“Despite My Age’s Ban”: The Political Discourse of V. V. Nabokov’s Poetry

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of V. Nabokov’s political discourse and the presentation of the writer’s literary personality from an unusual perspective, i.e. as a poet who is not indifferent to the cataclysms of the “terrible age”. The scientific novelty of the research lies in expanding the scope of ideas about Nabokov’s poetic works, in particular their range of themes: it is the first time that the author’s socio-political poems are analysed. This topic remains largely unaddressed in poetry, not only because of the “calyptics” (А. A. Hansen-Löve), or the “hidden” poetics of the author, but because of the inertia of perception of his image formed by the poet himself. The research aims to overcome the stereotypes in perception of the image of Nabokov’s persona, as well as the idiosphere of his poetry. Using the material of the entire corpus of the author’s Russian-language verses and poems, the researcher identifies and analyses texts reflecting Nabokov’s reception of the events of the revolution, his attitude to the public life and political situation of Soviet Russia. The research findings include textological observations that testify to the importance of the political discourse and the versatility of its manifestation in Nabokov’s poetic works. In the course of the analysis, it has been found that longing for the things lost becomes one of the leading motifs in Nabokov’s early poetic texts. Later poems demonstrate the poet’s desire to “distance himself” from the memories of the past, but this desire is precisely what the readers may mistakenly perceive as Nabokov’s emphasised indifference to politics and public life.

References

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: December 12, 2022.
• Published: January 31, 2023.

Keywords

• поэзия В. Набокова
• политический дискурс
• историко-политический логос
• революция
• память
• V. Nabokov’s poetry
• political discourse
• historical and political logos
• revolution
• memory

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