Depictions of various deformities and “defective” objects are found in the poetry of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov, Chekhov, and Nabokov. The phenomena of deformation and “breakage” in the novels of Nabokov is the subject of this study. The relevance of the article is due to the interest of scholars, on the one hand, in the traditions and authors that Nabokov was interested in, and on the other hand, in literary phenomena and figures that caused him aesthetic disgust. In this respect, the topic itself is scientifically novel: an extremely negative attitude towards Dostoevsky's “cruel talent,” in which motifs of the broken, destroyed, and deformed are abundantly represented, did not affect Nabokov's desire to move in the opposite direction; on the contrary, his depiction of destruction is paradoxically no less frequent than that of his predecessor. The aim of this work is, firstly, to briefly outline the scope and characteristics of this phenomenon in the author's poetics and some of the functions of the image of “breakage”; secondly, to provide a detailed analysis of the specifics of the deformations found in individual lyrical works of the early period – “To the Poet” (1918), “Moths” (1922) and “Biology” (1923). The analysis of their artistic features concerns rhythmic organization – it reveals the overcoming of old poetic dimensions and entire poetic traditions, an attempt at their combinatorics, a motivic system, artistic detailing, etc. The observation of destruction here leads to understanding it as an inevitable stage of the transformation of all living things, which opens the way for the poet to inspiration, comprehension of the laws of creativity and understanding of the eternity of being. Conclusions are drawn about the change in the volume of deformations occurring depending on the period of the writer's work, the literary type, the qualitative difference in the nature of destructions in lyrics and epic works, as well as the fact that Nabokov's "breakage", for all its connection with entropy processes and mortal motives, ultimately expresses creativity and genius. The methodological base consists of comparative and structural-semiotic methods. The significance of the article lies, in particular, in a new look at the early period of Nabokov's work, which is often seen as purely student-like, and the discovery of an active search for ways to overcome the poet's shackling tradition. The results of the research can be applied both in further research and in the practice of teaching philological disciplines in the field of higher education.
Ekaterina Gennad'evna Nikolaeva (Sun,) studied this question.