‘The Wreck’ by V. Nabokov: Inside the Context

Abstract

The object of the study is V. Nabokov's poem “The Wreck” (1925), in which an artistic interpretation of the central fragment of the text is undertaken — the wreck of a train driven by angels. The subject matter that rarely came into the field of view of researchers determines the novelty of the paper. The work analyzes the interpretations of the poem translations made by A. Filimonov and A. Chizhov, that made it possible to observe the author's strategies in mastering the existential topic. All of them display different degrees of consistency with church tradition and poetic tradition, once again emphasizing Nabokov's worldview. The paper shows how biblical images and literary context may be combined in the most unexpected way within one poem since the 19th century. “The Wreck” sustains the tradition of Pushkin's “Prophet”, contributing to the creation of an intra-literary dialogue in which other accents are placed in accordance with Nabokov's worldview, determining the meaning of a thing, dehumanization of space, prophetic dream. In addition, the study argues that Nabokov's poem, based on the perception of the train by the Russian classics, lays the tradition of the theme of the train wreck in Russian poetry (Kochetkov, Rubtsov). Nabokov's “Wreck” aims to realize the author's poetics as fully as possible and to be a value measure of the confrontation of earthly and heavenly principles. The results obtained may be used in research and teaching activities connected to the study of the formation and development of poetry of the twentieth century.