| This dissertation treats the oeuvres of Vladimir Nabokov (1899--1977) and Iosif Brodskij (1940--96) in the context of the important literary and cultural traditions of the city of St. Petersburg, referred to here as "the Petersburg Theme." Petersburg has always been a city where the written word plays a particularly strong role in shaping the daily lives and consciousness of its inhabitants. The Petersburg writer can thus be said to "create" his city, in an ongoing continuation of the work of its strong-willed founder, Peter the Great.;Both natives of St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Nabokov and Brodskij were each forced to leave the city and to re-establish their lives and careers in permanent emigration and in a different language. Despite their physical removal from Russia, and despite the city's own struggles to retain its identity during cataclysmic social and political changes in the twentieth century, each writer continued to rely upon a clearly-defined Petersburg aesthetic in his works.;Using selections from Nabokov's poetry, short stories, and novels, and from Brodskij's poetry and essays, this study focuses on the city of Petersburg as both an image with a very specific set of spatial attributes, and also as a memory which activates these writers' creative consciousness. The city, with all its negative and positive attributes, continues to influence the way they think and write, as in turn these authors continue to create Petersburg, although they are far removed from the city-space itself. Each writer develops in a significant way the trajectory of the Petersburg Theme in the twentieth century, confirming that the city is as much a mental and creative construct as it is a physically perceptible space. Specifically, for Nabokov, Petersburg space is related to the powers of a transcendent creative consciousness, while for Brodskij, Petersburg space is the source of his poetic strategy of negative presence. Thus the city not only functions as an image in their works, but also underlies their creative vision as a whole. |
