While carrying out research for this thesis, important details relating to Vladimir Nabokov's novel were found, which will be described in the next chapters. These facts show on what foundation the novel was based. First of all, “The True Life of Sebastian Knight” was the first novel written in English in Nabokov's oeuvre. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay That creation was written during the beginning of the Second War. While the young immigrant in Paris, fleeing the Nazis with his wife and son in the United States, tried to open the door to English society. Before 1938 V. Nabokov had written all the stories exceptionally in his native language, that is, in Russian. So, due to the escape, there was only one possibility to survive abroad: to speak, write and think in the language, dictated by the fact that the new country became one's home. “Nabokov was both a teacher and an artist, and this study examines his views on writing and reading, contained in his published lectures and interviews, in order to approximate his literary practices in English novels.” This was a reasonable fact according to Nabokov's childhood. The young pioneer was born into the Russian aristocracy, he was taught three languages. Nurturing good manners, the young man moved away from his native land to donate all his knowledge to foreign talent seekers. The literary way began with translating novels and writing short stories. London-Berlin-Paris-New York - a long road full of unsolved problems, happy moments and setbacks. During that trip Nabokov wrote numerous novels and short stories, one of them was “The True Life of Sebastian Knight”. The main hero is Sebastian's half-brother, V., who decided to look into his lifeline and write his biography. By doing some research, finding 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 that novel, one such prediction was offered in the Encyclopedia Britannica: “It is written by his half-brother V., in response to another's belittling analysis of Sebastian biographer. Soon, however, V.'s "biography" turns into a mysterious story as he searches for the truth about Sebastian among his acquaintances. Himself a mediocre writer, V. ultimately has an identity crisis, and his search for the real Sebastian becomes a search for himself. And this theory seems right, just as the novel describes an unusual summation and an articulated architectural conformation between the author and his characters. Our main task is to conduct an investigation into how Nabokov used some particular devices and effects to create and transform his image within the novel. All of Nabokov's characters recur throughout his career. Some critics have attempted to compare early Russian novels with later English ones. 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 conditions as by their physical environment. There is no need to take on assignments with Nabokov. His ingenious nature is also found in the title of the novel "La vita vera". The author told more about V.' attempts to write a biography, not the plot of Sebastian. The main character, and at the same time narrator, is not an artist at all, as we had already understood from the first part of the novel: he is simply a businessman. By reading and examining Nabokov's creation we can see how V. meddled in Sebastian's life. He went to Paris to visit some of Sebastian's friends, therehis 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 instead of him. And in the end he got confused. “So… I'm SebastianCavaliere. I feel as if I were impersonating him on a lighted stage, with the people he knew coming and going, the shadowy figures of the few friends he had, the scholar and the poet. The use of characters in the novel is triple, because sometimes we notice the author's hints, that is, the use of masks to hide real acts, instead of trying to maneuver some secondary characters, who have particular destinations and purposes in the whole history. Sebastian Knight has an artist who painted a portrait of Sebastian as a face reflected in water. “Everyone can look into the water,” the narrator says. The artist replies: 'Don't you think Sebastian was particularly good at that? So the true artist is always Narcissus. In another way: art is a self-sufficient being that does not need any out-of-the-box materials; more precisely, any material is transformed by its insertion into the structure of the work. And even the very ending of the opera mentioned above is reminiscent of Fellini's brilliant ending '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. The hints of 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 it is necessary to talk about Nina - Nina Rechnaya, that femme fatale who apparently ruined Sebastian. This is a nod to Nabokov's Russian past. Nina Rechnaya immediately calls for an association with Nina Zarechnaya from Chekhov's “Chaika”. This is the Russian literature from which Sirin, who ruins the Russian writer himself, painfully tears himself away: it is not Nina who kills him, but Nina Rechnaya, also a 'trickster'. He pretended to be French, just like Nabokov, American. But she has, the narrator says, a beautiful French language, so much so that he doesn't recognize her Russian. But Nabokov also has beautiful English and is perfectly fine in this masquerade. It must be said that "the real life of Sebastian Knight" is not only a masquerade or a circus, but also a game of chess. Knight in English is a chess knight, Bishop (surname Claire) is an elephant and Nina, who was a maiden named Turovets, is, of course, a 'tour', a rook. And the whole novel is castling: the transformation of the Russian writer into an American. Among the inconspicuous correspondences between Sebastian and Nabokov there is one directly related to the metaliterary themes and aspirations in the writer's work. V.'s reasoning about Knight's novel "The Prismatic Facet" can be interpreted as a hidden controversy with the well-known provisions of Vladislav Khodasevich's article "About Sirine" (1937). V.'s words that the heroes of the opera are "writing techniques" resemble Khodasevich's idea that Sirin's works "are inhabited not only by actors, but also by countless techniques ... one of his tasks main is to show exactly how the techniques live and work". However, from the continuation of the conversation on Knight's work, it appears that V. is not inclined to reduce it to a set of techniques. he cites the artist who, apparently , wants to show 'not the image of the landscape, but the image of different ways of representing a certain landscape'. An essential warning must be made: since this is not an end in itself, the artist would like to believe that the 'harmonious fusion' of different representation methods 'will reveal in the landscape what I wanted to show you in It'. In other words, behind the technical perfectionKnight's art hides deep convictions and a certain vision of the world. One can therefore see in V.'s reasoning a controversy with Khodasevich, who stated 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 several theories that could shed light on the conspiracy of the novel, except Nabokov's. The truth is that in every work of art the creator has a role to play, reflecting all his experiences and thoughts. The narrative begins with the interpretations of the characters. We will never know the name of our main character, the narrator, because the author left us only the initials of V for reflection. What would it mean? The beginning of the author's name - Vladimir or a mysterious anonymous stranger, who is really Sebastian's half-brother? In fact, Sebastian himself is a poet of Russian origin, who stubbornly denied the fact of his origin. Going to his stepmother from time to time, he tried to use small Russian words, speaking only French. From time to time he kept in touch with his brother V. through letters, also in French. All life after the young man's departure for Paris became a mystery for V. The brothers completely ceased to maintain contact with each other, and they all began to live their own lives. Until the tragedy of Sebastian's sudden death occurred. From that moment on the novel gains momentum and V.'s searches begin. V.'s search begins with a publishing house, where Sebastian has published his works several times. In the hope of finding important information, V. came to a conversation directly with Mr. Goodman, who, as it later turned out, also began to write a book about Sebastian's life, but the plot of his book is completely distorted and adheres to Goodman's "truth". Having discovered nothing important, V. decides to leave the office, as the conversation with Mr. Goodman is not very pleasant. However, when the character leaves, a young girl surprises him and introduces herself as Helen Pratt. She works in this office and is also friends with Sebastian's beloved Claire Bishop, which gives the biographer a new thread to look for. But it was also preceded by a flashback from V., in which he remembered what he had learned in Claire, because they had once met Sebastian in a Parisian cafe. “She was pretty in a way, with a pale, slightly freckled complexion, slightly sunken cheeks, myopic blue-gray eyes, a thin mouth. He wore a tailored gray suit with a blue scarf and a three-cornered mall hat. I think her hair was a bob." Unfortunately, the narrator can't tell us anything because Claire is married and ill. V. does not want to disturb her, he soon discovers that the girl is dead. Therefore, the plot thread broke again. The search for a young brother will often be interrupted by a marriage of information. Continuing the search, V. will discover that Sebastian also had a casual relationship, and the narrator travels to Germany to meet a girl who was the deceased poet's last love. From that moment on we can observe the play on words that the writer hides behind the girl's name. Sebastian's muse, Claire Bishop, has another meaning, namely the figure of chess. Ah, because Nabokov is a chess enthusiast, and you can see it from the constant quotation and various allegories present in his novels. What did Nabokov never write about? About the humiliating poverty into which he fell from a luxurious villa, which to this day has not lost its splendor, about the fact that in the same poverty he was forced to contemplate his own mother, perhaps the only heiress of millions of states. Nabokov, who described all ancestors from his father's side upon the seventh knee, but did not mention in a single word this same relative of the merchant Mittenshik, whose money provided his golden childhood, all the luxury in which he was brought up; and although the material could be found, the merchants were not the last, the writer somehow did not rush to disturb the shadows of his ancestors. For some reason, he pretended not to remember his brother's name, not 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, he. But Nabokov has the honor of improving this game, in which he achieved such virtuosity that by the end of his life he became an invisible writer. It seems that he was helped to expose many of the clues of nature itself, and it was not for nothing that he paid so much attention and devoted so much effort to the study of entomological mimicry: these lessons had a practical literary significance, helping to discover ways to protect oneself from curious but lazy readers. Nabokov requires attention: the meaning often turns out not to be there, where the author allows himself to be carried away by a gullible fool. Here there seems to be a separate trait of the form of the writer's uncle, who made him his heir, as if all the important things about him were told, but it does not immediately open the solution to the anger that comes to Nabokov's father seeing his son in his womb to the uncle, peacefully 'caressing a beautiful child'”. Apparently, his uncle had homosexual tendencies, and this is the reason for some strange things about his fate, such as the estate bequeathed to an unknown Italian manor. An example from another field: in the novel 'Other Shores' there is a table of Nabokov's color sensations from the letters of the alphabet. So, regarding the fictional name of the heroine of Tamara's memories, it is casually said that this name is colored in the floral tones of her real name. Is it like a farce in a novel that can be found in the real name of the writer's first love - probably Varvara? Or the novel 'The Protection of Luzhyn', which develops two narrative levels, the first of which is a story about the life of a brilliant chess player, the creator of 'The Protection of Luzhyn', built as an antithesis to those novels about bright and exemplary children, written by the hero's father. But behind this story develops like a chess game, built as a defense of the hero Luzhina from the attack of the black figures, which is attempted first by the king-father and then by the queen-wife. Nabokov was perfectly aware of the duality of the Russian genitive. One thing is as if prohibited by the rules of the game: to accept Nabokov's novels with all simplicity, as we are accustomed to Russian literature - when playing hide and seek, the relationship between partners should be different. Perhaps there was only one theme, touching which the writer allowed himself to discover something of the real system of his feelings: family. Against the background of the initial emptiness, which at the beginning was life in exile, the family has become a sort of "small homeland", within which something of the lost life is resurrected. The Nabokov family believed immediately and forever, hence his passionate poeticization, almost frenetic description of the father's joy, hymns and ode to his wife, completely unexpected in the writer with a cold and restrained temperament, as he usually sees Nabokov. Nabokov loved to discover recurring themes in destiny, just as he loved to impress these repetitions on his characters. And he did not love them in vain: in his fate the repetitions acquired a constantly symbolic meaning. The fact is that, on the threshold of his sixteenth year,he was once announced heir to his uncle's millionth estate, who probably did not even once remember having lived in the last pfennig in the beggar's furniture in Berlin. He couldn't help but think of the difference that existed between him, to whom his uncle had bequeathed everything, and the unknown Italian, to whom his uncle had bequeathed only one of his Italian possessions. Nabokov had a special score with inheritance: he knew from experience that the one who passes it on to you does not always soberly evaluate the possibility of such a transfer. He was one of the first emigrants to realize that no one was following them, they were the last, it was an evolutionary dead end. But returning to the topic of Nabokov's passion for chess, it is worth remembering where it all began. In 1924 Vladimir wrote a poem 'Three sonnets about chess':The masterful rook advances towards the iambic themeWhile the path of the bishop lady is anapaest.Ballet and brain: this is chess! Hear the drunken feast From the coffee with steam occluding the fog Where Philidor of Légal won his spurs. But now a Spaniard deep in brow and plot faces a gnome, with thick glasses, a disturbing dream Of blue-veined arms and eyes The Chimera's curse. Aha! That tower comes out threateningly as the thought descends. «Caramba!» Look, your queen! You must resign!' But he shakes the gnome's neck And grabs a purple piece with nail and claw A sacrifice from the bishop, a check from the magician And there he is, he's mated in four. Unison and escape lie hidden in problematic chess Clap and dance both. So lay the checkered field and marvel at the rendering of chiaroscuro with seven white men, three black, no more, no less. The ebony queen besieged by chivalry and the pawns entwined in tense amber await the result floating in time caught by clashing weapons, lord and slave, in debt. Watch as the star queen with her burning power stuns the solver's mind to tease him, to lure him far into the darkness. But then this fluttering nymph flies to the rescue dressed in the lacquered gown of the magic clerk and barely hovers, pointing with her fescue. Sonnet in full development, however, I could not write However sweetly the sighs of the night bird sounded But caressing the heads of pedestrians and the thighs of the twin castles I tormented the riddle until the light. I made it, torment and massacre despite With you at night illuminated by joyful cries Unstable stars swimming in flowing skies And dark leaves shaken by the poet's right. My Spaniard and my gnome, my Filodoro You see him here widening your eyes before Pieces, even if few, with harmony permeated By the lunar glow that increases pale and jet While I performed ecstatically, you subjugated 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 is a chess bishop in the guise of a beloved poet. Which girl plays a role in the novel? The role and functions of the bishop on the chessboard should be analyzed to understand the further actions of the heroine of the novel. «If used correctly, bishops can be quite powerful. In many positions, a bishop can prove to be much stronger than the other minor piece, the knight. Open positions, in which pawns, especially central ones, have been exchanged, tend to increase the potential of the bishop. Place bishops on open diagonals, where they can exert control over as many spaces as possible. Heroin never played an important role in lifeof Sebastian, but it may have influenced his decisions. Unfortunately, his strength was not enough to maintain the relationship, and the distance did not overcome this, to V. it seemed like 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 Lesser, as the narrator, friend of Helen von Gran, the girl who was the next candidate in love with Sebastian, is greeted by Madame Lesser ("small, fragile, pale-faced lady with dark, straight hair"), who called herself friend of von Graun. He promises to find out everything he can. The next day, Madame Leserf ("an old little black bulldog in front of her on the sofa") tells V. how her friend had fascinated Sebastian: first of all, she liked him, and besides, it seemed fun to her to play such an intellectual game of love for her. When he finally realized that he could not live without her, she realized that she could no longer stand his conversations ('about the shape of an ashtray' or 'about the color of the weather', 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 evening, promising that the mysterious lady will definitely come there. In a huge, old and neglected house, some people are visiting, who are connected to each other in a complex way (just like in the 'Prismatic Facade', where Sebastian played 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, because there were no hints of intimacy, but V. remembers what he was told about Nini Rechnoi and understands that Madame Lesserf and Nina are 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 during the entire narrative. This theme now converges with the theme of the book 'The True 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 the books of his Brother ). But remember how in mid-January 1936 he received an alarming letter from his brother, written, oddly enough, in Russian (Sebastian preferred to write letters in English, but began this letter as a letter to Nina). At night V. had a very unpleasant dream: Sebastian calls it "the last, persistent call", but not the words. The following evening a telegram arrived: «Sebastian's condition is desperate...». With great difficulty, V. reached Saint-Damier. He sits in his sleeping brother's room, listens to his breathing, and realizes he knows Sebastian more than ever. However, a mistake occurred: V. entered the wrong room and spent the night at the bedside of a stranger. And Sebastian died the day before he arrived. This action is called castling in a chess game. The girl presented herself as another person, thus trying to hide the past and not spoil the present. However, in this game V. won. Despite the above example of drawing a parallel between chess and character construction in the novel, we can also recall the fleeting and secondary analogies on the lower level of 'True Life' where the reader can easily distinguish and simulate the paronomastic contours of the chess. pieces, moves and positions: 'Knight' means, among other things, 'chess knight'; Bishop - "elephant"; Turovets - 'tour', i.e. rook, Roquebrune - castling; Uncle Sebastian HX Stainton, from whom, it is believed, he learned that he had visited Roquebrune.