Marina Grishakova wrote: " In her last letter, Jansy Mello touches upon the
principle of "metamorphic writing" and prosopopeia in "The Gift". In this
connection, let me cite the following passage from my "Models of Space, Time and
Vision in Nabokov's Fiction" (pp. 248-250):
"The novel imitates the
universe: multiple worlds are embedded one within another ... In "The Gift" the
real world metamorphoses into the fictional and the fictional world assumes the
form of the real. Poetry mingles with
prose, the otherworld filters into the
earthly reality. The story of father's travels intertwines with Pushkin's
documentary prose, the Chernyshevsky's story with the book on Chernyshevsky,
love for Zina with "The Gift" (see Davydov 1982, Paperno 1997). Finally, all
these worlds intertwine as different forms of writing and maturing
literary
self-consciousness (see Tammi 1985: 84 on "The Gift" as a
Künstlerroman). Chernyshevsky's utilitarian thesis on the superiority of
life over art is subverted by a playful reversal of the direction of mimesis,
when the real space imitates the fictional one. .... For Andrei Bely, the mirror
was an emblem of the reversibility of mimetic realtions of art and life and
therefore a source of ontological anxiety and panic... Nabokov turns this
reversibility into a source of purely
aesthetic bliss or anxiety, making
possible in fiction what is impossible in life"
I had the pleasure of finding one of Marina
Grishakova's articles in the internet (“V. Nabokov’s “Bend Sinister”: A Social
Message or an Experiment with Time?” Sign Systems Studies 28, Tartu University Press, 2000, pp. 242-263)
and this is how I gained access to it.
Several quotations and references are to be found in my
short-note: "Time Before and Time After in Nabokov's Novels" ( The Nabokovian,
Fall 2005, Number 55) and want to add one of them here, on VN's : "device of the “serial observer” discloses an
affinity between the metafictional and metaphysical problems: the status of the
fictional world, its development in time, the fiction of the
creator”.
Unfortunately
I have not yet been able to order your book where you develop your ideas in
relation to "The Gift".
Our ED SES
posted a tantalizing message about it: "... Marina Grishakova makes a similar argument
in her recent book, "The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov's
Fiction" (Tartu University Press,2006), explaining that in VN's novels, "whereas
the reality is partially fictionalized and devoid of its uncontestable
obviousness, fiction reveals a potency of becoming real and acquires either a
miraculous or threatening solidity of fact" (p. 37).
Thank you
for allowing us to have a small glimpse of it in today's message to the
List.
Jansy