Vladimir Nabokov: pro et contra T1 Alexander Dolinin

A. YANOVSKY About Nabokov's novel Masha (359)

A. YANOVSKY

About Nabokov's novel "Mashenka" (359)

"Mashenka", his first novel (which became the last of the author translated into English), Nabokov considered "a test of time." Alfred Appel recalls that on all the books signed to him, Nabokov drew a butterfly, and only on the Berlin edition of Mashenka (1926) “egg”, “larva” and “chrysalis”, “Somehow they stuck to the first novel, where metamorphoses remained forever unfinished” . In this work, we will try to trace the "rudiments" of mature Nabokov's prose contained in his first novel.

A number of works by domestic and foreign scientists are devoted to the analysis of "Mashenka". The researchers singled out literary associations and reminiscences: the “Pushkin theme”, echoes with Fet (Nora Books considers Fet’s poem “The Nightingale and the Rose” to be the dominant metaphor of the novel), analogies with Dante. Some cross-cutting motifs of the work were revealed: for example, the motif of the shadow, which goes back to Chamisso's "The Amazing Story of Peter Schlemiel". An attempt was made to include "Mashenka" in the concept of a meta-novel.

Let's pay attention to the functions of some elements of the text, based on the "presumption of the non-randomness of any word."

"Dvoemirie" as one of the main features of Nabokov's prose has been repeatedly noted by researchers. In "Mashenka" two artistic spaces are skillfully intertwined through montage: the "real" Berlin world and the "imaginary" world of the hero's memories. The past "passes in an even pattern through Berlin everyday life." Let's see how these worlds are organized. "Real" space is, first of all, the space of a Russian boarding school. In the first lines of the second chapter, Nabokov introduces a cross-cutting metaphor “house-train”: in the boarding house “day-to-day and a good part of the night you can hear the trains of the city railway, and therefore it seemed that the whole house was slowly going somewhere” (37). The metaphor, transforming, runs through the entire text (cf.: “It seemed to Clara that she lived in a glass house, oscillating and floating somewhere. The noise of trains reached here too ... the bed seemed to rise and sway” (61)). Some interior details reinforce this image: an oak trunk in the hallway, a cramped corridor, windows overlooking the railway bed on one side and the railway bridge on the other. The boarding house appears as a temporary shelter for the permanently replacing each other tenants - passengers. The interior is described by Nabokov in great detail. The furniture distributed by the hostess of the boarding house to the guest rooms pops up more than once in the text, reinforcing the “reality effect” (R. Barth's term). The desk with “an iron inkpot in the form of a toad and with a deep, like a hold, a middle drawer” (38) went to Alferov, and in this hold a photograph of Mashenka will be imprisoned (“... here I have cards in my desk” (52)). In the mirror hanging over the trunk, the presence of which is also mentioned in the second chapter, Ganin saw "the reflected depth of Alferov's room, the door of which was wide open," and sadly thought that "his past lies on someone else's table" (69). And from the revolving stool, carefully placed by the author with the assistance of Mrs. Dorn in the sixth number to the dancers, in the thirteenth chapter Alferov, drunk at the party, almost fell. As you can see, every thing is firmly in its place and text, except for the incident with the "four green chairs", one of which went to Ganin, and the other to the hostess herself. However, Ganin, having come to visit Podtyagin, “sat down in an old green armchair” (62), no one knows how he ended up there. This, in the words of the hero of another Nabokov's novel, is rather a "treacherous blunder" than a "metaphysical paradox", an insignificant oversight by the author against the background of the solid "substantiality" of the details.

From the description of the interior of the room in the summer estate, Ganin the creator also begins to “recreate the lost world”. His Nabokov-like memory, greedy for details, recalls the smallest details of the situation. It would not be difficult to draw an exact plan of the room, similar to the plans of the railway car of the Moscow-Petersburg train or the apartment of Gregor Samsa, which Nabokov brought to his lectures on literature. Ganin arranges furniture, hangs lithographs on the walls, “wanders with his eyes” over the bluish roses on the wallpaper, fills the room with “youthful presentiment” and “sunny charm” (58) and, having relived the joy of recovery, leaves it forever. Space "memory"- open, as opposed to the "real" space closed in the boarding house. All meetings of Masha and Ganin take place in nature in Voskresensk and in St. Petersburg. Meetings in the city were hard for Ganin, because "all love requires solitude, cover, shelter, but they had no shelter" (84). Only the last time they meet in the car, which was a kind of rehearsal of separation from Russia: the smoke of burning peat through time merges with the smoke that clouds the window of Ganin's shelter in Berlin. Such a smooth transition from one narrative plane to another is one of the distinguishing features of the "mature" Nabokov's poetics.

Let's see what details are involved in the opposition "reality" (exile) / "memory" (Russia). Some parallels are the accessories of the Berlin boarding house and the rooms of the Ganinsky estate. Thus, the paintings on the walls “resurrected” by memory: “a starling made convexly from its own feathers” and “a horse’s head” (57) are contaminated into “yellow horned deer skulls” (39), and “the brown face of Christ in an icon case” (58) emigration replaced the lithograph of The Last Supper. (“The Last Supper” behind Mrs. Dorn, who is seated at the head of the table in the boarding canteen, also creates a parodic situation.)

Ganin meets Mashenka for the first time at a dacha concert. A knocked together platform, benches, a bass who came from St. a fat red-haired man without a jacket on the platform among the lanterns”, “who yelled into a horn to the point of stupidity” (49–50). It is this episode on the set that introduces one of the central through motifs into the novel - "the sale of the shadow." “Seven Russian lost shadows” lived in the boarding house, and life itself is a shooting, “during which an indifferent extra does not know in which picture he is participating” (50). The shadow of Ganin "lived in the boarding house of Mrs. Dorn" (72), and the other guests are only "shadows of his exile dream." And only Mashenka is his real life. However, there is no clear opposition between dream and reality in the novel. The attitude of the hero to the property of memory is twofold. From doubt: “I read about the “eternal return” ... But what if this complex solitaire never comes out a second time?” (59) - to the point of being sure that the affair with Mashenka ended forever: in a "sober light, that life of memories that Ganin lived became what it really was in the distant past" (111). Mashenka remains "together with the dying old poet there, in the house of shadows, which itself has become a memory" (112). A revolution takes place in the hero's mind: "everything seems to be not so staged, fragile, turned upside down, as in a mirror" (110). Mashenka becomes a “shadow”, and Ganin returns “to life”.

The precariousness of the present/past opposition is marked by some details. In one episode, the hero’s “remembering self” is called a shadow: “He sat down on a bench in a spacious square, and immediately the quivering and gentle companion who accompanied him lay down at his feet like a grayish shadow and spoke” (56).

It is important to note the importance of color reproduction in Nabokov's poetics. The “emigrant” space of the novel is saturated with yellow color in Dostoevsky style. Yellow light in the elevator cabin, Alferov's "sand-colored coat", his "golden" (hereinafter "yellow", "dung-colored") beard. “The light on the stairs burned yellowish and dimly” (106), and “horned yellow deer skulls” hung in the dining room. And the yellow-violet combination carries a clear semantic load: Lyudmila's “yellow tresses” and her lips, “made up to a lilac gloss” (41), the faces of the extras “in purple and yellow make-up stains” (49); and at a party in the dancers' suite, the lamp was wrapped in a purple shred of silk (99). And although Ganin's memory "rearranged the light prisms of his whole life" (56), the color opposition turns out to be partly neutralized. Memory resurrects that distant happy summer, “bright languor”, “one of those forest edges that are only in Russia ... and above it the golden west”, crossed by “only one lilac cloud ...” (68; detente is mine everywhere. - AND I.). And “heavy bumblebees sleep on the pale purple pads of scabiosis” (73). In the gazebo, where Ganin first ventured to speak with Masha, multi-colored glass in "small rhombuses of white windows", and if you look through the yellow - "everything is extremely fun" (73). However, this gives rise to the opposition of the natural color of the "open" Russian space and the artificial - "closed" Berlin.

Let's see how the "hero"/"anti-hero" relationship is implemented. Alferov opens a gallery of numerous Nabokov vulgarities. One of the features of Nabokov's poetics is the transfer of key phrases to a character who is far from the role of the author's representative in the text.

Alferov's statements that irritated Ganin about the symbolism of their meeting in the elevator actually set one of the central motifs of the novel: “the symbol is at a stop, in immobility, in this darkness. And in anticipation” (36). Iv. Tolstoy called Nabokov a master of exposition: “There is no dynamics in his books, the events in them only mature, are forced from within; a certain force of life accumulates, the description swells with details, reaching a critical level, after which everything is resolved by a plot explosion: Ganin runs away from Mashenka, Luzhin throws himself out of the window, Herman shoots at a double, Cincinnatus is beheaded, etc. Alferov, Ganin, and the reader are waiting for Masha's appearance, but Chekhov's gun, hung in the first act, misfires in the last act in a Nabokovian way: the heroine never appears in the "real" tense of the novel.

Raising the event into a symbol is not alien to Ganin: “... on that black, stormy night, when, on the eve of leaving for St. Petersburg at the beginning of the school year, he met her for the last time ... something terrible and unexpected happened, a symbol, perhaps, of all blasphemy" (82). Ganin saw the watchman's son peeping behind him with Masha, overtook him, sagging the window with his back, and when the enemy began to moan under the blows, Ganin returned to the platform "and then noticed that something dark, glandular was flowing from his mouth, and that his hands cut him with pieces of glass” (83). This scene, perhaps, symbolizes the war and blood (Ganin was shell-shocked in the head), through which the hero had to go through before parting with Mashenka/Russia.

For Alferov and for Ganin, life becomes an expectation of Mashenka's arrival. Both of them almost equally express their impatience (Ganin - to himself, Alferov - aloud).

Alferov: "Today is already Sunday ... So, there are six days left" (36). “Think about it - on Saturday my wife arrives. And tomorrow is already Tuesday…” (51). “Three, four, five, seven,” Alferov counted again and winked at the dial with a blissful smile (105).

Ganin: “There are four days left: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And now I can die…” (59). “And tomorrow Mashenka is coming,” he exclaimed to himself, looking around the ceiling, walls, floor with blissful, slightly frightened eyes ... ”(94). “Yes, this is happiness. We'll meet in twelve hours" (98).

Such analogies "blur" the opposition, expand the reader's perception and, consequently, different interpretations of the text. Thus, V. Erofeev believes that Ganin commits an "unethical act", "does not feel the slightest remorse at the same time." Thus, the text creates an atmosphere not only of semantic fluctuation, but also of moral ambiguity.

Let us consider the elements acting in a different function. They can be conditionally called signs-signals that mark a change in the situation, critical points in the plot, changes in the psychological state of the characters, etc.

On that night, when Alferov showed Ganin a photograph of Mashenka, and fate turned the hero’s life upside down, throwing him “into the past,” an “old man” appears in the text, who “in a black cape wandered along the very panel along a long deserted avenue and poked with the tip of a gnarled stick at asphalt, looking for tobacco tips ... "(53). Here the old man "signals" the beginning of the plot. The second time it occurs at the climax - a few hours before the arrival of the "Northern Express": "A hunched old man in a black cape was already walking along the wide street, tapping with a stick, and, groaning, bent down when the tip of the stick knocked out a cigarette butt" (105). It is interesting that the blind beggar in Madame Bovary performs a similar function. He also makes two appearances at key points in the plot, the first time at the start of Emma and Leon's love crisis, and the other time at the moment of Emma's death. The last thing she hears before her death is the sound of a stick, and the song of a blind man.

The "shadows" motif is marked in a similar way. It is introduced into the text by the description of filming (49–50). Ganin recalls “lazy workers, freely and indifferently, like blue angels, moving from beam to beam high above ...” (49). Since then, he perceives himself as a lost shadow. And at the end of the novel, sitting on a bench in the square near the station, to which a train will bring Mashenka in a few hours, Ganin sees a house under construction: “Despite the early hour, work was already underway. Figures of workers shone blue against the light sky. One moved along the very ridge, easily and freely, as if he was about to fly away” (111). Everything around becomes for the hero "more alive than the most vivid dream of the past." The house of shadows remains behind, the memory has exhausted the affair with Mashenka, Ganin is reborn to a new life. The "blue angels" "introduce" the hero into the "world of shadows", and at the end of the novel they "bring" him out of there.

A number of elements, repeating in the text, forms a symbol. “Slightly jagged at the edges” Masha’s bow (Ganin sees the heroine for the first time from the back at a concert) is subsequently compared to a butterfly: “the black bow flickered like a huge mourning woman” (77); "a bow that spread its wings" (68). This comparison turns the detail into a multi-valued symbol for Nabokov's poetic system (Nabokov himself, however, said that he was not interested in the butterfly as a symbol: “That in some cases the butterfly symbolizes something (e. g., Psyche) lies utterly outside my area of ​​interest”).

It is characteristic that when the hero feels a crisis in his relationship with Masha, he remarks upon meeting her: "... the bow has disappeared, and therefore her lovely head seemed smaller" (85).

We meet another character in the novel, Clara, at the tram stop with a paper bag of oranges pressed to her chest (54). She dreams of a merchant from whom she "buys oranges on her way to work" (61). At the dancers' party, Clara drinks orange liqueur (100). However, the symbol is built only when we learn from Ganin's memoirs the details of his departure from Russia and arrival in Istanbul, where on an "orange evening" he saw "a blue Turk sleeping on a huge pile of oranges" at the pier; “only then did he feel piercingly and clearly how far the warm bulk of his homeland was from him ...” (103-104).

The details mentioned above, realizing the “house-train” motif, can also be attributed to this kind of elements.

Thus, the narrative elements considered in this paper can be divided into groups depending on their functions in the text.

1) Elements that create the "effect of reality", giving density, materiality to the fabric of the narrative, striving, in the words of one of Nabokov's heroes, "to turn the reader into a spectator." Whether it is the revolving stool in the actors' room, which is mentioned twice, or the "barber in cotton gloves" (75), who carries the lamp onto the veranda of the estate and disappears forever from the pages of the novel - all these elements "in the end say only one thing: we are reality."

2) Elements participating in the creation of the opposition. Outwardly, they may not differ from the elements of the first group, but functionally they mark artistic spaces, characters and other large structural units that enter into a relationship of opposition.

3) Elements that weaken the opposition. As V. Linetsky noted, “if two characters opposed by the plot are characterized through the same detail ... then the mechanism of meaning formation turns out to be paralyzed and the declared topic does not allow itself to be read.” Leaving aside the problem of deconstruction, we note that in this case the opposition is not neutralized, but only “blurred”, deprived of its unambiguous meaning.

4) Elements linking two (or more) spatial narrative plans. So, during the first meeting with Masha, Ganin notices that "the black silk sock was torn at the ankle" (74). Packing his suitcases before leaving the boarding house, he came across "a tattered silk sock that has lost its pair" (93). Similar roll calls-repetitions permeate the entire novel, comparing and connecting different spatio-temporal levels.

5) Elements that mark critical moments of the plot (an old man collecting cigarette butts; workers - "angels"). Such elements, due to their function, acquire a symbolic meaning.

6) Character-forming elements. Like the elements of the fifth group, they generate a symbol, but this happens through their multiple varying repetitions in the text.

© Alexander Yanovsky, 1997.

From the book Classic without retouching [Literary world about the work of Vladimir Nabokov] author Nabokov Vladimir

MASHENKA Berlin: Slovo, 1926 Fragments of the novel were published in the newspapers Vozrozhdenie (March 2, 1926) and Slovo (March 27, 1926) Vladimir Nabokov's first and most autobiographical novel was begun in the spring of 1925 shortly after his marriage to Vera Slonim . Creation of "Mashenka"

From the book Vladimir Nabokov: pro et contra T1 author

Mich. Os.<Михаил Осоргин>(16) Rec.: Masha. Berlin: Slovo, 1926 "Mashenka" is not a novel, but a very good everyday story from an emigre life. In Berlin, in a Russian guesthouse overlooking the railway track, insignificant people live "on an iron draft"

From the book Invisible Bird author Chervinskaya Lidia Davydovna

BUT.<Дмитрий Шаховской>(17) Rec.: Masha. Berlin: Slovo, 1926 What immediately becomes extraordinarily pleasing in the novel is the absence of a plot, its creative absence. Not being interested in the plot is a gratifying sign of a writer. In our days, disastrous for Europe, trusts (18) and

From the book Dead Yes author Steiger Anatoly Sergeevich

Georgy Ivanov (70) V. Sirin. "Mashenka", "King, Queen, Jack", "Luzhin's Defense", "Return of Chorba" The name of V. Sirin has been flashing for a long time in newspapers and magazines, but only recently they "talked" about Sirin. They spoke mainly in connection with his last two novels -

From the book Vladimir Nabokov: pro et contra T2 author Dolinin Alexander Alexandrovich

Preface to the English translation of Mary (72) Mashenka was my first novel. I started working on it in Berlin, shortly after my marriage, in the spring of 1925. By the beginning of the next year, it was finished and published by the Russian foreign publishing house Slovo (Berlin,

From the book Heavy Soul: A Literary Diary. Memoirs Articles. Poems author Zlobin Vladimir Ananievich

V. S. YANOVSKY From the book “Elysian Fields. The Book of Memory” (208) Large, ceremonial evenings - reviews of Parisian literature - were usually held in the hall of the Geographical Society (Solferino metro station) ... Emigrants from the times of Herzen and Mickiewicz still flocked there. There Adamovich gave

From the author's book

G. IVANOV V. Sirin. "Mashenka", "King, Queen, Jack", "Luzhin's Defence", "Return of Chorba" (216) The name of V. Sirin has been flashing in newspapers and magazines for a long time, but only recently they "talked" about Sirin. They spoke mainly in connection with his last two novels -

From the author's book

From the author's book

A. DOLININ Three notes on Vladimir Nabokov's novel "The Gift" (351) 1. "THANK YOU, FATHERLAND ..." In the first chapter of The Gift, his hero Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev composes a poem in which he refers to Russia he has lost with words of gratitude : Thank you,

O. Skonechnaya "Despair" by V. Nabokov and "The Little Demon" by F. Sologub[*] ON THE QUESTION OF THE TRADITIONS OF RUSSIAN SYMBOLISM IN V. V. NABOKOV'S PROSE OF THE 1920s–1930s In 1934, in a review of Despair, Georgy Adamovich connected Nabokov with the tradition of Russian literature in the following way:

From the author's book

G. KHASIN Between micro and macro: narration and metaphysics in V. Nabokov's novel "King, Queen, Jack" All great writers have something in common: their works and their worlds consist of elements, which in turn are works and worlds. The effort of understanding

From the author's book

N. SEMENOVA Quotation in V. Nabokov's novel "King, Queen, Jack" In 1928, V. Nabokov's second novel "King, Queen, Jack" was published in Berlin. The novel was not successful and stands alone in Nabokov's work. Writers about The King, Queen, Jack noted that this is the only novel

From the author's book

O. SABUROVA Author and hero in the novel "Despair" by V. Nabokov The question of the relationship between the author and his very unsympathetic hero, who assures the reader that the murder he committed is a wonderful work of art, has more than once become the subject of discussion. And if now

Masha

"Mashenka"- the first novel by V. V. Nabokov; written in the Berlin period in 1926 in Russian.

The book exhibits the themes developed to a greater extent in The Gift: the Russian émigré environment in Berlin.

Plot

The main character Ganin lives in a Russian pension in Berlin. One of the neighbors, Alferov, keeps talking about the arrival of his wife Masha from Soviet Russia at the end of the week. From the photograph, Ganin recognizes his former love and decides to kidnap her from the station. All week Ganin lives with memories. On the eve of Mashenka's arrival in Berlin, Ganin solder Alferov and set his alarm clock incorrectly. At the last moment, however, Ganin decides that the past image cannot be returned and goes to another station, leaving Berlin forever. Masha herself appears in the book only in Ganin's memoirs.

Mashenka and her husband appear later in Nabokov's novel Defense of Luzhin (chapter 13).

In 1991, the book was made into a film of the same name.

The image of Russia in the novel

V. Nabokov describes the life of emigrants in a German pension.

These people are poor, both materially and spiritually. They live in thoughts about the past, pre-emigrant life in Russia, and cannot build the present and the future.

The image of Russia is opposed to the image of France. The heroes associate Russia with a squiggle, and France with a zigzag. In France, "everything is very correct," in Russia it's a mess. Alferov believes that everything is over with Russia, “washed it away, as you know, if you smear it with a wet sponge on a black board, on a painted mug ...” Life in Russia is perceived as painful, Alferov calls it “metampsychosis”. Russia is called cursed. Alferov declares that Russia is kaput, "that the 'god-bearer' turned out, as one might expect, to be a gray bastard, that our homeland, therefore, perished forever."

Ganin lives with memories of Russia. When he sees fast clouds, her image immediately appears in his head. Ganin most of the time recalls the Motherland. When the end of July comes, Ganin indulges in memories of Russia (“The end of July in the north of Russia already smells slightly of autumn ...”). In the memory of the hero, the nature of Russia mainly pops up, its detailed description: smells, colors ... For him, separation from Masha is also separation from Russia. The image of Mashenka is closely intertwined with the image of Russia.

Clara loves Russia, she feels lonely in Berlin.

Podtyagin dreams of the apocalyptic Petersburg, while Ganin dreams of "only beauty."

The heroes of the novel reminisce about their youth, about studying at a gymnasium, a school, how they played Cossacks - robbers, bast shoes; remember magazines, poems, birch groves, forest edges...

Thus, the heroes have an ambiguous attitude towards Russia, each of them has his own ideas about the Motherland, his own memories.

Recollection in the novel (on the example of Ganin)

Ganin is the hero of the novel "Mashenka" by V. Nabokov. This character is not prone to actions, apathetic. Critics of Literature in the 1920s consider Ganin a failed attempt to present a strong personality. But in the image of this character there is also dynamics. You need to remember the past of the hero and his reaction in the stopped elevator (an attempt to find a way out). Ganin's memories are also dynamics. His difference from other heroes is that he is the only one who leaves the boarding house.

Remembrance in V. Nabokov's novel is presented as an all-encompassing force, as an animated being. Ganin, seeing a photograph of Mashenka, changes his worldview in the bud. Also, the memory accompanies the hero everywhere, it is like a living being. In the novel, the memory is called a gentle companion who lay down and spoke.

In his memoirs, the hero plunges into adolescence, where he met his first love. Masha's letter to Ganin awakens in him memories of a bright feeling.

Sleep in the novel is equal to falling. Nabokov's hero survives this test. The means to awakening is remembrance.

The fullness of life returns to Ganin through recollection. This happens with the help of a photograph of Mashenka. It is from contact with her that Ganin's resurrection begins. As a result of the healing, Ganin recalls his feelings that he experiences while recovering from typhus.

The memory of Mashenka, the appeal of the hero to her image, can be compared with the appeal to the Virgin Mary for help.

N. Poznansky notes that Nabokov's recollection in its essence resembles "prayer-like conspiracies."

Thus, memory plays a central role in the novel. With the help of it, the plot is built, their own fate depends on the memories of the heroes.

That. memory is a kind of mechanism through which the dynamics in the novel are carried out.

[When writing this section, an article by Dmitrienko O.A. was used. Folklore and mythological motifs in Nabokov's novel >// Russian Literature, No.4,2007]

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 beat over the edge.

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.

Mashenka (1926) is the first and most autobiographical novel by the world famous Russian-American writer, one of the greatest prose writers of the 20th century, the author of the famous Lolita Vladimir Nabokov. This book is about the “strangeness of memories”, about the whimsical interweaving of life patterns of the past and the present, about the “amazing event” of the resurrection by the main character, a Russian emigrant living in Berlin, Lev Ganin, the story of his first love. The novel, the action of which covers only six days and in which there are very few characters, acquires emotional poignancy and semantic depth thanks to the passionate power of Ganin's (and the author's) memory, faithful to the irrational moments of the past. © 1970, Dmitri Nabokov All rights reserved; © Publishing Group LLC © Azbuka Atticus, 2012 © AZBUKA® (R) Publishing House ARDIS Distribution LLC, 2004

Description added by user:

"Mashenka" - the plot

Lev Glebovich Ganin lives in Berlin, in a Russian boarding house. In addition to him, 5 more people live there: two dancers Colin and Gornotsvetov, Clara, who is in love with Ganin, the poet Podtyagin, disillusioned with himself, and Alferov. One day, Alferov, who is madly in love with his wife Masha, shows her photograph to Ganin. Mashenka herself should arrive from Russia on Saturday. Alferov did not see her for four years. And Ganin recognizes his first love in the photo - that same Mashenka. From that day on, he constantly thinks about Masha, remembers their meetings in the garden, a secret from his parents. Ganin even wants to steal this photo from Alferov, but at the moment when Ganin is looking for it in the desk drawer, Clara enters the room. She thinks that Ganin wanted to steal money from Alferov. but promises not to tell anyone about it. Meanwhile, Saturday is approaching. Ganin decides to meet Masha at the station and take her away from Alferov, away from Berlin. On Friday evening, Ganin waters the already drunk Alferov, but Alferov still remembers that he must meet his wife in the morning and asks to set the alarm clock at half past seven. Ganin puts Alferov to bed, and he sets the alarm for eleven. In the morning, Ganin leaves the boarding house, but on the way to the station, a stream of thoughts captures him, and Ganin decides that he should not stir up the past, let Mashenka remain an unfulfilled dream. He buys a ticket to the southwest of Germany and leaves.

Reviews

Reviews of the book "Mashenka"

Please register or login to leave a review. Registration will take no more than 15 seconds.

Julia Olegina

First and last love

Mashenka is a complex and painfully true novel. The main character - Lev Glebovch Ganin lives in a foreign land, in Berlin, in a Russian pension. His neighbor - Alferov - shows a photograph of his wife Masha. It is in this Mashenka that Ganin recognizes his first love.

This novel is now being studied at school, but it seems to me that schoolchildren do not need to read this at all. The novel tells about broken dreams, about unfulfilled desires, about the transience of time, about the rapid departure of first love. And school time is the time when dreams and first love do not need to be destroyed. All the same, the younger generation will not take advantage of the advice given by Nabokov in his novel. In short, an adult novel. Not in terms of scenes or anything like that, but just in terms of psychology.

To be honest, I didn't really like it. The ending was especially disappointing. But what else can you expect from Nabokov, a man who lived a difficult life, wandering all over our miserable planet all the time? On the other hand, this is his first novel, written at a time when life, it seems, did not "shock" much. This means that Nabokov had a presentiment that life is not an easy thing...

Not very impressed, although the novel, I repeat, with a strong psychological overtones.

Useful review?

/