On the poetics of emotions and the world’s tenderness in V. Nabokov’s short story Beneficence [Blagost]

Abstract

The article analyses and interprets the short story Beneficence [Blagost] (1924), penned by V. Nabokov during his Berlin period of emigration. The author selected the short story for several reasons. Firstly, it appeals as an example of genre transformation of a love story and demonstrates the multidimensionality of the concept of love; secondly, the protagonist arouses interest as an empathetic narrator whose utterances reveal a complex structure; and thirdly, due to the ways in which the meaning of the title correlates with the decoded concept of the world’s tenderness. The writer’s strategy and the poetics of emotions uncover the core meaning of a reminiscence as a cognitive act and transformation of the hero’s consciousness, i. e., his understanding of love and happiness. The protagonist proceeds to discover happiness on a different plane of existence — in the relationship of ‘me and the world,’ in the harmony of the universe, and in the convergence of the micro- and macrocosms. Taking this into account, it appears that Nabokov’s portrayal of tenderness is endowed with a sacred meaning and reaches completion in the formula ‘me for the Other.’