Conceptualists became an impetus to the literary creativity. Vladimir Sorokin - presenter ... there is a fundamental difference "between Nabokov and some Zhekovsky ... already existing. Hence eclecticism creativity Sorokin, emphatically aloof, ...

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich (pseudonym until 1940 Vladimir S. And rin), writer (April 22, 1899, St. Petersburg - July 2, 1977, Montreux, Switzerland). His father, a lawyer, was a prominent member of the leadership of the Cadet Party before the revolution, then he led the clerical work of the first composition Provisional Government, and in March 1922 he died in Berlin, defending the chief leader of the Cadets, P. Milyukova, from the assassination of monarchist officers.

Geniuses and villains. Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov emigrated from Russia in 1919. He studied French literature at Cambridge, and lived in Berlin from 1922-37, doing literary and translation work. While still in Petrograd, Nabokov privately published two small collections of his poems (1916 and 1918), some poems appeared in magazines. In 1921-29 he regularly published poems in the Ruhl newspaper (Berlin), and in 1923 and 1930 he compiled two books of selected poems.

The first novel he wrote was called Masha(1926), followed by seven more novels until 1937. King, queen, jack(1928) was published as a novel with a sequel in the Vossische Zeitung. Novel Pinhole camera(1932/33) gained such popularity in the West that by 1963 it had been translated into 14 languages.

In 1937, Nabokov moved to Paris, where, starting in 1929, all his novels appeared in the journal Sovremennye Zapiski. In the last issue of this magazine (No. 70, 1940), the beginning of the novel was printed Solus Rex, left unfinished. In Paris, Nabokov lived by translations, language lessons and tennis.

The German occupation forced Nabokov to emigrate to the United States. From that time on he wrote in English and also translated into English some significant works of Russian literature (Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov). In addition, he gained scientific fame as an entomologist. In 1948-59 Nabokov taught literature as a professor at Cornell University.

In 1960, he moved to Switzerland (in Montreux), where, in addition to writing new novels (the most famous are Pale flame And Ada), translated into English many of the former. Nabokov died in Switzerland.

In the USSR, Nabokov's works were not published until 1986, when several of his poems and a novel were published. Luzhin's Defense (1929-30).

Nabokov's poems are characterized by a religious mood, human existence appears in them included in the visible and invisible world, which is based on irrational knowledge about the predestination of a person's fate in spiritual world and the frequency of the incarnation of souls. Nabokov's poems are marked by depth, conciseness and clarity.

The conscious attitude to the word expressed in the verses is distinguishing feature and all subsequent novels by Nabokov, in which the spiritual content is pushed into the background for the sake of playing with the most romantic form, incorporating ever new points of view that interrupt the action, parodying literary genres, confusing the reader in the labyrinth of the narrative. His novels and short stories are characterized by paradoxical positions, which determine the multi-layered image, and the aesthetic enjoyment of the art form.

Among the writers of the first emigration, Nabokov occupies a special place. Since he emigrated very young, only in some of his first novels the action takes place entirely or partially on Russian soil. In the novel Masha there is a look at the beginning of emigration, and main character arises only in visions and memories. IN Defense of Luzhin, in a novel about a chess player, the author introduces the reader into a borderline situation where genius and mental illness converge; in the background of the novel are memories of Russia and criticism of émigré life in Berlin. In the novel Gift(1937/38) biography of one of the Russian writers of the 19th century. (Chernyshevsky) is intertwined with the fate of his fictional biographer, an aspiring writer.

Other Russians and american novels Nabokov leave the world of these experiences and, first of all - Lolita(1955), a novel on an unusual subject: about an erotic relationship between a man of forty and a precocious twelve-year-old girl; novel, thanks to which Nabokov was entrenched world recognition, but which, perhaps, prevented him from being awarded Nobel Prize. The original, short version of this novel Wizard(1940) was first published in 1986 in English.

Novels ada,orArdor:afamilyChronicle (1969, Hell or Desire) And Pnin (1957, Pnin) develop the theme of the lost Russian culture of the 19th century and, with the help of time shifts in the narrative, reveal one of the most important questions for Nabokov - about the further existence of the past and the meaning of time.

Nabokov's works are alive with the tension that arises from the combination of thoroughness of realistic, research descriptions, lightness surreal images of fantasy, intellectual play with forms and artistic intuition. “Not only his poetry, but also his prose constantly penetrates into such spheres that are best described by the word mysticism” (Setschkareff).

Nabokov left behind, without exaggeration, a huge literary heritage. His main books written in Russian are Mashenka (1926), The King, the Queen, the Jack (1928), The Return of Chorba, The Defense of Luzhin (1930), The Feat (1932), The Circle "(1936), "Gift" (1937-1938), "Invitation to execution", "Spy" (1938) and others. In the same years, he published many poems, poetic dramas: “Grandfather”, “Death”, “Wanderers”, “Plus”, plays in prose, many translations, including for children: “Anya in Wonderland” by L. Catol. In the USA he wrote in English: "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight", "Under the Sign of the Illegitimate", "Lolita", "Phantom Things", "Hell", "Look at the Harlequins!". Translated Russian poetry of the 19th century into English. He translated and commented line by line on "Eugene Onegin", published lectures on Russian literature read at Welshley College and Cornell University.

V. V. Nabokov left a significant dramatic legacy: he wrote nine plays and a script for a film based on the novel Lolita.

The first of the plays, "The Event", was written in Menton in 1938 and appeared in the same year in the fourth issue of the Russian Notes magazine. The next play, The Invention of the Waltz, was written in September 1938 in Cap d'Antibes and published in the eleventh issue of Russian Notes.

The boarding house of Nabokov's prose is densely populated with unsympathetic characters. Gloomy, annoying. Either fake, or cowardly, or frankly vile. They look accordingly. Anger and disappointment are heard in the author's voice: human nature is flawed, dirty, viscous, petty. Now this attentive spy will notice a fleshy wart near the nose on someone’s face, “as if the nostril has turned once again” (“Circle”), then he will smell “a warm, sluggish smell of a not quite healthy, elderly man” (“Mashenka”), and the reader I almost feel bad, but these are still flowers; then he will tell, just like a criminal chronicler, how a mother, having lost her patience, drowned her two-year-old daughter in the bathroom and then bathed herself - the hot water would not disappear (“Vasily Shishkov”). From each person you can get a "weak solution of evil." An unfortunate impression. Cretinism, abomination...

Nabokov was accused of thoughtlessness and lack of spirituality, of immorality, of replacing virtuous pathos with a device. But is it? Let's take a closer look at some of his works.

Reading the novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, one involuntarily plunges into a labyrinth of mirrors, a bizarre world of reflections, which is all the more interesting because behind each reflection we find the elusive features of Nabokov himself.

Exploring the true life of Knight, we, together with the hero of the novel (and what's there, together with Nabokov himself) constantly meet the details of life and character traits that are so well known to true lovers of Nabokov. Sometimes it seems that the author deliberately portrayed himself, who died in the Old World, in the image of Sebastian Knight, and himself, born in America, in the image of the narrator. But for a chess problem lover, this would be too easy. The author deliberately plays with the Reader, giving him the opportunity to see an almost finished portrait of Vladimir Nabokov. But immediately it becomes cloudy; a little more, and now only a pale outline is visible; and then, and at all - only a smile. However, it also dissolves, but only so that we meet again with a living writer on another page. At the same time, the author himself is his books; books that are born on the cover and die on the last page. In any case, you close all of Nabokov's books with a sense of loss of something subtly beautiful.

In general, the theme of reflections in Nabokov's works plays a very important role. Without understanding the significance of this role, it is impossible to achieve an understanding of the entire work of the writer. It is not the author himself who looks at us from the pages of the books, but the reflection of Nabokov's reflection, dressed in a fancy dress and playing a role invented by himself.

Or the first novel by Nabokov-Sirin "Mashenka" - the most "Russian" of Nabokov's novels. In the novel, the whole atmosphere, the air of a certain strangeness, the illusiveness of being, envelops the reader. Here, real destinies are embodied, turned into fictitious ones by Nabokov's talent. Later, in 1954, in "Other Shores" he will set out the true incidents that gave rise to the novel, and will name the true scene of action - the banks of the same Oberez river near Petrograd. Here, as it were, a "lining" of this, in the words of the author, "semi-biographical story" will appear - the garden of his uncle V. I. Rukavshinikov; the Tatar cut of the eyes of the heroine, to whom he again gives a pseudonym - Tamara; and a couple of girlfriends whom caring fate will soon take away from the path; bicycle rides with a lantern charged with magic pieces of carbide. The same Petrograd winter, unfavorable for love, which ended in a dull parting, unlike Mashenka, will not step into twilight, “fluffy smelling of bird cherry”, but into “jasmine-saturated darkness.”

But already in "Mashenka" for the first time the main cross-cutting theme of V. V. Nabokov will declare itself: the theme of two houses. The house where Ganin temporarily lives, main character narrative, is transparent not only for the rumbling trains, but also for the reader - as a real symbol not only of the passage courtyard of exile, but also of the past as such. At the end, the hero leaves him and "will never return again." Moreover, Ganin finally understands that the image of Masha, dear to his heart, also remained forever “there, in the house of shadows, which has already become a memory itself.” And then another house pops up, just under construction.

Perhaps the most characteristic, characteristic of all Nabokov's passing heroes - their maximum egoism, unwillingness to reckon with "others". Ganin does not pity Masha and their love, he pities himself, only himself, whom you will not return, just as you will not return youth and Russia. And the real Mashenka, as he fears not without reason, the wife of a dim and apathetic neighbor in the boarding house Alferov, will kill the fragile past with her “vulgar” appearance ...

The writer Galina Kuznetsova relates a typical conversation in a Russian provincial library in the Jura of France: “I asked about Sirina. - They do, but not much. Difficult. And then, it’s true that at least “Mashenka” is here. I drove and drove and didn't make it. The reader does not like such endings.

Nabokov is an intellectual writer who puts the game of imagination, mind, and fantasy above all else. The questions that concern humanity today - the fate of the intellect, loneliness and freedom, personality and the totalitarian system, love and hopelessness - he refracts in his bright metaphorical word. The stylistic sophistication and virtuosity of Nabokov sharply distinguishes him from our traditional literature. His monumental legacy is just beginning to be published in his homeland. Overall score his creativity ahead; its place in Russian and world literature will be determined later.

In preparing this work, materials from the site http://www.studentu.ru were used.