| This project explores the literary relationship between Vladimir Nabokov (pseudonym V. Sirin, 1899--1977) and Vladislav Khodasevich (1886--1939), writers who left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, shared a literary heritage, but did not meet until 1932. Starting from the concept of "potustoronnost'" ("otherworldiness") and from the controversy over Khodasevich as a model for the poet Koncheyev in Nabokov's novel Dar (The Gift), I consider each man's ideas on the creativity and literary succession.;In Chapter 1, I show that each writer borrowed ideas on inspiration from Aleksandr Pushkin, highlighting their own affinity against the background of an emigre literary ethos that each considered distasteful and dangerous. Chapter 2 considers this literary ethos and its failings from Khodasevich's perspective, as well as Khodasevich's "theory" of art and life, "grain's way." In Chapter 3, I show how Khodasevich imbeds references to his own model of the creative process in his 1937 essay "O Sirine" ("On Sirin"), establishing a creative dynasty beginning with Horace and ending with Sirin.;Chapters 4 through 7 discuss Nabokov's novels in the context of the creed he shared with Khodasevich. In Nabokov's first novel, Mashen'ka (Mary), his hero models the creative process that Khodasevich and Nabokov borrowed from Pushkin. This hero, Ganin, is a first sketch of the Nabokov's later "artist-heroes.";In Korol', dama, valet (King, Queen, Knave), Nabokov presents the reader with an "un-primer" on art, using his main characters to demonstrate faulty reading, writing, and creativity. Discussing Zashchita Luzhina (The Defense), I show how Luzhin's attempts to negotiate the line between the chess world and the real world mesh with Khodasevich's theory that "poet and man are two hypostases of a unified being.";In Chapter 7, I discuss Priglashenie na kazn' ( Invitation to a Beheading) as a test case for questions Nabokov explores differently in The Gift; Khodasevich's familiarity The Gift while it was in progress; and the novel's function as a "self-teaching handbook of literary inspiration." The novel's structure and characterization make its hero, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdynstev, fully man and fully poet. Fyodor therefore fulfills the demands Khodasevich placed on Nabokov, making Nabokov a worthy successor. |
