Nabokov Mashenka analysis of the work briefly. Characteristics of the main characters of the work Mashenka, Nabokov
In 1926, Nabokov's first prose work was published - the novel Mashenka. On this occasion, Niva magazine wrote: “Nabokov, having fun, tirelessly embroiders himself and his destiny in different variations along the canvas of his works. But not only his own, although hardly anyone interested Nabokov more than himself. This is also the fate of an entire human type - the Russian emigrant intellectual.” Indeed, for Nabokov, life in a foreign land was still quite difficult. The past, in which there were bright feelings, love, a completely different world, became a consolation. Therefore, the novel is based on memories. There is no plot as such, the content unfolds as a stream of consciousness: dialogues characters, internal monologues of the main character, descriptions of the scene of action are interspersed. The main character of the novel, Lev Glebovich Ganin, having found himself in exile, has lost some of the most important personality traits. He lives in a boarding house, which he does not need and is not interested in, its inhabitants seem pitiful to Ganin, and he himself, like other emigrants, is of no use to anyone. Ganin is sad, sometimes he cannot decide what to do: “should I change my body position, should I get up to go and wash my hands, should I open the window...”. “Twilight obsession” is the definition that the author gives to the state of his hero. Although the novel belongs to the early period of Nabokov’s work and is, perhaps, the most “classical” of all the works he created, the play with the reader characteristic of the writer is also present here. It is unclear what serves as the root cause: either spiritual experiences deform the external world, or, on the contrary, ugly reality deadens the soul. There is a feeling that the writer has placed two crooked mirrors in front of each other, the images in which are ugly refracted, doubling and tripling. The novel “Mashenka” is structured as the hero’s recollection of his former life in Russia, cut short by the revolution and Civil War; The narration is told in third person. There was one important event in Ganin’s life before emigration - his love for Mashenka, who remained in her homeland and was lost along with her. But quite unexpectedly, Ganin recognizes his Mashenka in the woman depicted in the photograph, the wife of his neighbor at the Berlin boarding house Alferov. She must come to Berlin, and this expected arrival revives the hero. Ganin’s heavy melancholy passes, his soul is filled with memories of the past: a room in a St. Petersburg house, a country estate, three poplars, a barn with a painted window, even the flashing spokes of a bicycle wheel. Ganin again seems to be immersed in the world of Russia, preserving the poetry of “noble nests” and the warmth of family relationships. Many events took place, and the author selects the most significant of them. Ganin perceives the image of Mashenka as “a sign, a call, a question thrown into the sky,” and to this question he suddenly receives a “gemstone, delightful answer.” The meeting with Mashenka should be a miracle, a return to the world in which Ganin could only be happy. Having done everything to prevent his neighbor from meeting his wife, Ganin finds himself at the station. At the moment the train on which she arrived stops, he feels that this meeting is impossible. And he leaves for another station to leave the city. It would seem that the novel assumes a love triangle situation, and the development of the plot pushes towards this. But Nabokov rejects the traditional ending. Ganin’s deep experiences are much more important to him than the nuances of the characters’ relationships. Ganin’s refusal to meet his beloved has not a psychological, but rather a philosophical motivation. He understands that the meeting is unnecessary, even impossible, not because it entails inevitable psychological problems, but because you can’t turn back time. This could lead to submission to the past and, therefore, renunciation of oneself, which is generally impossible for Nabokov’s heroes. In the novel “Mashenka,” Nabokov first addresses themes that will then appear repeatedly in his work. This is the theme of lost Russia, acting as an image paradise lost and the happiness of youth, the theme of memory, which simultaneously resists everything destroying time and fails in this futile struggle. The image of the main character, Ganin, is very typical of the work of V. Nabokov. Unsettled, “lost” emigrants constantly appear in his works. The dusty boarding house is unpleasant to Ganin, because it will never replace his homeland. Those living in the boarding house - Ganin, mathematics teacher Alferov, the old Russian poet Podtyagin, Klara, funny dancers - are united by uselessness, some kind of exclusion from life. The question arises: why do they live? Ganin acts in films, selling his shadow. Is it worth living in order to “get up and go to the printing house every morning,” as Clara does? Or “look for an engagement”, as dancers look for it? Humiliate yourself, beg for a visa, using bad language German How is Podtyagin forced to do this? None of them have a goal that would justify this miserable existence. All of them do not think about the future, do not strive to get settled, improve their lives, living in the daytime. Both the past and the expected future remained in Russia. But admitting this to yourself means telling yourself the truth about yourself. After this, you need to draw some conclusions, but then how to live, how to fill boring days? And life is filled with petty passions, romances, and vanity. “Podtyagin came into the room of the hostess of the boarding house, stroking the affectionate black dachshund, pinching her ears, a wart on her gray muzzle and talking about his old man’s painful illness and that he had been trying for a long time for a visa to Paris, where pins and red wine are very cheap “The connection between Ganin and Lyudmila does not leave for a second the feeling that we are talking about love. But this is not love: “And yearning and ashamed, he felt how senseless tenderness - the sad warmth remaining where love had once slipped very fleetingly - makes him press without passion to the purple rubber of her yielding lips...” Did Ganin have true love? When he met Mashenka as a boy, he fell in love not with her, but with his dream, the ideal woman he had invented. Mashenka turned out to be unworthy of him. He loved silence, solitude, beauty, and sought harmony. She was frivolous and pulled him into the crowd. And “he felt that these meetings were making him smaller true love" In Nabokov's world happy love impossible. It is either connected with betrayal, or the heroes do not even know what love is. Individualistic pathos, fear of subordination to another person, fear of the possibility of his judgment make Nabokov’s heroes forget about her. Often at the heart of the plot of the writer’s works love triangle. But it is impossible to find the intensity of passions, the nobility of feelings in his works, the story looks vulgar and boring. The novel “Mashenka” is characterized by features that appeared in Nabokov’s subsequent work. It's a game literary quotes and the construction of the text on elusive and reappearing leitmotifs and images. Here sounds become independent and significant (from nightingale singing, meaning the natural beginning and the past, to the noise of a train and tram, personifying the world of technology and the present), smells, repeating images - trains, trams, light, shadows, comparisons of heroes with birds. Nabokov, speaking about the meetings and partings of the characters, undoubtedly hinted to the reader about the plot of “Eugene Onegin.” Also, an attentive reader can find in the novel images characteristic of the lyrics of A.A. Feta (nightingale and rose), A.A. Blok (dates in a snowstorm, heroine in the snow). At the same time, the heroine, whose name is in the title of the novel, never appeared on its pages, and the reality of her existence sometimes seems doubtful. The game with illusions and reminiscences is constantly being played. Nabokov actively uses techniques traditional for Russian literature. The author turns to Chekhov's characteristic techniques of detailing, saturates the world with smells and colors, like Bunin. This is primarily due to the ghostly image main character. Contemporary critics of Nabokov called Mashenka a “narcissistic novel” and suggested that the author constantly “reflects himself” in his characters, placing at the center of the narrative a personality endowed with remarkable intelligence and capable of strong passion. There is no character development, the plot becomes a stream of consciousness. Many contemporaries did not accept the novel, since it did not have a dynamically developing plot and a happy resolution to the conflict. Nabokov wrote about the “furnished” emigration space in which he and his heroes were henceforth to live. Russia remained in memories and dreams, and this reality had to be taken into account.
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Russian language and literature, Russian folklore. Art system and literary direction. The main themes of the lyrics. Problems of the novel. Religious secular philosophy of the turn of the century. Answers to the State Exam.
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Sections: Literature
Educational goal: identify Nabokov’s conclusions about the purpose and meaning of life, fame and death; formulate the author’s attitude towards Russia; education of patriotism, desire for a full-blooded spiritual life
Educational goal: give an idea of the Russian diaspora, introduce the biography of V.V. Nabokov, identify the common and the different in the description " noble nest"in the novel "Mashenka" and in works of Russian classical literature, compare the main character with a "superfluous person"
Developmental goal: identifying the features of the author’s handwriting V.V. Nabokov (“the phenomenon of language” in the formulation of critics) and the nuances of the writer’s worldview (contrasting the “chosen one” with the “crowd,” “everyman,” “mass”).
Equipment: on the stand is a portrait of the writer, a brief biography, a poem “To the Future Reader” and “First Love”, statements by A.I. Solzhenitsyn and Z. Shakhovskaya about Vladimir Vladimirovich, seminar questions. On the other wall there is a stand for I.S. Turgenev, where, among other things, paintings dedicated to the theme of noble estates: “Grandma’s Garden” by V.D. Polenova, “Everything is in the past” by V.M. Maksimova, “Overgrown Pond” by V.A. Serov and “Spring” and “Reflection of Sunset” by V.E. Borisova-Musatova.
Lesson plan:
- introduction teachers
- Presentation about the life and work of V.V. Nabokov "Pages of Biography".
- Conversation on issues of the seminar lesson.
During the classes
Epigraph on the board:
Your image is light and brilliant
like in the palm of my hand I hold
and a butterfly that never flies away
I treasure it reverently.
V.V. Nabokov
I. Teacher's opening speech
Guys, today we will continue the theme of “noble nests” in the works of writers of the 19th-20th centuries and trace how V.V. Nabokov during the period early creativity continued the traditions of the classics of Russian literature. In the person of Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are faced with a new phenomenon for us... This is a writer whom we attribute to the Russian Abroad. This phenomenon is due to the fact that after 1917, many Russian writers were forced to leave Russia and continued their work outside their homeland, but wrote about it, about the Russian country and Russian people. Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov is one of these writers.
Write down the topic of the lesson and the epigraph to it in your notebook, take notes on the report on the biography of the writer.
II. Presentation about the life and work of V.V. Nabokov "Pages of Biography".
Now you are familiar with the fate of the writer and both the epigraph of the lesson and the 1930 poem “First Love” will be more clear to you.
The poem “First Love” was written 4 years after the novel “Mashenka”; they have much in common: heartfelt lyricism, sketches of fragrant nature, and nostalgia...
III. Conversation on issues of the seminar lesson.
1) What did you like about the novel? Maybe something is pushing you away? Is something unacceptable to you?
2) Can the work be called autobiographical? What is your evidence?
3) Why are the smallest details of the hero’s noble estate depicted so clearly and visibly? Support your reasoning with text.
- “The wallpaper is white, with bluish roses... To the right of the bed, between the icon case and the side window, hang two paintings: a tortoiseshell cat lapping milk from a saucer, and a starling made convexly from its own feathers on a painted birdhouse. Nearby, at the window frame, there is a kerosene lamp, prone to releasing a black tongue of soot...” The writer lovingly describes the smallest details of the furnishings of his room in childhood, because every thing reminds him of something inexplicably dear and loved. The hero imagines the setting of the estate, and he is more strongly drawn to his homeland. The author also compares the spaciousness and freedom of a noble estate and a wretched boarding house in Germany with Mrs. Dorn.
– When a person gets used to certain things, he does not notice them. But then, losing it, he remembers and yearns for them. All these things represent for him his homeland, his golden childhood. He lives in the past, lives with his memories. “The old, greenish-gray wooden house, connected by a gallery with an outbuilding, cheerfully and calmly looked with the colored eyes of its two glass verandas at the edge of the park and at the orange pretzel of garden paths that skirted the black earth motley of curtains. In the living room, where there was white furniture and on a tablecloth embroidered with roses, marbled volumes of old magazines lay, yellow parquet flooring poured out from an inclined mirror in an oval frame, and daguerreotypes on the walls listened to how a white piano came to life and rang.”
4) Critics call Nabokov a successor to the traditions of I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy. Prove or reject this conclusion.
5) How can you explain why the memories of Ganin’s youth are more real than the life around him?
6) Why is it so important for Ganin, a man without a job, without a family, without money and even without a future, to remember about Mashenka, about the youthful brightness and such short love?
– Memories of Mashenka involuntarily forced him to once again turn over the pages of his life, ponder and reevaluate the past, compare life in his homeland with a hopeless existence in Germany.
– Plunging into the past, Ganin felt comfort and calm. Memories provide an opportunity to find yourself in the Russia of the past, to find your lost paradise.
– Memories of bright youthful love are memories of brightness, sincerity of feelings (which he lacks in his love affair with Lyudmila).
– For Ganin, Mashenka is the ideal girl...
7) Portrait of the heroine. Do you remember the portraits of Tatyana Larina and Masha Troekurova, Princess Mary and Princess Vera, Olga Ilyinskaya, Natalya Lasunskaya, Liza Kalitina. What new did you bring to world literature Portrait of Mashenka?
– Mashenka, compared to other heroines, is much more cheerful. She behaves at ease, but not cheekily. She is having fun and laughing, while the heroines of Russian classics are more strict, for example, Tatyana Larina, Liza Kalitina. This opinion can be confirmed by the lines of the novel: “She was surprisingly cheerful, rather mocking. She loved songs, all sorts of jokes, sayings and poems. The song will stay with her for two or three days and then be forgotten, a new one will arrive.”
– Ganin describes Mashenka very often: these are first meetings, and acquaintance, and a period of short but bright love, and meetings in the capital. And every time he lovingly describes the details of her appearance (for example, a large bow on her braid, reminiscent of a mourning butterfly; remember that Nabokov himself was seriously interested in the science of butterflies, even wrote a scientific work, hence the comparison image in the poem “First Love”: “...and I reverently treasure the butterfly that never flies away.”)
The image of a light-winged butterfly is also a symbol of a bright first love, so vulnerable and unprotected... It is also a symbol of the heroine herself - a little frivolous and naive.
Ganin enthusiastically recalls more and more new habits of Mashenka, so she seems to us not as strict as the heroines of the 19th century, but more lively, earthly, humane: “... and in general she was constantly sucking on something - a stem, a leaf, a lollipop. She simply carried Landrin's lollipops in her pocket, in sticky pieces, to which hairs and debris stuck. And her perfume was inexpensive, sweet, called “Tagore”.
– You are undoubtedly right. The beginning of the 20th century brought new customs and mores. Girls from wealthy families receiving education already had more freedom than Pushkin's Tatyana. They were not constrained by strict secular rules; they differed from both coquette young ladies and “Turgenev girls” who lived a serious spiritual life, striving not for personal happiness, but for life for the benefit of society.
And now we will return to the image of the main character. Listen to the prepared report, write down the main thoughts in your notebook.
8) Psychological portrait of the young hero of the novel. How is he similar and different from the heroes of Russian classical literature? Has time left its mark or is he fundamentally different from the young nobles?XIXcenturies? We have just finished studying the novel “Rudin” by I.S. Turgenev, compare Rudin and Ganin.
– Ganin is a person of an egoistic character. But he is not a careerist, not a snob. In this way he is similar to Onegin and Pechorin. For him, the main thing is not the arguments of reason, but the movements of the soul, so he can be compared with Oblomov.
– Young Ganin has a soul sensitive to beauty, sincere feelings, a loving heart. But he, like many heroes of the 19th century, is selfish. He loves for himself. For him, the main thing is not Mashenka, but his feelings for her. They were separated not by circumstances, not by the disappearance of love, but by Ganin’s selfishness. And although, while reading the work, I often sympathized with the hero, I still cannot forgive him for losing his love.
– Ganin’s indecisiveness reminded me of Rudin’s self-doubt. But what is funny in a 30-year-old man is understandable and natural in a young man just starting to live.
– But for me, comparing Rudin with Ganin is not at all in favor of the latter. After all, Turgenev’s hero lives for others, he wants to live his life not in vain. But Ganin is mainly interested in his own problems.
9) What is your opinion why Ganin did not decide to meet the matured Mashenka? Why did he first do everything to make the date happen (even reset Alferov’s alarm clock), went to meet her, and then, after waiting for her train to arrive, he left?
“I think he realized that he couldn’t love Mashenka anymore.”
– My opinion is that Ganin simply decided that the past could not be returned; it is still unknown how this meeting would have happened, because so many years have passed!
– It seems to me that Ganin felt that the past could not be returned and that he had no right to deprive two people of possible happiness.
“I don’t agree with this opinion: Ganin was least capable of thinking about Mr. Alferov’s happiness. Most likely, he realized that a lot of time had passed; he was afraid to see his Mashenka, who had changed externally and internally.
– This is where his indecision manifested itself: after all, it is unknown how Mashenka would react if she met Ganin on the station platform...
- Ganin realized that Mashenka was no longer the same. He was afraid not to see such laughing eyes in her, those character traits that he loved so much. And the hero himself has changed. Their meeting would not have been so joyful far from Russia.
– You see how many opinions you have on this issue. And here’s what Nabokov wrote in a poem you already know:
But if you meet unexpectedly
fate would force us
I would be like a strange deformity,
your current image has shocked me.
There is no resentment more inexplicable:
you have acquired an alien life
no blue dress, no name
You didn't save it for me.
I think that Vladimir Vladimirovich believed that it was impossible to return happiness, like returning former love. The old Mashenka, so loved by him before, has remained in the past, where there is no way. As the philosopher said: “You cannot step into the same river twice.”
And we move on to the analysis of the minor images of the novel.
10) How is the emigrated intelligentsia shown in the novel? How does the emigrant author relate to emigrant heroes?
11) What conclusions about the purpose and meaning of life, about glory and death can be drawn by reading pages about Podtyagin and other inhabitants of Mrs. Dora’s boarding house?
12) Nostalgia did not leave Nabokov until his death. The image of lost Russia passes from novel to novel. Can we say that the heroes of the novel “Mashenka” “... live in exile and are tormented by nostalgia, busy searching for the lost paradise?” (Quote from an article by G.L. Korovkina).
– I think that people who emigrated abroad have different attitudes towards their Motherland: some hate it, consider it “cursed”, others suffer and rush about. But in their souls they are sad and because no matter what they do, they do not find a place in life.
– I think that Alferov did not suffer at all. But Ganin and Podtyagin, like the author himself, are really looking for the lost paradise - the Motherland.
– I agree that the characters of the boarding house “... live in exile and are tormented by nostalgia,” but I doubt that the dancers, Klara or Alferov “... are busy searching for the lost paradise.” They live, one might say, by inertia, without trying to think about their lives, without even making attempts to take the first step in this search.
Teacher's conclusion. Through the mouth of a seriously ill (in fact, dying) old man, the author expresses one of the most important thoughts of the work: “Russia must be loved. Without our emigrant love, Russia is finished.” Today, when political contradictions are a thing of the past, two wings are uniting Russian culture: the literature of the Russian diaspora has returned to us, bells, paintings, archives are returning. Two branches of the Orthodox Church have united... Today Podtyagin’s words have become clear: those emigrants who loved their distant Motherland even in exile, who wrote books glorifying Russia, created music, staged plays, built churches, taught children the Russian language, raised them in the spirit Orthodox culture, they worked not in vain. They preserved the richest layer of Russian culture. The return of art rarities is the introduction of our contemporaries to the rich spiritual culture of our ancestors. The emigrants of the first wave, including V.V. Nabokov, preserved high moral guidelines for us, their descendants.
And the novel “Mashenka” is an example of this. The author's attitude towards the heroes primarily depends on their attitude towards Russia... The writer unobtrusively instills ideas of patriotism, a sense of pride in his long-suffering but great Motherland.
13) “That’s enough, I’ll come back someday,” - this is what Vladimir Vladimirovich wrote in one of his poems. He dreamed of returning to Russia, but categorically did not recognize the power of the Bolsheviks, clearly perceiving the USSR as a totalitarian power. Now he has returned to his homeland, but after his death... He returned with his works... What do you think he can teach his descendants great writer?
– I believe that the author yearned for the nature of Russia, for its soul. The writer teaches you to appreciate what you have, teaches you to love your homeland, to understand its significance for a person. Nabokov shows that nothing can replace one’s native nest, one’s native place (neither money nor recognition of fans); he knew this from his own example.
– After reading the novel, you understand Vladimir Vladimirovich’s ideas: in life, happiness is not only money, a career, women, but also a feeling of sincere, reverent love both for people and for one’s native land.
- Today we met a unique phenomenon– Abroad, we touched the work of the great Nabokov V.V., saw in his novel echoes of Russian classical literature of the 19th century, and made a conclusion about the significance of his work for us, our descendants. I hope that you were interested in this lesson-seminar and in the summer, preparing for the 11th grade, you will read other novels by the famous author: “The Defense of Luzhin”, “Invitation to Execution”, “Other Shores”.
Finishing the lesson, I would like to turn to the line by which it is named: “Your image is light and shining...” In the poem “First Love” this is, of course, the image of the beloved, the image of first love, and in the novel “Masha” this is not only the image of the main character , but also a light, brilliant image of the lost and so dear Motherland...
“...Remembering the novels of previous years,
Remembering my former love..." A.S. Pushkin
German boarding house for Russian emigrants. 6 rooms numbered with sheets from an old tear-off calendar - the first days of April. Each of the tenants once lived in the Russian expanses, and now they are forced to crowd here, among loneliness, memories and hopes. It seems that even the old building yearns for the place where it never existed. “You can’t even imagine how much a person needs to suffer in order to get the right to leave here,” the words of the old Russian poet Podtyagina reflect the grave condition of the “prisoners”. Through a whole century, you feel how dullness, poverty and meaninglessness fit into the pages. “Well, everything can’t be so sad!”, you think. And indeed, the next page is filled with soft and warm light — main character unexpectedly recognizes his first love, Mashenka, in a photograph given by a neighbor. The sweet girl is the wife of the unloved Alferov and arrives in a few days. Like a lifeline, this news overwhelms Ganin and plunges him into sweet dreams. Despite the fact that he is already in a relationship with Lyudmila - also unloved - the young man is building in his head a cloudless future together with Masha. “He didn’t know what kind of push from the outside had to happen to give him the strength to break off his three-month relationship with Lyudmila, just as he didn’t know what exactly had to happen so that he could get up from his chair.” - there was not just a push, but a blow of such force that Ganin was able to leave not only Lyudmila, but also his entire past life. The fatalist inside the faded, weakened man believed that fate had given them a chance. Four days before her arrival, he could not find a place for himself, anticipated their meeting and lived on one thing - memories. But not everything is so simple - Mashenka appeared in his head not in wonderful solitude, but together with her native Russia. Being a happy ghost of the past, she was no longer a beloved girl, but her beloved Motherland, which Ganin had irretrievably lost. Four days were enough for the main character to cool down the flaring feelings that arose among the hopeless emptiness and shook him, and look at the situation with a sober look. An hour and a half before Masha’s arrival, he changes his mind, realizing that he only loves the image, the memories. Mashenka and Russia have changed equally and let them remain happiness in the past rather than disappointment in the present. Ganin goes to another station and leaves Berlin forever.
V.V. Nabokov is famous for the fact that he began his work without guile, reflecting his personal feelings and experiences. The precision and brightness of the details enslaves and attracts the eye. Each object has feelings, as do the characters, who, being both main and secondary, experience serious ups and downs. “Mashenka” was just the beginning of a journey, born out of problems, obstacles and melancholy. But this is precisely what predisposed the talented author to a successful literary future.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!Year: 1926 Genre: novel about love
Plot of the novel unfolds around the main character Ganin, Lev Glebovich, 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, luck smiled on Ganin and he easily got a job. The hero changed his job several times. During this period, he accumulated enough money to leave the city and return to his homeland. What keeps him here is only his relationship with Lyudmila, with whom he is fed up after three months of relationship. But Ganin can’t find a reason to break ties with the girl. The hero is determined to leave; he even tells the owner of the boarding house about his decision.
Mathematician Alferov informs Ganin that his wife Mashenka is coming this weekend. Then he invites him to his room and shows him a photo of his beloved. Ganin is shocked because he recognized his ex-love. It was as if the world stopped before his eyes, and the hero completely plunged into the past, nine years ago. The young man tells Lyudmila that his heart belongs to someone else. From now on he feels complete freedom.
When Ganin was sixteen years old, he went to an estate near Voskresensk, where he met a beautiful girl Mashenka. Her image appeared to him more than once in his dreams, and now she was nearby. 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 watchman's son. The hero beat him well for this. 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 weather has begun, and it was unbearable to walk outside for a long time, so the lovebirds are forced to communicate by phone. Soon Masha's family moves 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 Colin and Gornotsvetov organize a celebration in honor of the departure of Ganin and Podtyagin. The holiday is not fun, since Podtyagin is not feeling well, and on the eve of this day he had an attack. Afanasyev is drunk, Ganin gave him something to drink. 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 southwest Germany.
Picture or drawing of Mashenka
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Act 1. Olympiad Bolshova, or as she is affectionately called Lipochka, has reached the age when the time has come to get married. This girl sits all day long with a book, looking out the window, but her thoughts are not at all about what she read, but about dancing.
- Southern exile of Pushkin and his works briefly
One of the most curious pages in fate and creative activity The genius poet of the first half of the 19th century is Alexander Sergeevich’s stay in exile in the south. As a young poet
- Summary of Allez Kuprin
The name itself tells readers that we are talking about a circus, since this shout is used there, often addressing trained animals. But circus performers can also say “Hello” to themselves before performing a dangerous trick.
In 1926, Nabokov's first prose work was published - the novel Mashenka. On this occasion, Niva magazine wrote: “Nabokov, having fun, tirelessly embroiders himself and his destiny in different variations along the canvas of his works. But not only his own, although hardly anyone interested Nabokov more than himself. This is also the fate of an entire human type - the Russian emigrant intellectual.” Indeed, for Nabokov, life in a foreign land was still quite difficult. The past, in which there were bright feelings, love, a completely different world, became a consolation. Therefore, the novel is based on memories. There is no plot as such, the content unfolds as a stream of consciousness: dialogues of the characters, internal monologues of the main character, descriptions of the scene of action are interspersed.
The main character of the novel, Lev Glebovich Ganin, having found himself in exile, lost some of the most important personality traits. He lives in a boarding house, which he does not need and is not interested in, its inhabitants seem pitiful to Ganin, and he himself, like other emigrants, is of no use to anyone. Ganin is sad, sometimes he cannot decide what to do: “should I change my body position, should I get up to go and wash my hands, should I open the window...”. “Twilight obsession” is the definition that the author gives to the state of his hero. Although the novel belongs to the early period of Nabokov’s work and is, perhaps, the most “classical” of all the works he created, the play with the reader characteristic of the writer is also present here. It is unclear what serves as the root cause: either spiritual experiences deform the external world, or, on the contrary, ugly reality deadens the soul. There is a feeling that the writer has placed two crooked mirrors in front of each other, the images in which are ugly refracted, doubling and tripling.
The novel “Mashenka” is structured as the hero’s recollection of his former life in Russia, cut short by the revolution and the Civil War; The narration is told in third person. There was one important event in Ganin’s life before emigration - his love for Mashenka, who remained in her homeland and was lost along with her. But quite unexpectedly, Ganin recognizes his Mashenka in the woman depicted in the photograph, the wife of his neighbor at the Berlin boarding house Alferov. She must come to Berlin, and this expected arrival revives the hero. Ganin’s heavy melancholy passes, his soul is filled with memories of the past: a room in a St. Petersburg house, a country estate, three poplars, a barn with a painted window, even the flashing spokes of a bicycle wheel. Ganin again seems to be immersed in the world of Russia, preserving the poetry of “noble nests” and the warmth of family relationships. Many events took place, and the author selects the most significant of them. Ganin perceives the image of Mashenka as “a sign, a call, a question thrown into the sky,” and to this question he suddenly receives a “gemstone, delightful answer.” The meeting with Mashenka should be a miracle, a return to the world in which Ganin could only be happy. Having done everything to prevent his neighbor from meeting his wife, Ganin finds himself at the station. At the moment the train on which she arrived stops, he feels that this meeting is impossible. And he leaves for another station to leave the city.
It would seem that the novel assumes a love triangle situation, and the development of the plot pushes towards this. But Nabokov rejects the traditional ending. Ganin’s deep experiences are much more important to him than the nuances of the characters’ relationships. Ganin’s refusal to meet his beloved has not a psychological, but rather a philosophical motivation. He understands that the meeting is unnecessary, even impossible, not because it entails inevitable psychological problems, but because it is impossible to turn back time. This could lead to submission to the past and, therefore, renunciation of oneself, which is generally impossible for Nabokov’s heroes.
In the novel “Mashenka” Nabokov first addresses themes that will then appear repeatedly in his work. This is the theme of lost Russia, acting as an image of lost paradise and the happiness of youth, the theme of memory, which simultaneously resists everything destroying time and fails in this futile struggle.
The image of the main character, Ganin, is very typical of the work of V. Nabokov. Unsettled, “lost” emigrants constantly appear in his works. The dusty boarding house is unpleasant to Ganin, because it will never replace his homeland. Those living in the boarding house - Ganin, mathematics teacher Alferov, the old Russian poet Podtyagin, Klara, funny dancers - are united by uselessness, some kind of exclusion from life. The question arises: why do they live? Ganin acts in films, selling his shadow. Is it worth living in order to “get up and go to the printing house every morning,” as Clara does? Or “look for an engagement”, as dancers look for it? Humiliate yourself, beg for a visa, explaining yourself in bad German, as Podtyagin is forced to do? None of them have a goal that would justify this miserable existence. All of them do not think about the future, do not strive to get settled, improve their lives, living in the daytime. Both the past and the expected future remained in Russia. But admitting this to yourself means telling yourself the truth about yourself. After this, you need to draw some conclusions, but then how to live, how to fill boring days? And life is filled with petty passions, romances, and vanity. “Podtyagin came into the room of the hostess of the boarding house, stroking the affectionate black dachshund, pinching her ears, a wart on her gray muzzle and talking about his old man’s painful illness and that he had been trying for a long time for a visa to Paris, where pins and red wine are very cheap "
Ganin’s connection with Lyudmila does not leave for a second the feeling that we are talking about love. But this is not love: “And yearning and ashamed, he felt how senseless tenderness - the sad warmth remaining where love had once slipped very fleetingly - makes him press without passion to the purple rubber of her yielding lips...” Did Ganin have true love? When he met Mashenka as a boy, he fell in love not with her, but with his dream, the ideal woman he had invented. Mashenka turned out to be unworthy of him. He loved silence, solitude, beauty, and sought harmony. She was frivolous and pulled him into the crowd. And “he felt that these meetings were diminishing true love.” In Nabokov's world, happy love is impossible. It is either connected with betrayal, or the heroes do not even know what love is. Individualistic pathos, fear of subordination to another person, fear of the possibility of his judgment make Nabokov’s heroes forget about her. Often the plot of the writer's works is based on a love triangle. But it is impossible to find the intensity of passions, the nobility of feelings in his works; the story looks vulgar and boring.
The novel “Mashenka” is characterized by features that appeared in Nabokov’s subsequent work. This is a play with literary quotes and the construction of a text on elusive and reappearing leitmotifs and images. Here sounds become independent and significant (from nightingale singing, meaning the natural beginning and the past, to the noise of a train and tram, personifying the world of technology and the present), smells, repeating images - trains, trams, light, shadows, comparisons of heroes with birds. Nabokov, speaking about the meetings and partings of the characters, undoubtedly hinted to the reader about the plot of “Eugene Onegin.” Also, an attentive reader can find in the novel images characteristic of the lyrics of A.A. Feta (nightingale and rose), A.A. Blok (dates in a snowstorm, heroine in the snow). At the same time, the heroine, whose name is in the title of the novel, never appeared on its pages, and the reality of her existence sometimes seems doubtful. The game with illusions and reminiscences is ongoing.
Nabokov actively uses techniques traditional for Russian literature. The author turns to Chekhov's characteristic techniques of detailing, saturates the world with smells and colors, like Bunin. First of all, this is due to the ghostly image of the main character. Contemporary critics of Nabokov called Mashenka a “narcissistic novel” and suggested that the author constantly “reflects himself” in his characters, placing at the center of the narrative a personality endowed with remarkable intelligence and capable of strong passion. There is no character development, the plot becomes a stream of consciousness. Many contemporaries did not accept the novel, since it did not have a dynamically developing plot and a happy resolution to the conflict. Nabokov wrote about the “furnished” emigration space in which he and his heroes were henceforth to live. Russia remained in memories and dreams, and this reality had to be taken into account.
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