Kaliningrad State University

Course work

On the subject of the Russian language

Topic: “The artistic world of space in the novel “Mashenka” by V.V. Nabokov"

Completed by: student of KSU Faculty of Philology

Suraeva Svetlana

1. Introduction

1. Brief analysis of the main characters of the novel "Mashenka"
2. The central motif of the novel by V.V. Nabokov
3. Organization of artistic space in the novel "Mashenka"
4. Female images in the novel "Mashenka"
5. Digital symbolism novel by V.V. Nabokov
6. End of the novel

Introduction

Favorite comparison of Vladimir Nabokov, the largest representative Russian diaspora, there was a comparison of literary creativity with a chess game. In chess, it is important not only to find the only correct solution, but also to mislead the opponent, to develop a system of deceptively strong moves, if you want to be cunning.

Of course, chess, especially at such a high intellectual level, is not a game for everyone. Similarly, Nabokov's works are designed for a smart, experienced reader who is able to catch the play of artistic images, unravel the chain of allusions, and bypass the author's linguistic and stylistic "traps". Reading some pages of Nabokov's prose, you often catch yourself thinking that you are solving a complicated crossword puzzle, and a lot of time and effort is spent on unraveling the ingenious plan. But then, when the intellectual difficulties are over, you begin to understand that your efforts and time were not wasted in vain: Nabokov's world is unique and his heroes will remain in memory forever.

Peru of the writer owns works both in Russian and in English. The most famous of them are the novels "Mashenka", "Luzhin's Defense", "Camera Obscura", "The Gift", "Lolita", "Pnin". In addition, Nabokov is the author of translations into English language"Eugene Onegin", "Words about Igor's Campaign", studies about Gogol, lectures on Russian literature.

Therefore, it is not surprising that one of central themes his work - the theme of Russia. This is the same Russia, the image of which rises from the pages of the prose of Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Bunin. And at the same time, Russia is different, Nabokov's: an image-remembrance, colored by the bitter awareness of the forever abandoned homeland.

The novel Mashenka (1926) is particularly indicative in this respect.

Nabokov's man is usually shown as a doll, a corpse, a mechanism - that is, as an alien and incomprehensible, "tightly boarded up world, full of miracles and crimes" ("Mashenka").

The main theme of Nabokov's books is the adventures of a lonely soul rich in feelings in a hostile, mysterious world of foreign countries and alien, incomprehensible and incomprehensible puppet people. This is a different principle of the creative "montage" of the soul. Therefore, it was necessary to stylize the Motherland. The writer often speaks of external life, false and improper, and internal life, real and only desirable. Its characters preserve and protect their complex, endless feelings, pushing aside and sharply evaluating the external "foreign" world and the "other" person. Any external epic action destroys the magical world of internal lyrical movements.

The complex metaphorical language of Nabokov's prose hides a simple and monotonous plot, seeks to distract, captivate, charm the reader with exotic beauty and permanent novelty. But it is worth overcoming his magic, his obsessive rapture with exquisite style and starting over, with the novel Masha, in order to see how the formula of the plot, which is then repeated many times, is formed. She is rather poor, needs constant "scheduling", new moves and verbal embellishments.

The protagonist of the novel, Ganin, has a dream, love and memory, and he lives by them, ”combining them in a symbolic image of Masha, who is coming to him from Russia. These complex beautiful feelings, starting from the outside world, poor and alien to the dreamer (the Berlin pension and its vile inhabitants), fill the emptiness of a solitary and inactive life. They are what Ganin needs, but the real Mashenka began to interfere with his dreams already in Russia: “He felt that love was shrinking from these imperfect meetings, rubbing off.” Real truth and Nabokov's "beautiful" image are incompatible. Therefore, the novel logically ends with Ganin's flight on the eve of Mashenka's arrival, so long and painfully expected by him. He left to cherish and nurture his subtlest feelings and thoughts, protecting them from the intrusion of an "alien" real person. And in vain Nabokov's sister reminded that the house in Rozhdestveno is described in the novel. Ganin, like the author of the book, does not need a house and Masha does not need it, he will wander around the boarding houses with his dreams, despising their dirt and vulgar inhabitants, and will die all alone, as Bunin predicted after an unsuccessful dinner with Nabokov.

Such an attitude to the plot, Oblomov's flight from actions, real events and replacing them with branched descriptions of the dialectics of a dreaming inactive soul and revealing catalogs of "eliminated" objects immediately created problems for Nabokov the novelist. The very genre of the novel was weakened and blurred by all this, its scale, objectivity and epicness were lost.

Brief analysis of the main characters of the novel "Mashenka"

The work of the young Nabokov, despite its apparent artlessness and traditionalism, reveals the features of the poetics of his mature prose. The text "grows" from the central metaphor, the elements of which unfold in the novel into independent thematic motifs. An indication of the metaphor is the technique of literary allusion, brought in Nabokov's later works to exquisite secrecy, but in "Mashenka" realized with a unique author's frankness - with a direct naming of the addressee. The reference is placed in the conditional core of the text, at a point of high lyrical tension, at the moment of the hero’s symbolic acquisition of a soul, in the scene on the windowsill of the “gloomy oak closet”, when 16-year-old Ganin dreams of Mashenka. "And this minute, when he sat ... and waited in vain for Fetov's nightingale to click in the poplars - this minute Ganin now rightly considered the most important and sublime in his whole life."

A. Fet's poem "The Nightingale and the Rose" not only appears in the text in the form of a hidden quotation, but becomes the dominant metaphor of the whole novel. The drama of the plot of Fetov's poem is due to the different temporal involvement of lyrical protagonists: the rose blooms during the day, the nightingale sings at night.

You sing when I doze

I bloom when you sleep...

Wed Nabokov: Ganin is a character of the present, Mashenka is of the past. The connection of heroes is possible in a space devoid of time dimensions, such as a dream, a dream, a memory, a meditation ... Nabokov's structural solution of the theme refers us to such works as Byron's "Dream", a poem about the poet's first love addressed to Mary Ann Chaworth, "Ode to the Nightingale" by J. Keats and to the already named poem by A. Fet "The Nightingale and the Rose".

The protagonist of the novel, Ganin, has some traits of a poet whose work is supposed to be in the future. Evidence of this is his dreamy idleness, vivid imagination and ability to "creative exploits". Ganin is an exile, the surname is phonetically encoded in emigrant status, lives in Berlin, in a Russian boarding house, among the "shadows of his exile dream" Cf. from Fet:

Paradise eternal exile,

I am the spring guest, the singing wanderer...

The second line of the quote speaks in the text of "Mashenka" as follows: "... longing for a new foreign land especially tormented him (Ganina. - N. B.) just in the spring."

In the portrait of Ganin, there is a hint of bird features: eyebrows that “spread open like light wings”, “a sharp face” - cf. sharp beak of a nightingale. Podtyagin says to Ganin: "You are a free bird."

The nightingale is a traditional poetic image of the singer of love. His songs make you forget about the dangers of the day, turn the dream of happiness into a tangible reality. This is precisely the peculiarity of Ganin's dreams: a happy past for him is transformed into the present. The hero says to the old poet: “I have begun a wonderful romance. I am going to her now. I am very happy".

The nightingale begins to sing in the first days of April. And in April, the action of the novel “Tender and foggy Berlin, in April, in the evening” begins, the main content of which is the hero’s memories of his first love. The repetition of the experience is reflected in the parodic spring emblems that mark the space (internal) of the Russian boarding school where the hero lives: sheets from the old calendar, “the six first days of April”, are attached to the doors of the rooms.

The singing of the nightingale is heard with the onset of twilight and lasts until the end of the night. The memories of love that Ganin indulges in in the novel are always nocturnal in nature. It is also symbolic that the signal to them is the singing of Ganin’s boarding house neighbor, Mashenka’s husband: “Ganin could not sleep... And in the middle of the night, behind the wall, his neighbor Alferov began to sing... When the train trembled, Alferov’s voice mingled with rumble, and then surfaced again: tu-u-u, tu-tu, tu-u-u. Ganin visits Alferov and learns about Mashenka. The plot move parodic embodies an ornithological observation: nightingales flock to the sounds of singing, and next to one singer, the voice of another is immediately heard. The example of old singers affects the beauty and length of the songs. The singing of the nightingale is divided into periods (knee) by short pauses. This compositional principle sustained in the hero's memories, Berlin reality plays the role of pauses in them.

Ganin plunges into "living dreams of the past" at night; signal is his phrase: "I'm going to her now." It is characteristic that all his meetings with Mashenka are marked by the onset of darkness. For the first time, the hero sees Masha "on a July evening" at a country concert. The semantics of the nightingale song in the novel is realized in the sound accompaniment of the scene. I quote: "And among ... the sounds that became visible ... among this flickering and popular music ... for Ganin there was only one thing: he looked in front of him at a chestnut braid in a black bow ... ".

The acquaintance of Ganin and Mashenka takes place “one evening, in a park gazebo ...”, all their dates are at the end of the day. “On a sunny evening” Ganin came out “from the bright estate into the black, murmuring dusk ...”. "They didn't talk much, it was too dark to talk." And a year later, “on this strange, cautiously darkening evening ... Ganin, in one short hour, fell in love with her more sharply than before and fell out of love with her, as if forever.”

The dates of Ganin and Mashenka are accompanied by accompaniments of the sounds of nature, while human voices are either muffled or completely “turned off”: “... the trunks creaked ... And to the sound of the autumn night, he unbuttoned her blouse ... she was silent ... ". Another example: Silently, with a beating heart, he leaned towards her ... But there were strange rustles in the park ... ".

The last meeting of the heroes also takes place at nightfall: “It was getting dark. The suburban train has just been delivered ... ". Characteristic in this scene is a change in orchestration: the lively voices of nature are muffled by the noise of the train (“the car rumbled”) - this sound is associated with the expulsion of the hero. So, about the boarding house: "The sounds of morning cleaning interfered with the noise of trains." It seemed to Ganin that “the train passes invisibly through the thickness of the house itself ... its rumble shakes the wall ...”.

The re-experienced romance with Masha reaches its climax on the night before her arrival in Berlin. Looking at the dancers, “who danced silently and quickly in the middle of the room, Ganin thought: “What happiness. It will be tomorrow, no, today, after all, it is already past midnight... Tomorrow all his youth, his Russia, will arrive.” In this last night scene (cf. the first meeting at a dacha concert), the dance is a hint of music. However, the music does not sound, the repetition fails (“What if this complicated solitaire never comes out a second time?” Ganin thinks), and happiness does not come true.

The disappearance of music in the finale is read in the context of the leading thematic motif of the novel, the musical motif: the song of the nightingale. It is the sound content that gives Ganin's memories the meaning of nightingale melodies. “Mashenka,” Ganin repeated again, trying to put into these three syllables everything that sang in them before - the wind, and the hum of telegraph poles, and happiness, - and some other secret sound, which was the very life of this word. He lay on his back, listening to his past.

The song of the bird subsides at dawn (cf. Nabokov: “Through the window the night has subsided”). And together with him, magical reality disappears, “the life of memories that Ganin lived”, now it “became what it really was far away.

With the onset of the day, the exile of the hero begins. “At dawn, Ganin climbed onto the captain's bridge ... Now the east was white ... On the shore somewhere the dawn began to play ... he felt piercingly and clearly how far from him was the warm bulk of his homeland and that Masha, whom he loved forever. The images of the motherland and the beloved, which, as researchers have repeatedly noted, converge in the novel, remain within the limits of the nightingale's song, transform from biographical to poetic; in other words, they become the theme of creativity.

The image of the heroine, Masha, takes on the features of Fetov's rose. Numerous examples of covert quoting testify to this. So, from a letter from Mashenka to Ganin: "If you return, I will torture you with kisses ...". Wed Fet: "I'll kiss you, I'll pump you ...". Ganin constantly recalls the tenderness of Mashenka's image: "tender swarthy," "a black bow on the gentle back of the head." Wed Fet: "You are as tender as morning roses ...". Alferov about Mashenka: "My wife is clean." Fet: "You are so pure ...". The poet Podtyagin says of the enamored Ganin: "It is not for nothing that he is so illumined." In Fet: a rose gives the nightingale "glow dreams."

The image of a rose in the capacious system of the flower code occupies the main place. The rose is a symbol of love, joy, but also mystery. And it is no coincidence that in the novel, where many flowers are scattered, the rose, symbolizing the hero's first love, is not named even once. This is a mirror reflection of the naming technique: the heroine, whose name the work is titled, never appears in reality.

A hint of the hidden meaning inherent in the name is already made in the first lines of the novel: “I inquired about your name for a reason,” the voice continued carelessly. - In my opinion, every name ... every name obliges.

The image of a rose as an allegory of Mashenka appears in an encrypted reference to the phraseology of another language. So, Ganin, sitting next to Alferov, "felt some kind of exciting pride at the memory that Mashenka gave him, and not her husband, her deep fragrance."

Love in the mind of the hero is connected with a mystery. So, about the summer romance of Ganin and Mashenka: “they didn’t know anything at home ...”. And later, in St. Petersburg: "All love requires solitude, cover, shelter ...".

Re-experiencing his feeling in Berlin, Ganin hides it, limiting himself to hints that only emphasize the mystery of what is happening. Ganin tells Clara: “I have an amazing, unheard-of plan. If he leaves, then the day after tomorrow I will not be in this city. Ganin makes a pseudo-confessional statement to the old poet about the beginning of a happy romance.

An example of the desacralization of feelings, the disclosure of secrets, demonstrativeness and its corresponding loss is the behavior of Lyudmila, Ganin's mistress, in the novel. Lyudmila tells Clara "details that have not yet cooled down, terribly certain," invites her friend along with Ganin to the cinema to "flaunt her novel ...".

Concealment of the iconic image of the heroine, similar to the technique of default true name, is read in Nabokov's novel as an allusion to Shakespeare's sonnets addressed to his beloved. The features named in the verses served as the definition of her conditional image; in Shakespeare studies she is called the “Swarty Lady of the Sonnets”. The parody of the reference is due to the external similarity of the heroines and their spiritual contrast.

On the other hand, Mashenka's "gentle swarthyness" is a poetic echo of the Song of Songs. Wed “Do not look at me that I am swarthy; for the sun has scorched me..." Another condition for the allusion is the fragrance associated with the symbolic image of the heroine, the rose maiden, - in the Song of Songs - associated with the image of the beloved: "... and the incense of your colors is better than all fragrances!"

The third source, with which the image of Masha, the rose-maiden, is associated, is the "Flowers of Evil" by C. Baudelaire. The parodic reference to the beloved, mulatto Jeanne Duval, sung by the poet, who is unnamed in the texts, is associated with the name of the collection. Keeping the lyrical content, the allusion of Nabokov's image leads to Baudelaire's Poems in Prose, in particular, to L'Invitation au Voyage, in which the poet addresses his beloved using the metaphor of flowers.

The category of smell is affirmed in Masha as the tangible presence of the soul. The whole semantic series is embodied in the text: smell - spirit of flesh - spirit - breath - soul. The creative function of memory is realized in the restoration of the smells of the past, which is perceived as the animation of the images of the past: "... as you know, memory resurrects everything except smells, and nothing so fully resurrects the past as the smell once associated with it."

The uniqueness of the smell is equated with the uniqueness of the soul. So, Ganin about Masha: "... this incomprehensible, the only smell of her in the world." The smell of Mashenka captures the sweet aroma of a rose. “And her perfumes were inexpensive, sweet, they were called Tagore.” The parodic move - the use of the name of the famous Indian poet R. Tagore, the author of fragrant and sweetish poetic works, in the name of the spirits - is associated with his famous poem "The Soul of the People", which became the national anthem of India. This ironic mention of Tagore by Nabokov is apparently provoked by the huge popularity of the Indian poet in Soviet Russia in the 20s.

So, Nabokov's resurrection of memories is connected with the resurrection of his living spirit, the smell, which is carried out literally: how to breathe soul into the image. The artistic embodiment of the motif "smell - spirit - breath - soul" goes back to the biblical text: "And the Lord God created man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Wed Nabokov about Panin: "He was a god recreating a lost world ...".

The smell revives already the first scenes of the hero's memories: "Summer, the estate, typhus ... The nurse ... she gives off a damp smell, the old-girl coolness." At the dacha concert, where Tanin sees Mashenka for the first time, "there was a smell of candy and kerosene."

The condition of resurrection - the inhalation of the spirit - the smell - the soul is realized not only in relation to the images of the past, but also in relation to the author of the memoirs, Ganin. On a Berlin street, Ganin smells carbide: “... and now, when he accidentally breathed in carbide, he remembered everything at once ... "," he left the bright estate in the black murmuring twilight ... ". The hero comes to life in the revived past, although until recently, before the news of Masha, he felt "sluggish", "limp", turned into a shadow on the screen , i.e., those who have lost their living soul.

The development phase of the motive "soul - breath" is associated with the arrival of love. The hero’s conditional acquisition of a soul occurs in the already mentioned scene with “Fetov’s nightingale”] I will quote in full: “Ganin opened the frame of the colored window wider, sat down with his feet on the windowsill ... and the starry sky between the black poplars was such that he wanted take a deep breath. And this minute ... Ganin now rightly considered the most important and sublime in his whole life. The reverse version is also embodied in the text: the loss of love leads to the death of the soul. So, Ganin, having left his homeland, Masha, feels like "the soul is hiding." Ganin's resurrection is connected with his returned feeling for Mashenka. "Mashenka, Mashenka," whispered Ganin. - Masha ... - and took in more air and froze, listening to how the heart is beating.

In the novel, Ganin, a poet whose work is supposed to be in the future, takes on a new breath, while the old poet, Podtyagin, whose work belongs to the past, suffocates, dies. The scene is played twice, such a rehearsal of death frees the plot from possible melodrama. At night, Podtyagin, during a heart attack, knocks on Ganin: “leaning his head against the wall and catching air with his gaping mouth, old Podtyagin stood ... And suddenly Podtyagin took a breath ... It was not just a sigh, but a wonderful pleasure, from which his features immediately revived ". At the end of the novel, Podtyagin dies. "His breathing... such a sound... scary to listen to," Ganin tells Mrs. Dorn. "...Pain like a wedge dug into the heart - and the air seemed inexpressible, unattainable bliss." Mashenka also presents a parodic reproduction of the theme of the loss of the soul, as the loss of a passport, the cause that actually causes Podtyagin's heart attack and death. The hero reports this to Clara in this way: “Exactly: he dropped it. Poetic license... Lose your passport. Cloud in your pants, nothing to say."

Life thereby imitates art, a parallel arises within the framework of the parodic designation of the theme of the passport as a bureaucratic identity of the soul. Russian émigré poet Podtyagin dies after losing his passport. Indicative in this context is Nabokov's statement: "The true passport of a writer is his art."

The central motif of the novel by V.V. Nabokov

The central motif of the novel. The starting condition for the resurrection of images of the past is a picture, a snapshot. Ganin is immersed in a novel-memory when he sees a photograph of Mashenka. Shows her Ganina Alferov, husband. “My wife is lovely,” he says. - ... Quite young. We got married in Poltava ... ". Poltava - the place of marriage of the elderly Alferov and the young Masha - a parodic reference; A. Pushkin's poem "Poltava", where the young Maria runs to the old man Mazepa.

As the space of the past comes to life in the memory of the hero, acquires sounds and smells, the Berlin world loses its living signs, turns into a photograph: “It seemed to Ganin that a strange city passing in front of him was just a moving picture.”

For the old poet Podtyagin, Russia is a picture, he says about himself: “... because of these birches, I have been all my life overlooked all of Russia." The selected single visual registration of the world determines the nature of his work. Poems-pictures of Podtyagin, respectively, were published in the "magazines" World Illustration "and" Picturesque Review "".

The loss of signs of real existence, in particular the smell-soul, causes the transformation of a living image into a visual object, which is equivalent to its dying, destruction. Hence, Russia, which remained only in the visual memory of other characters in the novel, disappears from reality. “And most importantly,” Alferov chattered, “after all, it’s over with Russia. They washed it off, as you know, if you smear it with a wet sponge on a black board, on a painted mug ... ".

This condition is realized many times in the novel. So, the death of Podtyagin is preceded by a conditional transition of his image into a photograph. “The picture, for sure, was wonderful: the astonished, swollen face was swimming in a grayish haze.” Wed further: "... Clara gasped when she saw his cloudy, upset face."

One of the active forces that destroy the smell is proclaimed in the novel by the wind. Ganin, meeting with Mashenka in St. Petersburg, “in the wind, in the cold”, feels how “love is shrinking, rubbing.

The ominous image of the wind, destroying the smell/living presence of the soul, is transformed in the narrative into the "iron drafts" of exile. The destructive function of the wind is a reference to A. Blok's poem "The Twelve".

Black evening.

White snow.

Wind, wind!

A person does not stand on his feet.

Wind, wind

In all God's world!

It is precisely this devastating role that the wind plays in the fate of the old poet Podtyagin. Going with Ganinsh to the police department, "he shivered from the fresh spring wind." On the imperial, Podtyagin forgets his hard-to-find passport, because "suddenly he grabbed his hat - a strong wind was blowing."

Already in "Mashenka" there is a literal reading phraseological turnover, which was widely used in the mature works of Nabokov. An example is the hat mentioned above. Leaving the police department, Podtyagin joyfully exclaims: “Now it’s in the bag,” believing that he will finally get out of Berlin. On the way to get a visa to the French embassy, ​​the wind blows off his hat, grabbing it, the poet forgets his passport on the seat.

The destruction of smell as the presence of a living soul is opposed in the novel by its preservation by translation into creativity, which is identified with the translation into immortality. So, Ganin, looking at the dying Podtyagin, “thought that, after all, Podtyagin left something, at least two pale verses, bloomed for him, Ganin, a warm and immortal being: this is how they become immortal "cheap perfume...". Eternal flowering, preservation of aroma/soul is possible for poetic images that belong to a creative space. Wed the absence of fresh flowers in the ghostly world of exile: in the boarding house there are two empty crystal vases For flowers, faded

from fluffy dust "Ganin's life to the memories of Mashenka is" colorless longing.

The route of the "smell-soul" motif, reaching the category of immortality, returns to the original dominant image of the novel - a rose, a flower afterlife with which the idea of ​​the resurrection is also connected.

The novel "Mashenka" realizes the poetic resurrection of the world of the past, the hero's first love under the sign of sub rosa, which creates a parodic opposition to the canonical literary image of a rose - a symbol of past love and lost youth.

Organization of artistic space in the novel "Mashenka"

In the novel "Mashenka" all female images are associated with a flower code. The hostess of the boarding house, Mrs. Dorn, in German: thorn, is a parodic detail of a withered rose. Mrs. Dorn is a widow (a thorn in flower symbolism is a sign of sadness), “a small, deaf woman”, that is, deaf to the songs of the nightingale. Outwardly, she looks like a dried flower, her hand is "light as a faded leaf", or "a wrinkled hand, like a dry leaf ...". She held "an enormous spoon in a tiny withered hand."

Ganina's lover Lyudmila, whose image is marked by mannerisms and pretentiousness, "dragged along a lie ... exquisite feelings, some kind of orchids, which she seemed to passionately love ...". In the novel Mashenka, the orchid flower - the emblem of "refined feelings" - is a parodic allusion to its similar embodiment in the poetry of the beginning of the century.

The images of birds and flowers, most exotic in the poetry of the beginning of the century, are reproduced by Nabokov with lyrical simplicity, which led to their renewal.

The image of Clara is associated with the flowers of the orange tree, a symbol of virginity. Every morning, on her way to work, Clara buys "oranges from a hospitable saleswoman." At the end of the novel, at a party, Clara is "in her unchanged black dress, languid, flushed from cheap orange liqueur." Black dress in this context - mourning for the failed female happiness, i.e., a parodic sign of eternal femininity.

The motif of smell connected with the symbolism of flowers in the novel acquires the meaning of characterizing the characters. So, in Clara's room "it smelled of good perfume." Lyudmila "smell of perfume, in which there was something untidy, stale, old, although she herself was only twenty-five years old." Neither Klara nor Lyudmila is attracted to Ganin, although both are in love with him.

The smell of Alferov, a worn out soul that has lost its freshness, is similar to the smell of Lyudmila. “Alferov sighed noisily; a warm, languid smell of a not quite healthy, elderly man gushed out. There is something sad about this smell."

The researchers noted that the inhabitants of Russian Berlin in the novel "Mashenka" are reproduced as inhabitants of the world of shadows. Nabokov's émigré world contains a reference to "Hell" in " Divine Comedy". This is also reflected in smells. I will give two examples. In the police department, where emigrants come for an exit visa, there is "a queue, a crush, someone's rotten breath." Farewell letter Lyudmila Ganin tore it apart and "threw it from the windowsill into the abyss, from where the smell of coal wafted."

The image of Lyudmila is also associated with the variant of the profanation of smell as a sign of the soul. Receiving her letter, the hero notices that "the envelope was strongly perfumed, and Ganin thought for a moment that scenting the letter is the same as spraying perfume on boots in order to cross the street." Ganin's interpretation is a parody reflection of one of the names of the orchid (the flower-sign of Lyudmila) - Sabot de Venus.

Smells and sounds enliven Masha's space. It is symptomatic that the first scene of the novel takes place in the dark, sounds and smells become signs of the manifestation of life, the beginning of action. Ganin notes Alferov's "brisk and annoying voice", and Alferov recognizes Ganin by the sound, whose national identity takes on a grotesque meaning. Alferov says: “In the evening, I hear you clear your throat behind the wall, and immediately by the sound of the cough I decided: a fellow countryman.”

The motif of sounds in the novel goes back to the image of the nightingale. Ganin and Alferov turn out to be rivals and show similar "bird" traits. Alferov "whistles sugary", he has "an oiled tenor". At night, Ganin hears how he sings with happiness. His singing is a parody version of the nightingale's songs: "... Alferov's voice mixed with the rumble of trains, and then popped up again: tu-u-u, tu-tu, tu-u-u."

In the very first scene of the novel, both rivals, like two birds, find themselves locked in the “cage” of a stopped elevator. To Ganin's question: "What were you in the past?" - Alferov replies: “I don’t remember. Is it possible to remember what was in past life, - maybe an oyster or, say, bird...".

As well as female images in the novel are marked with flower symbols, the males reveal a connection with songbirds. In guise male characters voice is selected first. So, about the poet Podtyagin: "He had an unusually pleasant voice, quiet, without any increase, the sound is soft and dull." The sound of his voice reflects the character of Podtyagin's poetic talent, the epithet "matt" refers to his picture poems published in magazines about painting.

The images of a bird and a flower go back to the dominant metaphor of the novel - “a nightingale and a rose”, hence their obligatory pair appearance in the text. The repeated parodic projection of the metaphor creates the variability of pairs in the novel.

The image of Mashenka in the novel is marked by another incarnation of the soul - a butterfly. Ganin recalls how "she ran along a rustling dark path, a black bow flickered like a huge mourning room ..."

The leading images of the novel, the bird and the flower, appear like watermarks in the marginal details of "Mashenka", while maintaining the playful variety of options. Leaving Lyudmila, Ganin looks "at the painting of open glass - a bush of cubic roses and a peacock fan." In the Manor where Ganin lived, “a tablecloth embroidered with roses” and a “white piano” that “came to life and rang”. In the final scene of the novel, Ganin goes out into the morning city and sees "a wagon loaded with huge bundles of violets ..." and how « With black branches fluttered ... sparrows.

The symbolism of the nightingale and the rose, vector images of the text, states their involvement in both the real and other worlds, which not only justifies the presence of these images in the two-world space of the novel, but also ensures its fusion. Ganin "it seemed that this past life, brought to perfection, passes in an even pattern through Berlin everyday life."

Female images in the novel "Mashenka"

The organization of artistic space in the novel "Mashenka" deserves special attention. It seems that the world of the past, Russia, and the world of the present, Berlin, are conditionally overturned into each other. “What happened that night, that delightful event of the soul, rearranged the light prisms of his whole life, overturned the past on him.” At the end of the novel, Ganin, having relived his love for Mashenka, leaves the house at dawn - the past and the present open defiantly: “Everything seemed not so staged, fragile, upside down, as in a mirror. And just as the sun gradually rose higher and the shadows dispersed to their places, in the same way, in this sober light, that life of memories that Ganin lived became what it really was - the distant past.

However, throughout the entire narrative, the novel space forms a vertical structure of two spheres turned towards each other (past and present), separated by a water surface that ensures their mutual reflection. The role of the watershed in the novel is played by the river, canal, sea, tears, mirror, shiny asphalt, window glass etc.

The river, which in the past Ganin is associated with his love (“He met Masha every day, on the other side of the river ...”), in Podtyagin’s poems - with Russia (“A full moon shines over the edge, / Look how the river wave shines” , p. 138), in the present it changes its semantic content, from a symbol of happiness it becomes a symbol of its loss. Water acquires the meaning of the border between the living world of the homeland and the other world of exile. The river is synonymous with the sea, crossing which the hero finds himself in the space of the world of shadows. “The ship on which he (Ganin. - N. B .) hit, it was Greek, dirty ... a fat-headed Greek child burst into tears ... And the fireman climbed out onto the deck, all black, with eyes lined with coal dust, index finger". The "Greek ship" in the context of Ganin's emigration is read as a reference to the "Odyssey", the hero of which, in his sea voyage, ends up in the "other" world. The image of the "fireman with a ruby ​​on his index finger" is an allusion to Dante's Divine Comedy. The parodic resemblance of a stoker to a demon, namely in the poem Dante Charon is a demon. I quote from the translation of M. Lozinsky: “And the demon Charon calls a flock of sinners, turning his eyes like coals in ashes.,.” gives Ganin's journey the meaning of a crossing over Acheron.

A hint of Acheron appears again in the novel, when Ganin and Podtyagin go to the police department for a passport. Podtyagin, who finally has the hope of moving to France (to another country of emigration; cf. Dante: Acheron separates the second circle of hell from the third), turns to Ganin: “The water sparkles gloriously,” Podtyagin noted, breathing with difficulty and pointing outstretched hand on the channel.

The very episode of the two poets going to the police department, the setting of which resembles the description from the III song "Hell", is a parodic reference to the "Divine Comedy". There - the senior poet, Virgil, accompanies the youngest, Dante, at Nabokov's - the youngest, Ganin, accompanies the eldest, Podtyagin. The parodic resemblance between Podtyagin and Virgil is enshrined in the sound of the voice. Virgil appears before Dante, hoarse from a long silence. Podtyagin speaks in a "matte, slightly lisping voice." Virgil is a dead poet, Podtyagin is still a living person, but as a poet he has already died. He says about himself to Ganin: “Now, thank God, I don’t write poetry. Basta. The last Italian word is another ironic reference to Dante.

The water border is a horizontal section of the novel's vertically organized artistic space. Russia and the past are immersed at the bottom of memory/at the bottom of the water. The condition of immersion in water is realized in the involvement in the seabed of different characters in the novel. So, Podtyagin "looks like a big gray-haired guinea pig", Alferov says that in a past life he was," perhaps an oyster, Mashenka's voice trembles in the tube, "like in a sea shell", in one of her letters to Ganin she admires the poem: "You are my little pale pearl."

Podtyagin, looking at the sugar at the bottom of the glass, thinks "that there is something Russian in this spongy piece...". In Clara's room hangs "a copy of Becklin's Isle of the Dead." The island depicted in the picture becomes synonymous with the Russian boarding house, which remained above the surface of the water into which the motherland plunged. The condition is enshrined in the topography: on one side the house faces the railway track, the other - on the bridge, which makes it seem as if it is standing above the water. Clara, whose windows overlook the bridge, has the impression that she lives in a house "floating somewhere."

Diving to the bottom of the water as a variant of the parodic plot is reproduced several times in the novel. So, Ganin, leaving his abandoned mistress, hears how “in the courtyard a wandering baritone roared in German “Stenka Razin”” . IN folk song Ataman Stenka Razin, at the request of his comrades, throws the Persian princess he loves into the Volga.

Raises with a powerful swing

He is a beautiful princess

And throws her overboard

Into the oncoming wave.

Another example of the parodic use of the situation of drowning: the meeting of Ganin and Mashenka in St. Petersburg, where their summer love actually dies, "they met under the arch where - in Tchaikovsky's opera - Lisa dies."

Death, oblivion, the transition to the status of the past are embodied in the novel as a downward movement. So, the dying Podtyagin feels that he is falling "into the abyss." Ganin's departure for emigration, from Sevastopol to Istanbul, is embodied in the geographical route down to the south. The last meeting between Ganin and Mashenka on the platform of the blue carriage ends with Mashenka "getting down at the first station", i.e., going down, becoming a memory.

It is from the bottom of memory that the hero extracts his past. Ganin is endowed with "mirror black pupils". The past, into which he peers so intently, arises as a reflection, and from the space of the bottom / bottom moves to a height, above the mirror surface of the water boundary. “And suddenly you are rushing through the night city ... looking at the lights, catching in them a dazzling memory of happiness - female face, surfaced again after many years of worldly oblivion.

The resurrection of Mashenka's image is associated with its spatial movement in height, i.e., on the other side of the mirror. “Really... it's... possible...” the letters appeared in a fiery, careful whisper, repeating in the sky Ganin's thought about Mashenka's return to his life. Fascinated by his recollection/reflection, Ganin himself, as it were, moves to the center of this resurrected past, now located in the upper part of the novel space, which, in turn, shifts the world of Berlin and seems to him to be located below. Ganin goes out for a walk around Berlin, “he ... climbed on top of the bus. At the bottom streets spilled."

The world of homeland and the world of exile are reflected in each other. In the estate of Ganin, there is a picture: "a horse's head drawn in pencil, which, having blown its nostrils, floats on the water." At the end of the novel, while packing things into a suitcase, Ganin discovers "rosary beads, yellow as horse teeth." In the gazebo, while meeting Masha, the hero notices with annoyance "that the black silk sock is torn at the ankle." In Berlin, among the things he finds "a tattered silk sock that has lost its pair." The effect of reflection is sometimes realized literally in this first novel by Nabokov, for example, “he is in the mirror of the hallway (Ganin. - N. B.) I saw the reflected depth of Alferov’s room ... and now it was scary to think that his past was in someone else’s table ”- in Alferov’s table there is a photograph of Mashenka.

The words of the drunk Alferov serve as a parodic indication of the vertical axis of the novel world: “I’m in pieces, I don’t remember what perpe ... perped ... perpendicular is, - and now it will be Mashenka ...”. The vertical organization of the space of the novel "Mashenka" is a structural reference to Dante's poem. “Washed” by immersion in Letheian waters, the reference returns to another Nabokovian text: in the novel “Luzhin’s Defense” in the hero’s office “a bookcase topped with ... Dante in bathing helmet."

Movement up/down is implemented literally in the novel "Mashenka" as the mechanics of the beginning and end of the story. In the first scene, Ganin takes the elevator to the boarding house (this corresponds to further lifting from the bottom of the memory of the past) - in the finale, the hero goes down the stairs, leaves the boarding house, and his past again sinks to the bottom of memory.

The vertical movement of the plot ascent/descent is projected onto one of the main devices of the poetics of the novel. It can be formulated as a reduction of the traditional pathos love lyrics, pathetic clichés and a parallel elevation/poeticization of the category of simple, sweet, natural, valued as domestic, everyday, native. One example of a decrease can be the scene already cited above of the conditional acquisition of a soul by the hero, which takes place on the windowsill of the “gloomy oak closet”. In order to reduce the pathos of the resurrection theme, this locus was chosen by the author as a point of contact between two worlds: Russian and Berlin. In Mrs. Dorn's boarding house: "a toilet cell, on the door of which there were two crimson zeros, deprived of their legitimate tens, with which they once made up two different Sunday afternoon in Mr. Dorn's desk calendar.

Along with this, the poetization of the “simple”, “native” is carried out in the novel. So, Mashenka's "cheap perfume", "grass stem sweetness", "landrin candies", funny stupid songs, banal sentimental poems, and the very simple name of the heroine: "To him (Ganin. - N. B.) it seemed these days that she must have some unusual, sonorous name, and when he found out that her name was Masha, he was not at all surprised, as if he knew in advance - and this simple name sounded to him in a new, charming significance ". The name of the heroine acquires the meaning of sweet simplicity, warm naturalness, touching tenderness.

Following Dante, Goethe, Solovyov, Nabokov created in his novel the image of Eternal Femininity, but in her unpretentious, sweet, homely incarnation. And at this level, "Mashenka" by Nabokov is a lyrical antithesis to "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" by A. Blok.

Digital symbolism of the novel by V.V. Nabokov

The digital presence is associated with a marginally reproduced theme of mathematics as an earthly, logical science that opposes itself to poetry. It is personified by Alferov, who forms a couple with Mashenka: “a figure and a flower”. The motif of numbers thus competes with the motif of the nightingale's song in the novel, revealing the poetic content of digital signs.

Here are some examples:

Nine. The meeting between Ganin and Mashenka took place "nine years ago." And, plunging into memories, Ganin again strives to approach the image of Mashenka “step by step, just like then, nine years ago. Ganin fell in love with Masha when they were both 16 years old. Nine years later, Mashenka arrives in Berlin, but on the morning of her arrival, the hero realizes that she has actually died for him, has become "a distant past."

25 years is a fatal age for other heroines of the novel. Lyudmila (she is 25 years old) after Ganin's words about the breakup "lay as if dead." Clara says that on the phone "she had an otherworldly voice." Clara turns 26 on the last night of the novel, but she remains with the other residents of the boarding house in the "house of shadows".

Five - a number traditionally associated with the rose, symbolizing its five petals. Five in the novel is Mashenka's number. Ganin keeps her "five letters". Upon learning of Mashenka's arrival, Ganin sees how in the sky "letters appeared in a fiery careful whisper ... and remained shining for five whole minutes ...". He goes out into the street and notices "five cabs ... five sleepy ... worlds in merchant liveries ...". The resurrection of the image of Mashenka is felt by the hero as his own resurrection, the sign of which is the return of the five senses.

Seven."Seven Russian lost shadows" live in a Berlin boarding house. The involvement of the characters in the other world is read as a reference to the seven deadly sins. The number "seven", with which the fullness of the human image is associated, acquires an obvious parodic meaning in the novel incarnation,

The novel lasts seven days, a closed cycle, a week, the time of the creation of the world. Wed the quotation already cited above that Ganin "was a god recreating a lost world." Seven, the number of the completed period, is usually associated with the transition to a new, unknown, open one, which is how he sees his further way Ganin.

End of the novel

At the end of the novel, Ganin leaves the Russian pension and leaves Berlin. “He chose a train that was leaving in half an hour to the south-west of Germany ... and with pleasant excitement he thought about how he would get through the border without any visas - and there France, Provence, and then the sea.” Even earlier, in a conversation with Clara, Ganin says: "I need to leave ... I'm thinking on Saturday to leave Berlin forever, to wave to the south of the earth, to some port ...". What is the meaning of the Ganinsky route, to the south of the earth, to the sea, to the port?

Even before the memories of Mashenka, Ganin, “feeling longing for a new foreign land,” goes for a walk around Berlin: “Raising the collar of an old mackintosh bought for one pound from an English lieutenant in Constantinople ... he ... staggered through the pale April streets ... and for a long time looked through the window of the shipping company at the wonderful model of Mauritania, at the colored cords connecting the harbors of the two continents on a large map.

The described picture contains a hidden answer: colored cords mark Ganin's route - from Europe to Africa. Ganin, a young poet, feels like a literary descendant of Pushkin. Pushkin is Nabokov's unnamed Virgil, whose name, like main image novel, encrypted by means of allusion.

The hero's surname - Ganin - phonetically arises from the name of Pushkin's famous African ancestor - Hannibal. Significant in this context is the scientific detail of the leading image of the novel, the nightingale, the symbol of the singer of love, the poet, that is, Ganin himself. “Two European species of nightingale are well known: eastern and western. Both species overwinter in Africa." Ganin's path in the opposite direction repeats the path of Hannibal: Russia - Constantinople / Istanbul - Africa. The stop in Berlin is perceived by the hero as a painful pause. Ganin's longing for "a new foreign land" and the proposed route are an allusion to Pushkin's poems:

Will the hour of my freedom come?

It's time, it's time! - I call to her;

Wandering over the sea, waiting for the weather,

Manyu sails ships.

Under the robe of storms arguing with the waves,

Along the freeway of the sea

When will I start freestyle running?

It's time to leave the boring beach

I hostile elements,

And among the midday swells,

Under the sky my Africa,

Sigh about gloomy Russia,

Where I suffered, where I loved

Where I buried my heart.

This 50th stanza from the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, as well as Pushkin's note to it about his African origin, became the object of Nabokov's research many years later. It was published under the title "Abram Hannibal" as the first appendix to the Commentaries and translation of "Eugene Onegin". The scientific research that made up the work was made by Nabokov, of course, later, but his interest in Pushkin was outlined in his early youth, and careful peering / reading into the works and biography of the poet coincide, at least with the choice of his own writing path. Hence, in the image of Ganin, the hero of Nabokov's first novel, a young poet, a conditional descendant of Pushkin, there are signs of the biography of the famous Pushkin ancestor. Wed principle specular reflection past and present in Masha. So, Ganin has "two passports... One is Russian, real, only very old, and the other is Polish, forged." Compare: Abram Hannibal was baptized in 1707. Peter I was his godfather, and the wife of the Polish king Augustus II was his godmother.

Pushkin's hidden presence is also manifested in the dominant metaphor of the novel. Perhaps the plot of the poem "The Nightingale and the Rose" Fet borrowed not directly from the oriental source, but from Pushkin. See his poems "O maiden rose, I am in chains", "Nightingale". It is symptomatic that the reference to Pushkin contains, along with the male and female, the central image of the novel. For example, the description of Masha in the above-mentioned dates of lovers in winter (“Frost, a snowstorm only revived her, and in ice whirlwinds ... he bared her shoulders ... snow fell ... on her bare chest”), is read as a reference to the heroine of Pushkin's poem "Winter. What should we do in the village?

And the maiden comes out on the porch at dusk:

Open neck, chest, and a blizzard in her face!

But the storms of the north are not harmful Russian rose.

How hot the kiss burns in the cold!

So, it is Pushkin's lines, in turn, that serve as an indication of the hidden, unnamed image of Masha - the rose.

Finding the addressee of Nabokov's allusion is extremely important for looking at the structure of the novel. The researchers of "Mashenka" noted the "non-strict frame construction" of the work, "where the embedded text - the hero's memories - is mixed with the framing - the hero's life in Berlin."

Literature

1. V. Nabokov, Krug. Poems, story, stories, M., 1991

2. V.V. Nabokov, Stories. An invitation to execution essays, interviews, reviews, M., 1989

3. Raevsky N.A., Memories of V. Nabokov, Prostor, 1989 No. 2

4. V. Nabokov, Masha

5. V. I. Sakharov, Carried away by fate. Several indisputable and controversial thoughts about Russian emigration and emigrants., RF today, 1998

6. Nora Books, Scaffold in the Crystal Palace. About Russian novels by V. Nabokov, New Literary Review, 1998

The novel "Mashenka", as already mentioned above, despite the seeming ingenuity and traditionalism, reveals the features of the poetics of Nabokov's mature prose. The text "grows" from the central metaphor, the elements of which unfold in the novel into independent thematic motifs. An indication of the metaphor is the technique of literary allusion, implemented in "Mashenka" with a unique author's frankness - with the direct naming of the addressee. The reference is placed in the conditional core of the text, at a point of high lyrical tension, at the moment of the hero’s symbolic acquisition of a soul, in the scene on the windowsill of the “gloomy oak lavatory”, when sixteen-year-old Ganin dreams of Mashenka. “And this minute, when he sat ... and waited in vain for Fetov’s nightingale to click into the poplars - this minute Ganin now rightly considered the most important and sublime in his whole life.”

A. Fet's poem "The Nightingale and the Rose" (1847) not only appears in the text in the form of a hidden quotation, but becomes the dominant metaphor of the whole novel. Nora Books believes that "the drama of the plot of Fetov's poem is due to the different temporal involvement of lyrical protagonists: the rose blooms during the day, the nightingale sings at night" 1 .

You sing when I doze

I bloom when you sleep...

Compare with Nabokov: Ganin is a character of the present, Masha is of the past. The connection of heroes is possible in a space devoid of time dimensions, such as a dream, a dream, a memory, a meditation.

The protagonist of the novel, Ganin, has some traits of a poet whose work is supposed to be in the future. Evidence of this is his dreamy idleness, vivid imagination and ability to "creative exploits". Ganin is an exile, lives in Berlin, in a Russian guesthouse, among "the shadows of his exile dream." Compare with Fet:

Paradise eternal exile,

Spring guest, singing wanderer... 2

The second line of the quotation is echoed in the text of "Mashenka" as follows: "... longing for a new foreign land especially tormented him [Ganin] precisely in the spring."

In the portrait of Ganin, one can find a hint of bird features: eyebrows that “spread open like light wings”, a “sharp face”. Podtyagin says to Ganin: "You are a free bird."

The nightingale is a traditional poetic image of the singer of love. His songs make you forget about the dangers of the day, turn the dream of happiness into a tangible reality. This is precisely the peculiarity of Ganin's dreams: a happy past for him is transformed into the present. The hero says to the old poet: “I have begun a wonderful romance. I am going to her now. I am very happy".

The nightingale begins to sing in the first days of April. And in April, the action of the novel begins ("Tender and foggy Berlin, in April, in the evening", the main content of which is the hero's memories of his first love.

The singing of the nightingale is heard with the onset of twilight and lasts until the end of the night. The memories of love that Ganin indulges in in the novel are always nocturnal in nature. It is also symbolic that the signal to them is the singing of Ganin’s boarding house neighbor, Mashenka’s husband: “Ganin could not sleep... And in the middle of the night, behind the wall, his neighbor Alferov began to sing... When the train trembled, Alferov’s voice mingled with rumble, and then surfaced again: tu-u-u, tu-tu, tu-u-u. Ganin visits Alferov and learns about Mashenka. “The plot move parodic embodies an ornithological observation: nightingales flock to the sounds of singing, and next to one singer, the voice of another is immediately heard. The example of old singers affects the beauty and length of the songs. The singing of the nightingale is divided into periods (knee) by short pauses. This compositional principle is sustained in the hero's memoirs, Berlin reality plays the role of pauses in them.

Ganin plunges into "living dreams of the past" at night; signal is his phrase: "I'm going to her now." It is characteristic that all his meetings with Mashenka are marked by the onset of darkness. For the first time, the hero sees Masha "on a July evening" at a country concert. The semantics of the nightingale song in the novel is realized in the sound accompaniment of the scene. I quote: "And among ... the sounds that became visible ... among this flickering and popular music ... for Ganin there was only one thing: he looked in front of him at a chestnut braid in a black bow ... ".

The acquaintance of Ganin and Mashenka takes place “one evening, in a park gazebo ...”, all their dates are at the end of the day. “On a sunny evening” Ganin came out “from the bright estate into the black, murmuring dusk ...”. "They didn't talk much, it was too dark to talk." And a year later, “on this strange, cautiously darkening evening ... Ganin, in one short hour, fell in love with her more sharply than before and fell out of love with her, as if forever.”

The dates of Ganin and Mashenka are accompanied by the accompaniment of sounds of nature, while human voices are either muffled or completely “turned off”: “... the trunks creaked ... And to the sound of the autumn night, he unbuttoned her blouse ... she was silent ... ". Another example: "Silently, with a beating heart, he leaned towards her ... But there were strange rustles in the park ...".

The last meeting of the heroes also takes place at nightfall: “It was getting dark. The suburban train has just been delivered ... ". Characteristic in this scene is a change in orchestration: the lively voices of nature are muffled by the noise of the train (“the car rumbled”) - this sound is associated with the expulsion of the hero. So, about the boarding house: "The sounds of morning cleaning interfered with the noise of trains." It seemed to Ganin that “the train passes invisibly through the thickness of the house itself ... its rumble shakes the wall ...”.

The re-experienced romance with Masha reaches its climax on the night before her arrival in Berlin. Looking at the dancers, “who danced silently and quickly in the middle of the room, Ganin thought: “What happiness. It will be tomorrow, no, today, after all, it is already past midnight... Tomorrow all his youth, his Russia, will arrive.” In this last night scene, the dance is an allusion to the music. However, the music does not sound, the repetition fails (“What if this complicated solitaire never comes out a second time?” Ganin thinks), and happiness does not come true.

The disappearance of music in the finale is read in the context of the leading thematic motif of the novel, the musical motif: the song of the nightingale. It is the sound content that gives Ganin's memories the meaning of nightingale melodies. “Mashenka,” Ganin repeated again, trying to put into these three syllables everything that sang in them before - the wind, and the hum of telegraph poles, and happiness, - and some other secret sound, which was the very life of this word. He lay on his back, listening to his past.

The song of the bird ceases at dawn (compare Nabokov: “Outside the window the night has subsided”), and with it the magical reality disappears, “the life of memories that Ganin lived”, now it “became what it really was - the distant past”.

With the onset of the day, the exile of the hero begins. “At dawn, Ganin climbed onto the captain's bridge ... Now the east was white ... On the shore somewhere the dawn began to play ... he felt piercingly and clearly how far from him was the warm bulk of his homeland and that Masha, whom he loved forever. The images of the motherland and the beloved, which come together in the novel, remain within the limits of the nightingale's song, transform from biographical to poetic; in other words, they become the theme of creativity.

The image of the heroine, Masha, takes on the features of Fetov's rose. Numerous examples of covert quoting testify to this. So, from a letter from Mashenka to Ganin: "If you return, I will torture you with kisses ...". Compare with Fet: "I'll kiss you, I'll pump you ..." 1. Ganin constantly recalls the tenderness of Mashenka's image: "tender swarthy," "a black bow on the gentle back of the head." Compare with Fet: "You are as tender as morning roses ...". Alferov says about Mashenka: "My wife is pure." Fet: "You are so pure ...". The poet Podtyagin says of the enamored Ganin: "It is not for nothing that he is so illumined." In Fet: a rose gives the nightingale "glow dreams."

The rose is a symbol of love, joy, but also mystery. From the Latin sub rosa - "designation of a secret." And it is no coincidence that in the novel, where many flowers are scattered, the rose, symbolizing the hero's first love, is not named even once. This is a mirror reflection of the naming technique: the heroine, whose name the work is titled, never appears in reality.

Deliberate non-pronunciation of the name, immersion in mystery, or substitution for another, conditional, is a well-known method of sacralization of the image. Love in the mind of the hero is connected with a mystery. So, about the summer romance of Ganin and Mashenka: “they didn’t know anything at home ...”. And later, in St. Petersburg: "All love requires solitude, cover, shelter ...".

Re-experiencing his feeling in Berlin, Ganin hides it, limiting himself to hints that only emphasize the mystery of what is happening. Ganin tells Clara: “I have an amazing, unheard-of plan. If he leaves, then the day after tomorrow I will not be in this city. Ganin makes a pseudo-confessional statement to the old poet about the beginning of a happy romance.

An example of the desacralization of feelings, the disclosure of secrets, demonstrativeness and its corresponding loss is the behavior of Lyudmila, Ganin's mistress, in the novel. Lyudmila tells Clara "certain details that have not yet cooled down, terribly certain", invites her friend to the cinema with Ganin to "flaunt her novel ...".

The texts-addressees should include the poems of A. Fet, connected with the tragically deceased Lazich. Love for Maria Lazich became the secret of the poet's life. Keeping the image of his beloved in his heart, Fet, however, for forty years did not devote a single poem to her. Moreover, as V. Toporov notes, "not naming her name has become the essence of an internal prohibition for the poet" 1 .

In an article by V. Toporov, using the example of four poems by Fet (“Torn out by life ...”, “In silence and darkness”, “You gave me a hand”, “He wished for my madness, who dared ...”) demonstrated how the name Maria Lazich becomes the object of anagramming. This is embodied in the ratio of the sound leitmotif of the verses to the leading image - the rose. So the structural allusion of Nabokov's novel to Fet merges with the plot one - about the love of a nightingale and a rose.

In the novel "Mashenka" all female images are associated with a flower code. The hostess of the boarding house, Mrs. Dorn, in German: "thorn", is a parodic detail of a withered rose. Mrs. Dorn is a widow (a thorn in flower symbolism is a sign of sadness), “a small, deaf woman”, that is, deaf to the songs of the nightingale. Outwardly, she looks like a dried flower, her "wrinkled hand, like a dry leaf ...". She held "an enormous spoon in a tiny withered hand."

Ganina's lover Lyudmila, whose image is marked by mannerisms and pretentiousness, "dragged along a lie ... exquisite feelings, some kind of orchids, which she seemed to passionately love ...". "In the novel Mashenka, the orchid flower - the emblem of refined feelings - is a parodic allusion to its similar embodiment in the poetry of the beginning of the century." A specific addressee may be a poem by K. Balmont "Orchid".

Leaning over the kissing cup,

I inhaled a thin sweet poison,

Leleyno-unsteady, multi-jet.

Like someone's soft mouth

More tender than the mouth of a fairy in love,

That smell of orchids

It intoxicates, intoxicates and drinks the will ...

Compare Nabokov’s reduced reproduction of the same scene with Lyudmila: “And longing and ashamed, he felt how senseless tenderness ... makes him cling without passion to the purple rubber of her yielding lips, but this tenderness did not drown out the calm, mocking voice advising him : "And what, they say, if you throw it away now."

The above poem by K. Balmont was included in the collection "Birds in the Air", which reflected the poet's impressions of a trip to Mexico. The images of birds and flowers, most exotic in the poetry of the beginning of the century, are reproduced by Nabokov with lyrical simplicity, which led to their renewal. Compare the remark from The Gift: “... once impoverished words like “rose”, having completed the full circle of life, now received in verses, as it were, unexpected freshness ...”.

The image of Clara is associated with the flowers of the orange tree, a symbol of virginity. Every morning, on her way to work, Clara buys "oranges from a hospitable saleswoman." At the end of the novel, at a party, Clara is "in her unchanged black dress, languid, flushed from cheap orange liqueur." A black dress in this context is mourning for failed female happiness, that is, a parodic sign of eternal femininity.

The motif of smell connected with the symbolism of flowers in the novel acquires the meaning of characterizing the characters. So, Clara's room "smelled of good perfume." Lyudmila "smell of perfume, in which there was something untidy, stale, old, although she herself was only twenty-five years old." Neither Klara nor Lyudmila is attracted to Ganin, although both are in love with him.

The smell of Alferov, a worn out soul that has lost its freshness, is similar to the smell of Lyudmila. “Alferov sighed noisily; a warm, languid smell of a not quite healthy, elderly man gushed out. There is something sad about this smell."

The researchers noted that “the inhabitants of Russian Berlin in the novel “Mashenka” are reproduced as inhabitants of the world of shadows. Nabokov's emigrant world contains a reference to "Hell" in Dante's "Divine Comedy". This is also reflected in smells. I will give two examples. In the police department, where emigrants come for an exit visa (compare with Dante - the crossing over Acheron), there is "a queue, a crush, someone's rotten breath." Lyudmila Ganin tore up the farewell letter and "threw it from the windowsill into the abyss, from where the smell of coal wafted."

A hint of Acheron appears again in the novel, when Ganin and Podtyagin go to the police department for a passport. Podtyagin, who finally has the hope of moving to France (to another country of emigration; compare with Dante: Acheron separates the second circle of hell from the third), turns to Ganin: channel". The very episode of the two poets going to the police department, the setting of which resembles the description from the III song "Hell" - is a parody reference to the "Divine Comedy". There - the senior poet, Virgil, accompanies the younger; Dante, at Nabokov's - the younger, Ganin, accompanies the elder, Podtyagin. The parodic resemblance between Podtyagin and Virgil is enshrined in the sound of the voice. Virgil appears before Dante, hoarse from a long silence. Podtyagin speaks in a "matte, slightly lisping voice." Virgil is a dead poet, Podtyagin is still a living person, but as a poet he has already died. He says about himself to Ganin: “Now, thank God, I don’t write poetry. Basta. The last Italian word is another ironic reference to Dante.

Smells and sounds enliven Masha's space. It is symptomatic that the first scene of the novel takes place in the dark, the signs of the manifestation of life, the beginning of the action, again become sounds and smells. Ganin notes Alferov's "brisk and annoying voice", and Alferov recognizes Ganin by the sound, whose national identity takes on a grotesque meaning. Alferov says: “In the evening, I hear you clear your throat behind the wall, and immediately by the sound of the cough I decided: a fellow countryman.”

The motif of sounds in the novel goes back to the image of the nightingale. Ganin and Alferov turn out to be rivals and show similar "bird" traits. Alferov "whistles sugary", he has "an oiled tenor". At night, Ganin hears how he sings with happiness. His singing is a parody version of the nightingale's songs; “... Alferov's voice mingled with the rumble of trains, and then surfaced again; tu-u-u, tu-tu, tu-u-u." In the very first scene of the novel, both rivals, like two birds, find themselves locked in the “cage” of a stopped elevator. To Ganin's question: "What were you in the past?" - Alferov replies: “I don’t remember. Is it possible to remember what was in a past life - perhaps an oyster or, say, a bird … ».

Just as the female images in the novel are marked with flower symbolism, the male images reveal a connection with songbirds. In the guise of male characters, the voice is highlighted first. So, about the poet Podtyagin: "He had an unusually pleasant voice, quiet, without any increase, the sound is soft and dull." The sound of his voice reflects the character of Podtyagin's poetic talent, the epithet "matt" refers to his picture poems published in magazines about painting.

The images of a bird and a flower go back to the dominant metaphor of the novel - “a nightingale and a rose”, hence their obligatory pair appearance in the text. The repeated parodic projection of the metaphor creates the variability of pairs in the novel. I will give examples. Masha and Alferov. Alferov says over dinner:

“- I used to say to my wife: since I am a mathematician, you are a coltsfoot ...

In a word, a number and a flower,” Ganin said coldly. Symptomatically parodic development of the theme: “Yes, you are right, the most delicate flower ... It's a miracle how she survived these years of horror. I'm sure that she will come here blooming ... You are a poet, Anton Sergeevich, describe such a thing as femininity, beautiful Russian femininity is stronger than any revolution, it will survive everything - adversity, terror ... ". The theme proposed by Podtyagin is a playful reference to N. Nekrasov's poem "Frost, Red Nose" (1863), to the famous hymn to a Russian woman: "There are women in Russian villages." The allusion is realized within the motif "woman - flower - flowering".

Another parodic couple in the novel are homosexual dancers, Colin and Gornotsvetov. The surname Gornotsvetov predetermines his role as a flower with a false claim to purity and purity. The features of his appearance are a caricature reflection of the image of Mashenka. “His face was dark ... long curled eyelashes gave his brown eyes a clear, innocent expression, black short hair slightly curly, he shaved the back of his neck like a coachman ... ". Mashenka has a “delicate swarthy look”, “a dark blush on her cheek, a corner of a burning Tatar eye”, “a dark sheen of hair”, “a black bow on a delicate nape”. The registration of both characters from the back is noteworthy: Mashenka as an image of the past, which Ganin conditionally looks after, in a look at Gornotsvetov, the dancer's homosexuality is parodically constituted.

The image of Mashenka in the novel is marked by another incarnation of the soul - a butterfly. Ganin recalls how "she ran along a rustling dark path, a black bow flickered like a huge mourning room ...". Mashenka's black butterfly bow is transformed in Gornotsvetov's parodic image into a "spotted tie", which he "tied with a bow".

Kolin, whose surname forms a phonetic parallel with the surname Ganin, is distinguished by a similarity to him, but realized with a parodic shift. So, Colin wears a dirty "Japanese dressing gown", and Ganin "knew how, no worse than a Japanese acrobat, he could walk on his hands." Colin's "round, unintelligent, very Russian face", Ganin seemed to Mrs. Dorn "not at all like all the Russian young people who stayed with her in a boarding house." Colin is a parody incarnation of the image of the nightingale. And here we should note the scientific accuracy of Nabokov's artistic detail. Colin's clothes: a dirty starched collar, a dirty undershirt and a colorful robe - reproduce the color of the nightingale: a brownish upper body and off-white lower.

Colin "jumps with a quick foot trill", the dancers speak "with birdlike antics", Ganin notices "the dove happiness of this harmless couple". In their "room smelled heavily of origan," the dancers rub their faces and necks with "toilet water, fragrant to the point of nausea." The exuberant floral scent is a parody of the light, sweet fragrance of the rose, the symbol of love, just as the dance of love performed by the dancers at the end of the novel is a parody of the love song performed by the poet-singer, the protagonist of the novel.

The leading images of the novel, the bird and the flower, appear in the marginal details of "Mashenka", while maintaining the playful variety of options. I will give a few examples. Leaving Lyudmila, Ganin looks "at the painting of open glass - a bush of cubic roses and a peacock fan." In the estate where Ganin lived, "a tablecloth embroidered with roses" and a "white piano" that "came to life and rang." In the final scene of the novel, Ganin enters the morning city and sees "a wagon loaded with huge bundles of violets ..." and how "sparrows fluttered from black branches."

The symbolism of the nightingale and the rose, vector images of the text, states their involvement in both the real and other worlds, which not only justifies the presence of these images in the two-world space of the novel, but also ensures its fusion. Ganin "it seemed that this past life, brought to perfection, passes in an even pattern through Berlin everyday life."

The organization of artistic space in the novel "Mashenka" deserves special attention. It seems that the world of the past, Russia, and the world of the present, Berlin, are conditionally overturned into each other. At the end of the novel, Ganin, having relived his love for Mashenka, leaves the house at dawn - the past and the present defiantly open up. However, “throughout the entire narrative, the novel space forms a vertical structure of two spheres turned towards each other (past and present), separated by a water surface that ensures their mutual reflection. The role of the watershed in the novel is played by a river, a canal, a sea, tears, a mirror, shiny asphalt, window glass.

The river, which in the past Ganin is associated with his love (“He met Masha every day, on the other side of the river ...”), in Podtyagin’s poems - with Russia (“A full moon shines over the edge, / Look how the river wave shines” ), in the present changes the semantic content, from a symbol of happiness becomes a symbol of its loss. Water acquires the meaning of the border between the living world of the homeland and the other world of exile. The river is synonymous with the sea, crossing which the hero finds himself in the space of the world of shadows. “The ship he [Ganin] got on was Greek, dirty ... a fat-headed Greek child cried ... And the stoker climbed out onto the deck, all black, with eyes lined with coal dust, with a fake ruby ​​on his index finger.” The "Greek ship" in the context of Ganin's emigration is read as a reference to the "Odyssey", the hero of which, in his sea voyage, ends up in the "other" world.

The water border is a horizontal section of the novel's vertically organized artistic space. Russia and the past are immersed at the bottom of memory/at the bottom of the water. The condition of immersion in water is realized in the involvement in the seabed of different characters in the novel. So, Podtyagin “looks like a big gray-haired guinea pig”, Alferov says that in a past life he was “perhaps an oyster”, Mashenka’s voice trembles in the pipe, “like in a sea shell”, in one of her letters to Ganin she admires the poem: "You are my little pale pearl."

Podtyagin, looking at the sugar at the bottom of the glass, thinks "that there is something Russian in this spongy piece...". In Clara's room hangs "a copy of Becklin's Isle of the Dead." The island depicted in the picture becomes synonymous with the Russian boarding house, which remained above the surface of the water into which the motherland plunged. The condition is enshrined in the topography: on one side the house faces the railway track, the other - on the bridge, which makes it seem as if it is standing above the water. Clara, whose windows overlook the bridge, has the impression that she lives in a house "floating somewhere."

Diving to the bottom of the water as a variant of the parodic plot is reproduced several times in the novel. So, Ganin, leaving his abandoned mistress, hears how “in the courtyard a wandering baritone roared in German “Stenka Razin”. In a folk song, ataman Stenka Razin, at the request of his comrades, throws the Persian princess he loves into the Volga.

Another example of the parodic use of the situation of drowning: the meeting of Ganin and Mashenka in St. Petersburg, where their summer love actually dies, "they met under the arch where - in Tchaikovsky's opera - Lisa dies."

Death, oblivion, the transition to the status of the past are embodied in the novel as a downward movement. So, the dying Podtyagin feels that he is falling "into the abyss." Ganin's departure for emigration, from Sevastopol to Istanbul, is embodied in the geographical route down to the south. The last meeting between Ganin and Mashenka on the platform of the blue carriage ends with Mashenka "getting off at the first station," that is, going down, becoming a memory.

It is from the bottom of memory that the hero extracts his past. Ganin is endowed with "mirror black pupils". The past, into which he peers so intently, arises as a reflection, and from the space of the bottom / bottom moves to a height, above the mirror surface of the water boundary. “And suddenly you are rushing through the night city ... looking at the lights, catching in them a dazzling memory of happiness - a woman's face that has surfaced again after many years of worldly oblivion.”

The resurrection of Mashenka's image is associated with its spatial movement in height, that is, on the other side of the mirror. "Is it really ... it's ... possible ..." - the letters appeared in a fiery, careful whisper, repeating in the sky Ganin's thought about Mashenka's return to his life. Fascinated by his recollection/reflection, Ganin himself, as it were, moves to the center of this resurrected past, now located in the upper part of the novel space, which, in turn, shifts the world of Berlin and seems to him to be located below. Ganin goes out for a walk around Berlin, “he ... climbed on top of the bus. Streets spilled down below.

The world of homeland and the world of exile are reflected in each other. In the estate of Ganin, there is a picture: "a horse's head drawn in pencil, which, having blown its nostrils, floats on the water." At the end of the novel, while packing things into a suitcase, Ganin discovers "rosary beads, yellow as horse teeth."

The words of the drunken Alferov serve as a parody indication of the vertical axis of the novel world: “I’m in pieces, I don’t remember what perpe ... perped ... perpendicular is, - and now it will be Mashenka ...”. The vertical organization of the space of the novel "Mashenka" is a structural reference to Dante's poem.

Movement up/down is implemented literally in the novel "Mashenka" as the mechanics of the beginning and end of the story. In the first scene, Ganin takes the elevator to the boarding house (this corresponds to further lifting from the bottom of the memory of the past) - in the finale, the hero goes down the stairs, leaves the boarding house, and his past again sinks to the bottom of memory. The vertical movement of the plot ascent/descent is projected onto one of the main devices of the poetics of the novel. It can be formulated as a reduction in the traditional pathos of love lyrics, pathetic clichés and a parallel elevation / poeticization of the category of simple, sweet, natural, assessed as homely, everyday, native. One example of a decline is the scene already cited above of the conditional acquisition of a soul by the hero. “In order to reduce the pathos of the resurrection theme, this locus was chosen by the author as a point of contact between two worlds: Russian and Berlin.” In Mrs. Dorn's boarding house: "a toilet cell, on the door of which there were two crimson zeros, deprived of their legitimate tens, with which they once made up two different Sundays in Mr. Dorn's desk calendar."

Along with this, the poetization of the “simple”, “native” is carried out in the novel. Thus, Mashenka's cheap spirits, "landrin lollipops", funny stupid songs, banal sentimental poems, and the very simple name of the heroine acquire immortality: "It seemed to him these days that she should have some unusual, sonorous name, and when found out that her name was Mashenka, was not at all surprised, as if he knew in advance - and this simple name sounded to him in a new way, with charming significance. The name of the heroine acquires the meaning of sweet simplicity, warm naturalness, touching tenderness.

Following Dante, Goethe, Solovyov, Nabokov created in his novel the image of Eternal Femininity, but in her unpretentious, sweet, homely incarnation. And at this level, Nabokov's "Mashenka" is a lyrical antithesis to "Poems about beautiful lady» A. Blok. Thus, the property of polygeneticity, that is, the presence of several addressees in an allusion, is found already in Nabokov's first novel.

At the end of the novel, Ganin leaves the Russian pension and leaves Berlin. “He chose a train that was leaving in half an hour to the south-west of Germany ... and with pleasant excitement he thought about how he would get through the border without any visas - and there France, Provence, and then the sea.” Even earlier, in a conversation with Clara, Ganin says: "I need to leave ... I'm thinking on Saturday to leave Berlin forever, to wave to the south of the earth, to some port ...". What is the meaning of the Ganinsky route, to the south of the earth, to the sea, to the port? Even before the memories of Mashenka, Ganin, longing for a new foreign land, goes for a walk around Berlin: “Having turned up the collar of an old mackintosh bought for one pound from an English lieutenant in Constantinople ... he ... staggered along the pale April streets ... and for a long time I looked through the window of the shipping society at the wonderful model of Mauritania, at the colored cords connecting the harbors of the two continents on a large map.

“The described picture contains a hidden answer: colored cords mark Ganin's route - from Europe to Africa. Ganin, a young poet, feels like a literary descendant of Pushkin. Pushkin is Nabokov's unnamed Virgil, whose name, like the main image of the novel, is encrypted through allusion.

The hero's surname - Ganin - phonetically arises from the name of Pushkin's famous African ancestor - Hannibal. Significant in this context is the scientific detail of the leading image of the novel, the nightingale, the symbol of the singer of love, the poet, that is, Ganin himself. “Two European species of the nightingale are well known: eastern and western. Both species winter in Africa" ​​1 . Ganin's path in the opposite direction repeats the path of Hannibal: Russia - Constantinople / Istanbul - Africa. The stop in Berlin is perceived by the hero as a painful pause. Ganin's longing for "a new foreign land" and the proposed route are an allusion to Pushkin's poems:

Will the hour of my freedom come?

It's time, it's time! - I call to her;

Wandering over the sea, waiting for the weather,

Manyu sails ships.

Under the robe of storms arguing with the waves,

Along the freeway of the sea

When will I start freestyle running?

It's time to leave the boring beach

I hostile elements,

And among the midday swells,

Under the sky my Africa,

Sigh about gloomy Russia,

Where I suffered, where I loved

Where I buried my heart 2 .

This 50th stanza from the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, as well as Pushkin's note to it about his African origin, became the object of Nabokov's research many years later. It was published under the title "Abram Hannibal" as the first supplement to the commentary and translation of "Eugene Onegin". The scientific investigations that made up the work were made by Nabokov, of course, later, but his interest in Pushkin was outlined in his early youth, and careful reading into the works and biography of the poet coincides, at least, with the choice of his own writing path. Hence, in the image of Ganin, the hero of Nabokov's first novel, a young poet, a conditional descendant of Pushkin, there are signs of the biography of the famous Pushkin ancestor. Compare the principle of mirror reflection of the past and the present in Masha. So, Ganin has "two passports... One is Russian, real, only very old, and the other is Polish, forged." Compare: Abram Hannibal was baptized in 1707. His godfather was Peter I, and his godmother was the wife of the Polish King Augustus II.

Pushkin's hidden presence is also manifested in the dominant metaphor of the novel. Perhaps the plot of the poem "The Nightingale and the Rose" Fet borrowed from Pushkin. It is symptomatic that the reference to Pushkin contains, along with the male and female, the central image of the novel. For example, the description of Mashenka in the above-mentioned dates of lovers in winter (“Frost, a snowstorm only revived her, and in ice whirlwinds ... he bared her shoulders ... the snow fell ... to her bare chest”), is read as a reference to the heroine of Pushkin's poem "Winter. What should we do in the village?

And the maiden comes out on the porch at dusk:

Open neck, chest, and a blizzard in her face!

But the storms of the north are not harmful Russian rose.

How hot the kiss burns in the cold!

So, it is Pushkin's lines, in turn, that serve as an indication of the hidden, unnamed image of Masha - the rose.

Oleg Dark considers the "Pushkin theme" in "Mashenka" to be the leading one 1 . The epigraph sets not only the external plot motif, but here is the key to novel poetics. "Eugene Onegin" and others classical works took Nabokov as a model when he reproduced in "Mashenka" a generalized novel structure, individual elements of which he will develop in subsequent works. First of all, Nabokov's hero appears, continuing the line of "superfluous", "strange" people in Russian literature. The intersecting oppositions hero - heroine, hero - world, moreover, the heroine is the bearer and guardian of the moral principle, and the reflection in the intimate experiences of the heroes go back to the classic Russian novel. public conflicts, and the traditional reliance on a woman in search of foundations, and the poetics of obstacles that fatally prevent former lovers from connecting, and an attempt to relive the outdated. Nabokov in the novel repeats the scheme of "Onegin" in a reduced way, adjusted for modernization, down to specific parallels: a stylized manor and garden setting in which the romance of Mashenka and Ganin takes place, Alferov's story about his wife, the moment of recognizing his beloved, Mashenka's letter, and without that saturated with paraphrases of Russian poetry, its beginning refers to the letter of Tatyana Larina, etc.

The detection of allusions in Nabokov's novel is extremely important for looking at the structure of the work. The researchers of "Mashenka" noted the "non-strict frame construction" of the work, "where the embedded text - the hero's memories - is mixed with the framing - the hero's life in Berlin."

It seems, however, that the true frame of the novel "Mashenka" is built by Nabokov much more skillfully. Her role is played by Pushkin's text. The first novel of the young writer begins with an epigraph from the 47th stanza of the first chapter of "Eugene Onegin" and ends with an allusion to the 50th stanza of the first chapter Pushkin's novel in verse.

Having studied the artistic space and imagery of the novel "Mashenka", we made the following conclusions.

"The repetition of secret themes in manifest destiny", immersed in the context of memory, is the central theme of the novel. This is the first major work Nabokov can be regarded as a model for all of his subsequent prose, it already has predetermined main features his plots and poetics. This is, first of all, a frame structure; mixing reality and memories; smooth transitions from reality to memories and back; hidden play on autobiography; polygenetic property; reception of allusions.

In Mashenka, Nabokov's favorite tricks are already being used. First, the form of the narrative "circle" or "closed spiral" in which the characters are enclosed. "Circle" is also a metaphor for fictional space ( artistic world), and text space. Secondly, "Mashenka" ends with the method of "replanting" the author's narrator into a hero, who was repeatedly and in various forms played out by Nabokov. It is the voice of the author's narrator, speaking "through" the hero, that gives the novel "Mashenka" a final note.

The plot of the novel is a reunion with the past in the fullness of memory, paradoxically granting freedom from it and readiness for the next stage of life. In this respect, Nabokov's memory of the past is of a completely different nature than the banal émigré nostalgia with its condemnation to life in the past. Not longing for the lost paradise of childhood, but the “sweetness of exile”, “the bliss of spiritual loneliness”, the gift of Mnemosyne acquired after exile - these are the corrections introduced by the theme of “total remembrance” in the perception of many Nabokov’s plots.

/ / / The image of Mashenka in Nabokov's novel "Mashenka"

The work of Vladimir Nabokov causes a lot of ambiguous judgments among readers. At the same time, he does not cease to be one of the most interesting Russian writers of the twentieth century. "" is the writer's first novel, which makes it incredibly exciting and interesting to study.

IN this work many impressions and experiences of Vladimir Nabokov himself were displayed. The main character is an immigrant. He was in love with a girl who stayed far away in Russia. Later, main character learns that the girl he loved with all his heart is now the wife of his neighbor and antagonist in the plot of the novel. Memories of Mashenka capture the soul of the protagonist entirely. Thoughts about his old love make him start living and dreaming.

The conflict of the novel is peculiar and interesting. The contradiction in the work is based on opposition. Dreams about Russia become more realistic for the protagonist than life itself in exile. In this conflict special meaning has the image of Masha, the girl whom Lev Ganin loved with all his heart while in Russia. She becomes for him a symbol of a distant homeland.

The image of Mashenka runs through all of Ganin's memories. He presents her as a beautiful girl with glowing eyes, swarthy skin and "a chestnut braid in black velvet". He remembers her cheerful, remembers her laughter and joy. Memories of the image of his beloved help him to experience the longing for his native country, which he experiences in a boarding house.

The image of Mashenka in the novel is associated with the brightest memories that made the main character happier before emigration. The girl merges with the image of the lost homeland, and with it happiness. Masha does not appear on the pages of the novel herself, only through the memories of the protagonist, which shows the unattainability paradise lost. The image of Mashenka is transmitted only by fragments of memories. Unfortunately, more is not available for expats. Meeting with a distant lover was supposed to be a miracle for Ganin, an opportunity to return to old world where he was happy. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

The author draws a whole life story in his novel. On the eve of Masha's return to her husband, Ganin gives water to his neighbor Alferov at the celebration. The protagonist makes plans to meet Masha at the station and wants to go far with her in order to be happy together. In the morning, the character says goodbye to the boarding house and goes to the station. Over time, Ganina begins to think that the affair with his beloved ended a long time ago, in distant Russia, which can no longer be returned. The novel by Vladimir Nabokov ends with the fact that the protagonist of the work does not wait for the woman to arrive at the station. He decides to groan alone.

Thus, we can conclude that the image of Mashenka becomes something ephemeral, vague and unattainable. Mashenka, like Russia itself, becomes in the eyes of the protagonist the past, which can no longer be returned. The fact that the heroine herself does not appear on the pages of the novel only confirms this theory.

The horrors of the First World War, the revolution, the Civil War, famine, devastation - these are just some of the reasons that forced hundreds of thousands of people in the "first wave" of Russian emigration to leave their country. Among them was the family of Vladimir Nabokov. Most Nabokov spent his life away from his homeland, and this left its mark on his work, on the topics and problems that he covered, on the originality of their disclosure.

The theme of love also sounds peculiar in V. Nabokov's novel "Mashenka", which, among other works, brought the writer real fame.

The whole novel is imbued with a sad, nostalgic mood. Its main character is an emigrant Ganin. He yearns for native land, and all his thoughts and feelings are painted in sad tones. There is emptiness in his soul, he is tormented by the realization of the meaninglessness of existence and inactivity, life flows "in some kind of tasteless idleness, devoid of dreamy hope, which makes idleness charming." “Recently,” the author reports about him, “he became lethargic and gloomy .... some kind of nut loosened, he even began to hunch over and himself admitted .... that .... suffers from insomnia- tsey". He would be glad to leave Berlin in search of solace, but he has a relationship with Lyudmila, whom he cannot tell that he no longer loves her. Actually, true love never happened between them. She "very fleetingly slipped once." And if earlier Ganin knew how to control his own willpower, then in his present mood, his will betrays him, and even the fact that “now everything was disgusting to him in Lyudmila” does not push him to take a decisive step.

The rest of the heroes of the novel are the mathematician Alferov, the poet Podtyagin, the dancers Kolin and Gornotsvetov, Clara, the secretary, the hostess of the boarding house Lidia Nikolaevna. They are united by the fact that they are all Russians and all of them, just like Ganin and Lyudmila, are cut off from home by the will of fate.

Their attitude towards Russia is not the same. Alferov is constantly critical of his homeland. “This is not a Russian mess for you,” he exclaims enthusiastically in one of the conversations and calls home country"damn it." He does not believe in her strength, in his opinion, Russia is "kaput", and all Alferov's speeches about his homeland are imbued with cold contempt and mockery. But Ganin and Podtyagin always talk about Russia with a special quivering feeling, they talk about it as the most expensive thing in the world.

The difference in attitudes towards the homeland determines Ganin's dislike for Alferov. He is displeased with his appearance, his manners, but the determining factor in their relationship is still the attitude towards Russia. Dislike for Alferov is also felt in the author's description. Such details as "dung-colored beard", "sparse hair", "skinny neck", "puffy voice", of course, cannot arouse sympathy in the reader either.

The culminating moment in the development of relations between Ganin and Alferov is the news that Mashenka, Ganin's former lover, is Alferov's wife. Alferov talked about Mashenka everywhere and everywhere, he did not miss the opportunity to enthusiastically announce her arrival. But Ganin could not even imagine that the wife of the one to whom "it is a sin not to change" would be his Mashenka. Alferov admires his wife, tells everyone that she is “charm” with him, but Ganin still considers Alferov unworthy of Ma-shenka. His pathetic memories of his wife are already beginning to arouse the ridicule of others. Ganin is bitter that the object of these ridicule, along with Alferov, involuntarily becomes Masha, who is almost holy to him. But at the same time, "he felt some kind of exciting pride when he remembered that Mashenka had given him, and not her husband, her deep, unique fragrance."

He decides to run away with her. Upon learning of her arrival, Ganin again finds the meaning of life and the remaining few days he lives in anticipation of the arrival of his beloved. These days he is truly happy. He feels cheerful, rejuvenated, and finally finds the strength to break with Lyudmila.

The description of Ganin's memoirs about Mashenka is full of lyricism. Plunging into thoughts of the past, he seems to relive that ardent passion, the very first and most unrestrained. However, in the last minutes, Ganin abandons his intention, because he suddenly realizes that the affair with Masha has long ended, that he lived only in the memory of her, of Russia, where their love blossomed and which is now far away for him. and unavailable. Love for Russia, and not love for Ma-shenka, so excited his heart: “He always remembered Russia when he saw fast clouds, but now he would remember her even without clouds: since last night he only thought about her.” “What happened that night” just threw the past on him, the past that had gone forever. Ganin suddenly realizes that he "experienced the memory as a reality."

The novel "Mashenka" is a work about love for the motherland. The author reveals the problems of attitude to the native land, the fate of Russia, the fate of emigrants, the problem of love.

/ / / The problems of Nabokov's novel "Mashenka"

The novel "", written by Vladimir Nabokov closer to 1930, brought him fame: the author managed to show the life of emigrants in a foreign land, their love for their native land, and memories of it. Nabokov created wonderful and realistic images, put his soul into them to show how much you can love Russia.

Many during the war were forced to live in a foreign land, thus becoming emigrants. And this problem was acute for many - be that as it may, and the homeland is always more expensive, whatever it may be.

And in the novel we see Ganin, devoted to his country, dreaming of returning there in order to find the meaning of life again. How well the author shows us Ganin's first love - Masha. Her image evokes memories of Russia, of the best moments of his life. These memories are the happiest and only they awaken him and fill him with life when he has already lost all meaning and is disappointed in everything.

Hope lives in each of them, and, in general, Ganin is saved by this hope. The very probability that someday he will return to his native land.

When he remembers the beautiful and his love for her, this is exactly what he feels for his homeland.

To find solace, the main character constantly thinks about how it would be nice to leave, and at the very end, he nevertheless decides and leaves Berlin. But without Mashenka, since she must remain in the past, and their romance is over (although he does not immediately understand this, but it is).

The last lines make it clear to us that for the last week the hero himself was inspired not by his feelings for Mashenka, but by his love for his homeland, and this is what is important in the novel. Russia is now inaccessible to him, just like his first love, which should remain only in memories - wonderful and the best. Ganin once said that he remembered Russia with its clouds, and now he was suddenly able to remember it without clouds, and this shows us how strong his love for his motherland really is.

If you look at Ganin's "rival" - Alferov, then the attitude towards the motherland is different: he constantly criticizes everything connected with Russia. He chuckles at her and says that Russia is coming to an end, and life in a foreign land is not so bad.

Podtyagin, like him, reverently loves his native country, always speaks well of her.

It can be concluded that Ganin and each other are unpleasant, among other things, because of such different views on their homeland. Perhaps the attitude towards Russia in this case is the main reason that they do not like each other.

Only an emigrant can love his country so devotedly, and this is the main theme and problem that Nabokov tried to show and reveal in full. He perfectly portrayed all the feelings of Ganin and other characters - emigrants, showed what their fate is, and what can await in the future a person deprived of his native land.