2016 # 6 (20)
Belova T.N.
Chronotops Specific Fraturesin Nabokov’s Novels
Abstract
The article considers chronotop’s specific features in famous Nabokov’s novels (“Speak, Memory”, “The Gift”, “Pale Fire”, etc.) that can be characterized as an extremely extended space-and-time perspective of the novels in order to ensure their philosophical depth and embody the unity of the author’s world outlook with its neoplatonic concept of the Otherworld as well as the concept of time as a fraudulent mirage of a human being (i.e. time doesn’t exist at all). Also the poetics of romanticism (with its double worlds and double heroes) is used to counterpose two of them: present one – the dull grey shadow emigreé world with its life as if beyond the grave and bright Nabokov’s Russia of his unforgettable youth and childhood which is depicted as a vivid live multicolored rainbow world full of beautiful butterflies, precious stones of his mother’s jewelry, holiday illuminations; also there are his charming beloved and the Motherland.
These worlds are created due to various symbolic images and leit-motives moving from novel to novel and forming their implications with the underlying idea – the message of the author to the attentive reader. Also the metaphorical style of the narration, symbolic images and leit-motives form a system of labyrinthic ties and connections with the history of culture and the world literature and art – that is the multilayered ramifide intertextuality which attaches the poetic expressiveness and mere rhythmical organization to Nabokov’s novels.
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