The protagonist of the work, a Russian emigrant living in Berlin in a cheap boarding house. He lived in it for 3 months, but constantly wanted to move out. Recently, he became lethargic and gloomy, but before he was so alive - he walked on his hands, he could lift a chair with his teeth - energy was overflowing.

Alferov, Alexei Ivanovich

Ganina's boarding house neighbor, Mashenka's husband. He married her in 1919, and a year later was forced to leave, leaving her in Russia. Now, four years later, she comes to him, and he just can't wait for her. A few days before his arrival, he shows her card to Ganin, and he is horrified to recognize in her his first love, which he still loves. He decides to intercept her from the train and leave with her, but at the last moment he changes his mind and leaves alone.

Masha

Alferov's wife and Ganin's first love. She loved Ganin desperately for many years. First, after meeting at the dacha, then in St. Petersburg. When Ganin rejected her, she still continued to love him, wrote him letters to the front, tried to maintain relations with him. In 1919, she married Alferov, who left her in Russia a year later, and left for Europe himself. With great difficulty she was able to survive for four years and is now going to her husband in Berlin. She does not know that Ganin lives in the same boarding house with him, who planned to intercept her from the train, but did not dare.

Podtyagin, Anton Sergeevich

Ganin's neighbor at the boarding school, a former Russian poet, now an old man, who has completely lost heart. He is trying to go to France, to his niece, but he can't get a visa. Podtyagin often has heart attacks, and he is afraid that he will die soon. Almost having finally received a visa, he loses his passport and this completely finishes him off. The author leaves him completely broken, lying on the bed after another heart attack.

Clara

Ganin's boarding house neighbor, a friend of his mistress Lyudmila. Clara is 26 years old, she is a buxom girl who secretly loves Ganin. Even once, having noticed Ganin in Alferov's room, and deciding that he wanted to steal money from him, she did not betray him, and even continued to love him. Clara is very unhappy, after Ganin's departure she cries for a long time.

Ludmila

Ganin's mistress, whom he fell out of love with immediately after the first night spent with her. He keeps trying to break up with her, but can not decide on it. In the end, he makes up his mind and rudely dumps her. She makes some attempts to reconcile, writes him a letter, but he does not answer.

Colin and Gornotsvetov

Ganin's boarding house neighbors, dancers living in the same room as a family. They were both short, thin, but with muscular legs. They came to Berlin from the Balkans in search of a place where they could dance. At the end of the work, luck will smile on them, and they will find an engagement.

Lidia Nikolaevna Dorn

The hostess of the boarding house where all the heroes live. She had been married to a German for 20 years, but the year before last he died of brain inflammation. She was not at a loss, rented an apartment, furnished it with her own furniture, bought a little more and opened a boarding house for Russians. She herself was a little old woman, strange and quiet. The hostess lived in the smallest room. She kept a cook, Erica, to help.

Erika

The cook in the boarding house, a large, red-haired woman.

Kunitsyn

An episodic character, Podtyagin's guest, his former classmate, who also lives in Berlin, but despises the poet. After leaving, he thrust 20 marks into Podtyagin's hand, which offended him greatly.

Year: 1926 Genre: novel about love

The plot of the novel is revealed around the protagonist Lev Glebovich Ganin, who has been living in Berlin since the spring of 1934. His neighbors in the boarding house are a typist, a mathematician, and dancers.

A year ago, Ganin was lucky and he easily got a job. The hero repeatedly changed jobs. During this period, he accumulated enough funds to leave the city and return to his homeland. Keeps him here only relationship with Lyudmila, whom he is fed up with for three months of relationship. But, Ganin can't find a reason to break the connection with the girl. The hero is determined to leave, even telling the owner of the boarding house about his decision.

The mathematician Alferov informs Ganin that his wife Masha is coming this weekend. Then he invites him to his room and shows a photo of his beloved. Ganin is shocked, as he recognized his former love in the girl. As if the world stopped before his eyes, and the hero completely plunged into the past, about nine years ago. The young man informs Lyudmila that his heart belongs to another. From now on, he feels complete freedom.

When Ganin was sixteen years old, he went to the estate near Voskresensk, where he met the beautiful girl Masha. Her image appeared to him more than once in his dreams, and now she was there. A dark-skinned girl with a long braid and beautiful features. Mashenka was a positive person. There was always a smile on her face. They often met near the river.

One day, Ganin discovered that they were being watched. It turned out that this was the son of the watchman. The hero gave him a good beating for it. It was already the end of summer, and it was time for Ganin to go home to St. Petersburg. Masha will return to the city only in November. The cold began, and it was unbearable to walk on the street for a long time, so the doves in love are forced to communicate by phone. Soon Masha's family moved to the capital.

In the summer they saw each other again, but their meetings became rare, since the distance from one estate to another was about fifty miles.

Their last meeting took place on the train, after which Ganin did not see his beloved.

Dancers Kolin and Gornotsvetov organize a holiday in honor of the departure of Ganin and Podtyagin. The holiday is not cheerful, since Podtyagin does not feel well, on the eve of this day he had an attack. Afanasiev is drunk, Ganin got him drunk. Everyone is busy with their own business.

Ganin goes to the station and looks forward to meeting Mashenka. Sitting on a bench in the park, he realizes that his love for a girl is the past, it ended many years ago. Now each of them has their own life. The hero takes his luggage, goes to another station and leaves for the southwest of Germany.

Picture or drawing Mashenka

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The work belongs to the period of the early work of the writer and is the first prose creation of the author, a test of the writer's pen.

The basis of the novel is memories in the absence of the plot of the work, and the narrative content unfolds through the use of dialogues of characters, internal monologues of the protagonist, as well as author's descriptions of the places of events and actions.

The narration in the novel is carried out on behalf of a third person and is built in the form of memories of the protagonist Lev Glebovich Ganin about his past life in the country, which he was forced to leave because of the revolution.

The protagonist is represented by the writer in the form of a person in a state of twilight obsession, who, having entered the environment of emigration, loses the human qualities inherent in the personality, feeling his uselessness and loss. Memories of the past, illuminated by bright feelings, become Ganin's only consolation.

The storyline of the novel is presented in the form of the hero's memories of his first love for the girl Masha, whose photo he accidentally sees at a boarding house neighbor in Berlin. It turns out that Mashenka is the wife of the mathematician Alferov and should soon come to Germany.

The arrival of the former lover contributes to the manifestation of revival in Ganin's soul, filling it with the poetic worlds of warmth, love, the summer sun and driving away the heavy longing for the abandoned homeland. In the upcoming meeting, Ganin feels a divine miracle, giving hope of returning to a happy and peaceful life. However, an hour before the train arrives, Ganin realizes that all feelings remain only in the past and return is impossible, so he leaves hope for happiness and leaves the station.

The writer characterizes the protagonist of the novel by describing his deep psychological experiences, conveying the feelings of the lost happiness of youth, playing with the special construction of the narrative text in the form of elusive leitmotifs and images. As means of artistic expression in the novel, there is a technique of detailing that saturates the content with smells and colorful shades, repetitions and comparisons, illusions and reminiscences, as well as numerous metaphors, each having a symbolic meaning individually and creating an atmosphere of reality of the ongoing event.

A distinctive feature of the novel is the author's use of an unusual color presentation of the narrative using various shades of colors that enhance the plot climax, in the form of yellow, purple flowers, a yellow-violet combination, as well as light, golden tones.

The semantic load of the work is combined in the image of two artistic spaces, expressed in the real Berlin existence of Ganin in a disgusting Russian boarding school and his imaginary world of memories, which is personified in Mashenka, his lost paradise and happiness, about the meaninglessness of his own destiny.

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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 of the novel by V.V. Nabokov
6. End of the novel

Introduction

The favorite comparison of Vladimir Nabokov, the largest representative of the Russian diaspora, was the 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 of "Eugene Onegin", "Words about Igor's Campaign", studies about Gogol, lectures on Russian literature.

Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the central themes of his work is 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 "alien" 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 boarding house 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 did Nabokov's sister remind that the novel describes a house in Rozhdestveno. 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 lavatory”, 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'm 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: leaflets from the old calendar, “the six first days of the month 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 hum... 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 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 country 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 whitening ... 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 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, 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 ...".

The concealment of the iconic image of the heroine, similar to the technique of keeping silent about the 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 a 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 maiden-rose, - in the Song of Songs - associated with the image of the beloved: "... and the incense of your ointments 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 Prose Poems, 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 resurrects the past so completely 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. Such an ironic reference by Nabokov to Tagore was provoked, apparently, by the huge popularity of the Indian poet in Soviet Russia in the 1920s.

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 the first scenes of the hero’s memories: “Summer, the estate, typhoid fever ... The nurse ... she gives off a damp smell, old-maiden 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 inhaled 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 phase of development of the motive "soul - breath" is associated with the arrival of love. The conditional acquisition of the soul by the hero occurs in the already mentioned scene with the “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." In "Mashenka" there is also 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 Mary 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 appears a method of literal reading of the 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, blossomed 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 - the rose, the flower of the underworld, which is also associated with the idea of ​​resurrection.

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 ... refined 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." 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 The 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." Lyudmila Ganin tore up the farewell letter 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 heavily perfumed, and Ganin briefly thought 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 a past life - perhaps an oyster or, say, 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.

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 bunches 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 narrative, the novel space forms a vertical structure of two spheres (past and present) turned towards each other, 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, 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 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 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 tells Ganin about himself: “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 submerged 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 a 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 - a woman's 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 Mashenka, the hero remarks with annoyance "that the black silk sock was torn at the ankle." In Berlin, among the things he finds "a torn 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 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. “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 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, dear. 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 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 perfume", "grass-stalk sweetness", "landrin lollipops", funny silly 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 Masha'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 Ganin sees his future path.

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 Masha, Ganin, “feeling 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 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 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 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 free 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 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 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 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 the principle of mirror reflection of the past and present in "Mashenka". 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 Mashenka 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 a 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

Year of publication of the book: 1926

The book of Vladimir Nabokov "Mashenka" is the first novel of the writer, which was published in the so-called "Berlin" period of the author's life. The novel describes the theme of emigration and the life of people who left their homeland. Based on Nabokov's work "Mashenka" in 1987, a British-made feature film of the same name was shot.

Novel "Mashenka" summary

In Nabokov's novel "Mashenka" a summary tells about the events that took place in 1924. The protagonist of the work is Lev Ganin, who at this stage of his life lives in Berlin in one of the Russian pensions. He has a large number of neighbors: these are the mathematician Alexei Alferov and the poet Anton Podtyagin, and the typist Clara, who was unrequitedly in love with Lev Glebovich. Also in the boarding house there are ballet dancers Colin and Gornotsvetov, who sometimes behave rather strangely, but are still friends of the protagonist.

Ganin himself moved to Berlin about a year ago. During this time, he managed to change several jobs and was a waiter, an extra and an ordinary worker. Now he has enough money to leave the country. The only thing that keeps Lev Glebovich in Berlin is his relationship with Lyudmila, which he is afraid to break off. Although for three months of a love affair, the woman was already pretty fed up with Ganin. Every evening he looks out of the window at the railroad and dreams of going as far as possible, but he is afraid to do so.

One of Ganin's friends, Alferov, tells Lev Glebovich that his wife is coming over the weekend. After that, in Nabokov's novel "Mashenka", the characters go to visit Alexei Ivanovich, where he shows Ganin a photograph of his wife. Unexpectedly, the main character recognizes in this woman his old love. As in the main character, he remembers his relationship with Masha for the whole evening and feels young and alive again. He decides to end the annoying relationship and goes to Lyudmila. Leo admits that all his thoughts are occupied by another woman. After this act, Ganin feels complete freedom and plunges into memories.

In Nabokov's work "Mashenka" we can read that when Ganin was sixteen years old, he spent a lot of time in the estate near Voskresensk. There he had to recover from a serious illness. Over time, the young man began to invent the image of his ideal lover. Imagine his surprise when a month later he met a girl who matched all his ideas. Mashenka had attractive features, long brown hair and burning eyes. The girl was distinguished by a cheerful character and constantly found a reason to smile, which she could not help but attract the attention of Lev Glebovich. Just like Ganin, Mashenka lived in an estate in Voskresensk. Once, young people agreed to meet on the river bank and rode a boat all day. Since then, they began to see each other every day, walked and talked a lot.

In the novel "Mashenka" by Nabokov, a summary of the chapters tells that one day, during a walk, Ganin saw that someone was watching him and Masha. It turned out to be the son of a local watchman. In a rage, Lev Glebovich attacked the young man and inflicted several blows on him. After some time, the main character had to go to St. Petersburg. Mashenka arrived there at the end of autumn. It was very cold outside, so it was hard for young people to walk. Because of this, they had to constantly call up to somehow keep in touch. Both Ganin and Mashenka found it difficult. A few months later, the girl's family moves to Moscow, which even pleases Lev Glebovich a little.

The next summer, Masha's parents did not want to come to the estate in Voskresensk. They stopped at a house fifty versts from Ganin. The main character comes to his beloved on a bicycle. Like last summer, they walk a lot and often confess their love to each other. The last meeting between Mashenka and Leo took place on the train. However, the conversation did not last long, because the girl had to get off at the next station. Since then, their relationship has completely ended. During the war years, young people periodically wrote affectionate letters to each other. However, the distance played a role, and the communication between Mashenka and Ganin came to naught.

All love requires solitude, shelter, shelter, and they had no shelter.

If Nabokov's work "Mashenka" is downloaded, then we learn that Gornotsvetov and Colin decide to start a celebration on the occasion of the departure of Anton Podtyagin and Ganin. However, a few hours before this, an unpleasant situation occurs with Anton Sergeevich - he loses his passport, which causes a heart attack. Further, the whole dinner passed in rather sad notes. Podtyagin felt constant pain in his heart, and Alferov got terribly drunk and fell asleep. It could not have done without Ganin, who regularly poured a drink on his friend. Meanwhile, Lev Glebovich himself was in anticipation of a meeting with Mashenka all evening. After waiting for the morning, he immediately packed up and left for the station. Sitting on a bench waiting for the train, he realized that all his love is a relic of the past. Of course, he feels a sense of nostalgia and tenderness towards Mashenka. However, Ganin also comes to the realization that each of them must now live their own lives. The man gets into the car and goes to the station, wanting to go to the south of Germany.

The novel "Mashenka" on the Top Books website

Nabokov's novel "Mashenka" has recently become increasingly popular. This allowed him to get into our