While researching this thesis, we found important details relating to Vladimir Nabokov's novel, which will be described in the next chapters. These facts show what foundations the novel rests on. First of all, “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight” is the first novel written in English in Nabokov's oeuvre. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayThis was written at the start of World War II. While the young man who immigrated to Paris fled the Nazis with his wife and son to reach the United States, he tried to open the doors to English society. Before 1938, V. Nabokov wrote all short stories exclusively in his native language, namely in Russian. So, because of running away, there was only one option for surviving abroad: speaking, writing, and thinking in the language dictated by the new country becoming one's home. “Nabokov was both a teacher and an artist, and this study examines his own views on writing and reading, as contained in his published lectures and interviews, in order to address his literary practices in English novels” . This was a reasonable fact considering Nabokov's childhood. The young pioneer was born into the Russian aristocracy and learned three languages. Having been nurtured by good manners, the young man left his native country to pass on all his knowledge to foreign talent seekers. The literary path began with the translation of novels and the writing of short stories. London-Berlin-Paris-New York- a long road strewn with unresolved problems, happy moments and pitfalls. During this trip, Nabokov wrote numerous novels and short stories, among them "The True Life of Sebastian Knight." The main hero is Sebastian's half-brother V., who decided to examine his lifeline and write his biography. Doing some research, meeting Sebastian's friends and having conversations with them, V described each step in his notes. There are some opinions on how to perceive V.'s role in this novel, one of these predictions was proposed in the Encyclopedia Britannica: "It is written by his half-brother, V., in response to the demeaning analysis of another biographer on Sébastien. But soon, V.'s "biography" turns into a mysterious story as he searches for the real facts about Sebastian among Sebastian's acquaintances. A mediocre writer himself, V. ends up experiencing an identity crisis and his search for the real Sébastien becomes a search for himself. And this theory seems to be right, just as the novel describes an unusual and architectural conformation articulated between the author and his characters. The main task for us is to conduct an investigation into how Nabokov used certain special devices and effects to create and transform his image in the novel. All of Nabokov's characters recur throughout his career. Some critics have attempted to compare earlier Russian novels with later English novels. The reason for these doubts is that the main hero is always a stranger in his environment. They are all isolated as much by their mental state as by their physical environment. Nothing needs to be taken care of with Nabokov. His ingenious character is even found in the title of the novel “Real Life”. The author said more about V.' attempts to write a biography, not the story of Sebastian. The main character, and narrator at the same time, is not an artist at all, as we knew from the first part of the novel: he is just a businessman. By reading and examining Nabokov's creation, we can notice howV. interfered in Sébastien's life. He leaves for Paris to meet friends of Sébastien, his girlfriend, employer, publisher. V. found a lot of facts and materials and was ready to write a book, but the most problematic thing was trying to think like Sebastian, he thought in his place. And finally, he is confused. “So, I am SebastianChevalier. I feel like I'm playing him on a lit stage, with the people he knew coming and going – the blurred silhouettes of the few friends he had, the scholar and the poet. The use of characters in the novel is threefold, because sometimes we can notice the author's allusions, that by using masks to hide real acts in his place, he tries to maneuver certain secondary characters, who have special destinations and objectives throughout history. Sebastian Knight has an artist who painted a portrait of Sebastian in the form of a face reflected in water. “Everyone can look into the water,” says the storyteller. The artist responds: “Don’t you think Sebastian was particularly good at that?” The true artist is therefore always Narcissus. In another way: art is an autonomous being that does not need any material that goes off the beaten track; more precisely, any material is transformed by its inclusion in the structure of the work. And even the end of the work mentioned above is reminiscent of Fellini's brilliant finale "Eight and a Half". In general, this film is a cinematic analogue of Sebastian Knight, where the artist's real life is not his wife or mistress, but cinema. Allusions to a masquerade and lack of privacy are also present in Sebastian Knight's text: for example, Goodman wears a black mask during a business conversation. And here we have to talk about Nina - Nina Rechnaya, this femme fatale who ostensibly ruined Sebastian. It's a call from Nabokov's Russian past. Nina Rechnaya immediately calls for an association with Nina Zarechnaya from Chekhov's “Chaika”. This is Russian literature from which Sirin, who himself ruins the Russian writer, tears himself away with pain: it is not Nina who kills him, but Nina Rechnaya, who is also a “cheater”. She posed as a Frenchwoman, just like Nabokov, an American. But, says the storyteller, she has a beautiful French language, so as not to recognize her Russian. But Nabokov also speaks beautiful English, and in this charade he is entirely at home. It should be mentioned that “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight” is not only a masquerade or a circus, it is also a game of chess. Knight in English is a chess horse, Bishop (last name Claire) is an elephant, and Nina, who was a young girl named Turovets, is, of course, a "rook", a rook. And the whole novel is castling: the transformation of the Russian writer into an American writer. Among the discreet correspondences between Sébastien and Nabokov, there is one which is directly linked to the metal themes and aspirations in the writer's work. V.'s reasoning about Knight's novel “The Prismatic Facet” can be interpreted as a hidden polemic with the well-known provisions of Vladislav Khodasevich's article “About Sirin” (1937). V.'s words that the heroes of the work are “writing techniques” resemble Khodasevich's idea that Sirin's works “are inhabited not only by actors, but also by countless techniques ...one of its main tasks is to show exactly how the techniques live and work.” However, from further conversation about Knight's work, it follows that V. is not inclined to reduce it to a set of techniques. V. cites as an example the artist who, apparently, wants to show "not the image of the landscape, but the image ofdifferent ways of representing a certain landscape. But we must make an essential nuance: it turns out that this is not an end in itself, the artist would like to believe that the “harmonic fusion” of the different modes of representation “will reveal in the landscape what I wanted show you in it'. In other words, behind the technical perfection of knightly art lie deep convictions and a certain vision of the world. Thus, we can see in V.'s reasoning a polemic with Khodasevich, who said that Sirina's theme is limited to "the life of the artist and the life of reception in the artist's consciousness." Of course, there are different theories that could shed light on the novel's conspiracy, but Nabokov's The truth is that in every work of art, the creator has a role to play, reflecting all of his experiences and thoughts. The story begins with the performances of the characters. The name of our main character, the storyteller, we will never know, because the author has only left us with the initials of V. What would that mean? The beginning of the author's name - Vladimir or a mysterious anonymous stranger, who is Sebastian's half-brother? In fact, Sebastian himself is a poet of Russian origin, who stubbornly denied the fact of his origin. Coming from time to time to his mother-in-law's house, he tried to use little Russian words, speaking only French. From time to time he kept in touch with his brother V. by letters, also in French. All life after the young man left for Paris became a mystery for V. The brothers completely stopped maintaining contact with each other and everyone began to live their own lives. Until the tragedy of Sebastian's sudden death occurred. From this point on, the novel gains momentum and V's research begins. V.'s search begins with a publishing house, where Sebastian published his works several times. Hoping to find important information, V. had a conversation directly with Mr. Goodman, who, as it turned out later, also began to write a book about Sebastian's life, but intrigued him of his book is completely distorted and adheres to Goodman's "truth". Having discovered nothing important, V. decides to leave the office, because the conversation with Mr. Goodman is not very pleasant. However, when the character leaves, a young girl catches up with him and introduces herself as Helen Pratt. She works in this office and is also a friend of Claire Bishop, Sebastian's beloved, which gives the biographer a new thread to research. But it was also preceded by V.'s flashback, where he remembers what he had told Claire, because they had met Sébastien once in a Parisian café. “She was pretty in a rather quiet way with a pale, slightly freckled complexion, slightly sunken cheeks, myopic blue-gray eyes, and a thin mouth. She wore a gray suit with a blue scarf and a little tricorn. I think her hair was cut in a bob. Unfortunately, the storyteller can't tell us anything because Claire is married and sick. V. did not want to disturb her, soon finds out that the girl is dead. The plot thread was thus broken again. The search for a younger brother will often be interrupted by an information marriage. Continuing his research, V. will discover that Sebastian also had a chance affair, and the storyteller travels to Germany to meet a girl who was the late poet's last love. From this moment, we can observe the play on words that the writer hides behind the young girl's first name. Sebastian's muse, Claire Bishop, has another meaning, namely the figure of chess. Ah, because Nabokov is a chess fan, and we can see that through the constant mentions andvarious allegories in his novels. What did Nabokov never write about? From the humiliating poverty into which he fell from a luxurious mansion, which has not lost its splendor to this day, from the fact that in the same poverty he was forced to contemplate his own mother, perhaps the only heir to millions of states. Nabokov, who described all the father's ancestors up to the seventh knee, but did not mention in half a word that same relative of the merchant Mittenshik, whose money provided his golden childhood, all the luxury in which he was raised; and although the material could be found, the merchants were not the last, the writer did not hurry to disturb the shadows of his ancestors. For some reason, he claimed that he did not remember his brother's name, nor a word about his sister Elizabeth, whom he kept in exile. There are many such examples. Nabokov always hides much more than he tells us. The honor of inventing this game did not belong to him, Andrew Field wrote: "So - every novel: the game of hide and seek with the reader, him. But Nabokov has the honor of improving this game, in which he achieved such virtuosity that at the end of his life he became an invisible writer. It seems that he was helped to show many clues from nature itself, and not for nothing. he paid so much attention and spent so much effort studying mimicry in entomology: these lessons had practical literary significance, helping to find ways to protect oneself from curious but lazy readers Nabokov demands attention: the. meaning often turns out to be absent, where the author is carried away by a gullible gullible Here there seems to be a distinct feature of the form of the writer's uncle, who made him his heir, as if on. told him all the important things about him, but that doesn't immediately open up the solution to the rage that comes to Nabokov's father, seeing his son on his uncle's lap, peacefully "caressing a lovely child." Apparently his uncle had homosexual tendencies, and that's why there are strange things about his fate, like the estate bequeathed to an unknown Italian mansion. An example from another area: in the novel “Other Shores” there is a table of Nabokov's color sensations based on the letters of the alphabet. Then, regarding the fictional name of the heroine from Tamara's memories, it is said in passing that this name is colored in the floral tones of her real name. It's like a charade in a novel that ends up under the real name of the writer's first love - probably Varvara? Or the novel "The Protection of Luzhyn", which develops two narrative plans, the first of which is the story of the life of a brilliant chess player, creator of "The Protection of Luzhyn", constructed as an antithesis of these novels about brilliant and exemplary children, written by the hero's father. But behind this story unfolds as if it were a chess game, constructed as a defense of the hero, Luzhina, against the attack of the black figures, which is attempted first by the king-father, then by the queen-consort. Nabokov was well aware of the duality of the Russian genitive. One thing is as if forbidden by the rules of the game: accepting Nabokov's novels with ease, as we are accustomed to Russian literature - when playing hide and seek, the relationship between partners should be different. Perhaps there was only one touching theme on which the writer allowed himself to discover something of the real system of his feelings: the family. In the context of the void that opened up, which was initially life in exile, the family became a kind of “small homeland”, inside which something was resurrected from the lost life. In the family Nabokov believed immediately and forever, hence his passionate poeticism,his almost frenetic description of the father's joy, his hymns and his ode to his wife, completely unexpected in the writer with the cold and restrained temperament, as we usually see in Nabokov. Nabokov loved discovering recurring themes in fate, just as he loved giving his characters these repetitions. And he did not love them in vain: in his destiny, the repetitions always acquired a symbolic meaning. The fact is that on the threshold of his sixteenth birthday, he was once announced as the heir to his uncle's millionth estate, which is probably not once he remembers living in the last pfennig beggar's furniture in Berlin. He could not help but think of the difference between him, to whom his uncle had left everything, and the unknown Italian, to whom his uncle had left only part of his Italian estate. With inheritance, Nabokov had a special score: from experience he knew that the one who passes it on to you does not always soberly assess the possibility of such a transfer. He was one of the first to emigrate to realize that no one was following them, that they were the last, that it was an evolutionary dead end. However, returning to the subject of Nabokov's passion for chess, it is worth mentioning where it all began. In 1924, Vladimir wrote a poem "Three chess sonnets": the masterly rook advances towards the iambic theme, while the path of the lady bishop is anapaest. Ballet and the brain - that's chess! Listen to a drunken feast From coffee to steam that obscures the fog Where Philidor de Légal earned his spurs. But now a deep-browed and scheming Spaniard Faces a thick-lensed gnome, a strange dream Of blue-veined arms and eyes The curse of Chimera. Aha! This tower comes out menacingly as thought descends. “Caramba!” Look, your queen! You must resign! But shakes the gnome's neck and grabs a purple coin with a nail and a claw. A bishop's sacrifice, a sorcerer's failure. And there you have it, it's checkmate in four. Unison and flight are hidden in problem chess Beat and dance both. So plant the field in a checkerboard pattern And marvel at the chiaroscuro yield With seven white men, three blacks, no more, no less. Watch how the queen of stars with fiery power vibrates the solver's mind in a daze to tease him, to lure him into the darkness. But then this flying nymph flies to the rescue. Dressed in the lacquered costume of a magical clerk and barely hovering, pointing with her fescue. However, I did not manage to write a full-fledged sonnet, although the sighs of the night owl sounded softly, but caressing the tops of the pawns and the thighs of the twin castles. I worried the enigma until the light. in flowing skies and dark leaves stirred by the poet's right. My Spaniard and my gnome, my Philidor You see him here, open your eyes before Pieces, although few in number, with harmony imbued with the lunar glow enhancing the pale and jet While I played delighted, you mastered Perfected on your chessboard my sonnet.The writer constantly emphasized the emotional connection between literary creativity and composition. Moreover, he strove to convey feelings by purely chess means, the most familiar sphere of expression of which is lyric poetry. In this case, there's a chess madman in the form of a beloved poet. Which girl plays a role in the novel? It is appropriate to analyze the role and functions of the bishop on the chessboard to understand the subsequent actions of the heroine of the novel. “When used correctly, bishops can be very powerful. In many positions, one bishop can prove much stronger than the otherminor piece, the knight. Open positions, where pawns – especially central pawns – have been exchanged, tend to increase a bishop's potential. Place bishops on open diagonals, where they can exert control over as many spaces as possible. Heroin never played a major role in Sébastien's life, but it could have influenced his decisions. Unfortunately, his strength was not enough to maintain the relationship, and the distance did not exceed that, it seemed to V., the perfect couple. And then we move on to another exciting chess game. V.'s meeting with the new narrative heroine brings us to the end of this task. Nina Rechnaya is a new acquaintance of V., who, unfortunately, does not have enough time to see her ex-husband, but to see Madame Leserf. Madame Lesserf, as a storyteller, friend of Helen von Gran, Sebastian's next candidate for love, is greeted by Madame Lesserf ("fragile little lady with a pale face and straight black hair"), who called herself a friend of von Graun. She promises to find out everything she can. The next day, Madame Leserf (“a little old black bulldog in front of her on the sofa”) tells V. how her friend charmed Sébastien: first, she liked him, and then it seemed funny to her to do such a thing. intellectual approach I like it. When he finally realized that he could not live without her, she understood that she could no longer stand his conversations ("on the shape of an ashtray" or "on the color of time", for example) and left him. . Having heard all this, V. wishes to meet von Graun even more, and Madame Lecerf invites him to her village for a weekend, promising that the mysterious lady will definitely come there. In a huge old and neglected house, visitors are visiting, who are linked to each other in a complex way (just like in the “Prismatic Facade”, where Sebastian pretended to be a detective). Thinking of a mysterious stranger, V. suddenly feels attracted to Madame Leserf. The feeling of love that arose is unclear and worries the hero, since there was no trace of intimacy, but V. remembers what he was told about Nini Rechnoi and understands that Madame Lesserf and Nina are one and the same woman. Without any explanation, V. leaves. In Sebastian's latest book, "Unclear Asphodel," characters appear on stage and disappear, and the main character dies throughout the story. This theme now converges with the theme of the book "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight", which is almost finished before our eyes by V. (it is no coincidence that this is perhaps his favorite book among all books of his brother). But he remembers that in mid-January 1936 he received an alarming letter from his brother, written, oddly enough, in Russian (Sebastien preferred to write letters in English, but he began this letter with a letter to Nina). At night, V. had a very unpleasant dream – Sebastian calls it “the last persistent call”, but not the words. The next evening a telegram arrived: "Sébastien's condition is desperate..." V. arrived with great difficulty in Saint-Damier. He sits in his sleeping brother's room, listens to his breathing and realizes that he knows Sebastian more than ever. However, there was a mistake: V. got into the wrong room and spent the night at a stranger's bedside. And Sébastien died the day before his arrival. This action is called castling in a game of chess. The girl presented herself as another person, thereby trying to hide the past and not spoil the present. Anyway, in this game, V. won. Despite the above example of drawing a parallel between chess and the construction of the characters of the novel, one can also remember the fleeting and secondary analogies on the lower level of ".