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Plot

The main character Ganin lives in a Russian boarding house in Berlin. One of the neighbors, Alferov, keeps talking about the arrival of his wife Mashenka from Soviet Russia at the end of the week. From the photograph, Ganin recognizes his former love and decides to sneak her away from the station. All week Ganin lives with memories. On the eve of Mashenka’s arrival in Berlin, Ganin gets Alferov drunk and sets his alarm clock incorrectly. At the last moment, however, Ganin decides that the past image cannot be returned and goes to another station, leaving Berlin forever. Mashenka herself appears in the book only in Ganin’s memoirs.

Mashenka and her husband appear later in Nabokov's novel The Defense of Luzhin (Chapter 13).

In 1991, a film of the same name was made based on the book.

The image of Russia in the novel

V. Nabokov describes the life of emigrants in a German boarding school.

These people are poor, both materially and spiritually. They live in thoughts about their past, pre-emigrant life in Russia, and cannot build the present and future.

The image of Russia is contrasted with the image of France. The heroes associate Russia with a squiggle, and France with a zigzag. In France “everything is very correct”, in Russia it’s a mess. Alferov believes that everything is over with Russia, “they washed it away, as you know, if you smear it with a wet sponge on a black board, on a painted face...” Life in Russia is perceived as painful, Alferov calls it “metamppsychosis.” Russia is called damned. Alferov declares that Russia is kaput, “that the “God-bearer” turned out, as one might have expected, to be a gray bastard, that our homeland, therefore, perished forever.”

Ganin lives with memories of Russia. When he sees fast clouds, her image immediately appears in his head. Ganin remembers his Motherland most of the time. When the end of July comes, Ganin indulges in memories of Russia (“The end of July in the north of Russia already smells slightly of autumn…”). The hero’s memory mainly evokes the nature of Russia, its detailed description: smells, colors... For him, separation from Mashenka is also separation from Russia. The image of Mashenka is closely intertwined with the image of Russia. Clara loves Russia and feels lonely in Berlin.

Podtyagin dreams of apocalyptic Petersburg, and Ganin dreams of “only beauty.”

The heroes of the novel remember their youth, studying at the gymnasium, college, how they played Cossacks - robbers, lapta; they remember magazines, poems, birch groves, forest edges...

Thus, the heroes have an ambivalent attitude towards Russia, each of them has their own ideas about the Motherland, their own memories.

Memory in a novel (using the example of Ganin)

Ganin is the hero of the novel “Mashenka” by V. Nabokov. This character is not inclined to action, apathetic. Critics of literature of the 20s They consider Ganin a failed attempt to present a strong personality. But there is also dynamics in the image of this character. We need to remember the hero’s past and his reaction in a stopped elevator (trying to find a way out). Ganin’s memories are also dynamics. The difference between him and other heroes is that he is the only one leaving the boarding house.

Memory in V. Nabokov's novel is presented as an all-encompassing force, as an animated being. Ganin, seeing Mashenka’s photograph, radically changes his worldview. Also, the memory accompanies the hero everywhere, it is like a living being. In the novel, the memory is called a gentle companion who lay down and spoke.

In his memoirs, the hero plunges into his youth, where he met his first love. Mashenka’s letter to Ganin awakens in him memories of a bright feeling.

Sleep in the novel is equal to falling. Nabokov's hero passes this test. The means to awakening is memory.

The fullness of life returns to Ganin through memory. This happens with the help of Mashenka’s photograph. It is from contact with her that Ganin’s resurrection begins. As a result of the healing, Ganin remembers the feelings he experienced during his recovery from typhus.

The memory of Mashenka, the hero’s appeal to her image, can be compared to an appeal to the Virgin Mary for help. N. Poznansky notes that Nabokov’s memories in their essence resemble “prayer-like conspiracies.”

So, memory plays a central role in the novel. With its help, the plot is built; their fate depends on the memories of the heroes.

That. memory is a kind of mechanism through which the dynamics in the novel are realized.

[When writing this section, the article by Dmitrienko O.A. was used. Folklore and mythological motifs in Nabokov's novel<<Машенька>>>/Russian literature, No.4,2007]

Sources

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation.

2010.

Mashenka: diminutive for the name "Maria". Not everyone is allowed to call Masha that, but only close people. If you are not one of them, take the trouble to call her less affectionately. Works with the title “Mashenka” Mashenka (novel) ... ... Wikipedia

Mashenka and the Bear ... Wikipedia

Roman Kachanov Birth name: Roman Abelevich Kachanov Date of birth: February 25, 1921 (19210225) Place ... Wikipedia

Wikipedia has articles about other people with this surname, see Kachanov. Wikipedia has articles about other people named Kachanov, Roman. Roman Kachanov Birth name: Ruvim Abelevich Kachanov Date of birth ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Lolita. Lolita Lolita

- “King, Queen, Jack” novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Written in Russian during the Berlin period of his life, in 1928. Nabokov’s memoirs note that during his entire life in Germany he did not get along with a single German. This alienation is reflected in... ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Camera Obscura (meanings). Pinhole camera

This term has other meanings, see Feat. Feat Genre: novel

The first novel by V.V. Nabokov; written during the Berlin period in 1926 in Russian. This piece is exceptional and extraordinary. It is different from all the novels and plays he has written.

Briefly speaking about the theme of the novel, this is a story about an unusual person in exile, in whom his interest in life is already beginning to fade. And only having accidentally met the love of his youth, he tries to be reborn, to return to his bright past, to return to his youth, during which he was so happy.

A book about the “oddities of memory,” about the whimsical interweaving of life patterns of the past and present, about the “delightful event” of the resurrection of the story of his first love by the main character, a Russian emigrant Lev Ganin living in Berlin. The novel, set over just six days and featuring very few characters, gains emotional poignancy and semantic depth thanks to the passionate power of Ganin's (and the author's) memory, faithful to the irrational moments of the past.

In his novel, Nabokov reflects philosophically on love for a woman and for Russia. These two loves merge into one whole for him, and separation from Russia causes him no less pain than separation from his beloved. “For me, the concepts of love and Motherland are equivalent,” Nabokov wrote in exile. His characters yearn for Russia, not counting Alferov, who calls Russia “damned” and says that it has “come to the end of its life.” (“It’s time for us all to openly declare that Russia is kaput, that the “God-bearer” turned out, as one might have guessed, to be a gray bastard, that our homeland, therefore, perished.”) However, the other heroes passionately love their homeland and believe in it rebirth. (“…Russia must be loved. Without our emigrant love, Russia is finished. Nobody loves it there. Do you love it? I really do.”)

Mashenka and her husband appear later in Nabokov's novel The Defense of Luzhin (Chapter 13).

In 1991, a film of the same name was made based on the book.

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– Lev Glevo... Lev Glebovich? Well, your name, my friend, is enough to dislocate your tongue...

“It’s possible,” Ganin confirmed rather coldly, trying to make out his interlocutor’s face in the unexpected darkness. He was irritated by the stupid situation in which they both found themselves, and by this forced conversation with a stranger.

“I inquired about your name for a reason,” the voice continued carefree. - In my opinion, every name...

“Let me press the button again,” Ganin interrupted him.

- Press. I'm afraid it won't help. So: every name obliges. Leo and Gleb are a complex, rare connection. It requires dryness, firmness, and originality from you. My name is more modest; and his wife’s name is quite simple: Maria. By the way, let me introduce myself: Alexey Ivanovich Alferov. Sorry, I think I stepped on your toes...

“Very nice,” said Ganin, feeling in the darkness for the hand that was poking at his cuff. – Do you think we’ll stay here for a long time? It's time to do something. Damn...

“Let’s sit on the bench and wait,” a lively and annoying voice sounded right next to his ear. – Yesterday, when I arrived, you and I ran into each other in the corridor. In the evening, I heard you clear your throat behind the wall, and immediately from the sound of the cough I decided: fellow countryman. Tell me, have you been living in this boarding house for a long time?

- For a long time. Do you have any matches?

- No. I do not smoke. And the boarding house is a bit dirty, even though it’s Russian. You know, I have great happiness: my wife is coming from Russia. Four years – is it a joke... Yes, sir. And now we won't have to wait long. It's already Sunday.

“What darkness...” said Ganin and cracked his fingers. - I wonder what time it is...

Alferov sighed noisily; the warm, lethargic smell of a not entirely healthy, elderly man gushed out. There's something sad about that smell.

“That means there are six days left.” I believe she will arrive on Saturday. I received a letter from her yesterday. She wrote the address very funny. It's a shame it's so dark, otherwise I would have shown it. What are you feeling there, my dear? These windows don't open.

“I don’t mind breaking them,” said Ganin.

- Come on, Lev Glebovich; Shouldn't we play some petit-jo? I know amazing ones, I compose them myself. Think, for example, of some two-digit number. Ready?

“Excuse me,” said Ganin and slammed his fist twice into the wall.

“But you must admit that we can’t stay here all night.”

- It seems that I will have to. Don’t you think, Lev Glebovich, that there is something symbolic in our meeting? While we were still at Terra Firma, we didn’t know each other, and it so happened that we returned home at the same hour and entered this room together. By the way, what a thin floor this is! And underneath is a black well. So, I said: we silently entered here, not yet knowing each other, silently floated up and suddenly - stop. And darkness came.

– What, exactly, is the symbol? – Ganin asked gloomily.

- Yes, here, in a stop, in immobility, in this darkness. And waiting. Today at dinner this - what's his name... old writer... yes, Podtyagin... - argued with me about the meaning of our emigrant life, our great expectation. You didn’t have lunch here today, Lev Glebovich?

- No. I was outside the city.

- Now it’s spring. It must be nice there.

“When my wife arrives, I will also go out of town with her.” She loves walks. The landlady told me that your room will be free by Saturday?

“That’s right,” Ganin answered dryly.

– Are you leaving Berlin completely?

Ganin nodded, forgetting that a nod could not be seen in the dark. Alferov shifted on the bench, sighed twice, then began whistling quietly and saccharinely. He will be silent and start again. Ten minutes passed; suddenly something clicked upstairs.

“That’s better,” Ganin grinned.

At that same moment, a light bulb flashed in the ceiling, and the entire humming, floating cage was filled with yellow light. Alferov blinked, as if waking up. He was wearing an old, hooded, sand-colored coat—as they say, a demi-season one—and holding a bowler hat in his hand. His sparse blond hair was slightly disheveled, and there was something popular, sweetly evangelical in his features - in his golden beard, in the turn of his skinny neck, from which he pulled off a colorful scarf.

The elevator shookly caught on the threshold of the fourth platform and stopped.

“Miracles,” Alferov smiled, opening the door... “I thought someone upstairs raised us, but there’s no one here.” Please, Lev Glebovich; After you.

But Ganin, wincing, gently pushed him out and then, coming out himself, rattled the iron door in his heart. He had never been so irritable before.

“Miracles,” Alferov repeated, “rose, but no one was there.” Also, you know, a symbol...

The boarding house was Russian and unpleasant at that. The main thing that was unpleasant was that the city railway trains could be heard all day long and for a good part of the night, and therefore it seemed as if the whole house was slowly moving somewhere. The hallway, where there hung a dark mirror with a stand for gloves and an oak trunk that could easily be bumped into with a knee, narrowed into a bare, very cramped corridor. On each side there were three rooms with large, black numbers pasted on the doors: they were just pieces of paper torn from an old calendar - the first six days of the month of April. In the April Fool's room - the first door on the left - Alferov now lived, in the next - Ganin, in the third - the hostess herself, Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn, the widow of a German businessman, who brought her from Sarepta twenty years ago and died the year before last from inflammation of the brain. In three rooms to the right - from the fourth to the sixth of April - lived: the old Russian poet Anton Sergeevich Podtyagin, Klara - a full-breasted young lady with wonderful bluish-brown eyes - and finally - in room six, at the bend of the corridor - ballet dancers Colin and Gornotsvetov, Both are funny, feminine, thin, with powdered noses and muscular thighs. At the end of the first part of the corridor there was a dining room, with a lithographic “Last Supper” on the wall opposite the door and with horned yellow deer skulls on the other wall, above a pot-bellied sideboard, where stood two crystal vases, which were once the cleanest objects in the entire apartment, and now dulled by fluffy dust. Having reached the dining room, the corridor turned at a right angle to the right: there further, in the tragic and inodorous wilds, there was a kitchen, a closet for servants, a dirty bathroom and a toilet cell, on the door of which there were two crimson zeros, deprived of their legitimate tens with which they formed there were once two different Sundays on Mr. Dorn’s desk calendar. A month after his death, Lydia Nikolaevna, a small, deaf woman and not without oddities, rented an empty apartment and turned it into a boarding house, showing at the same time an extraordinary, somewhat creepy, ingenuity in the sense of distributing all those few household items that she inherited. Tables, chairs, creaky cabinets and bumpy couches were scattered throughout the rooms that she was planning to rent out, and, thus separated from each other, they immediately faded and took on a dull and absurd appearance, like the bones of a dismantled skeleton. The dead man's desk, an oak hulk with an iron inkwell in the shape of a toad and a middle drawer as deep as a hold, ended up in the first room where Alferov lived, and the swivel stool, once acquired with the table together, forlornly went to the dancers who lived in the room sixth. The pair of green armchairs also split up: one was bored by Ganin, in the other sat the owner herself or her old dachshund, a black, fat bitch with a gray muzzle and drooping ears, velvety at the ends, like the fringe of a butterfly. And on the shelf in Clara’s room, for decoration’s sake, stood the first few volumes of the encyclopedia, while the remaining volumes went to Podtyagin. Clara also got the only decent washbasin with a mirror and drawers; in each of the other rooms there was simply a thick stand, and on it a tin cup with the same jug. But then the beds had to be bought, and Mrs. Dorn did this reluctantly, not because she was stingy, but because she found some kind of sweet excitement, some kind of economic pride in the way all her previous furnishings were distributed, and in this case she It was annoying that it was impossible to saw the double bed into the required number of pieces, on which it was too spacious for her, a widow, to sleep. She cleaned the rooms herself, and moreover, somehow, she didn’t know how to cook at all, and she kept a cook - the terror of the market, a huge red-haired woman who on Fridays put on a crimson hat and rode off to the northern quarters to ply her trade with her seductive obesity. Lidia Nikolaevna was afraid to enter the kitchen, and in general she was a quiet, timid person. When she ran along the corridor with her blunt legs, it seemed to the residents that this small, gray-haired, snub-nosed woman was not the owner at all, but simply a stupid old woman who had found herself in someone else’s apartment. She folded herself like a rag doll when in the morning she quickly collected rubbish from under the furniture with a brush, and then disappeared into her room, the smallest of all, and there she read some tattered German books or looked through the papers of her late husband, in which I didn’t understand a single word. Only Podtyagin came into this room, stroked the affectionate black dachshund, pinched its ears, a wart on its gray muzzle, tried to force the dog to give up its crooked paw and told Lidia Nikolaevna about his old man’s painful illness and that he had been working for a long time, six months. about a visa to Paris, where his niece lives and where long, crispy rolls and red wine are very cheap. The old woman nodded her head, sometimes asking him about the other residents and especially about Ganin, who seemed to her to be completely different from all the Russian young people who stayed in her boarding house. Ganin, having lived with her for three months, was now planning to move out, he even said that he would vacate the room this Saturday, but he had already planned to do so several times, but he kept putting it off and changed his mind. And Lidia Nikolaevna, from the words of the old gentle poet, knew that Ganin had a girlfriend. That was the whole point.

Mashenka

"Mashenka"- the first novel by V.V. Nabokov; written during the Berlin period in 1926 in Russian.

The book exhibits themes developed to a greater extent in “The Gift”: the Russian emigrant environment in Berlin.

Plot

Mashenka and her husband appear later in Nabokov's novel The Defense of Luzhin (Chapter 13).

In 1991, a film of the same name was made based on the book.

The image of Russia in the novel

V. Nabokov describes the life of emigrants in a German boarding school.

These people are poor, both materially and spiritually. They live in thoughts about their past, pre-emigrant life in Russia, and cannot build the present and future.

Clara loves Russia and feels lonely in Berlin.

Podtyagin dreams of apocalyptic Petersburg, and Ganin dreams of “only beauty.”

The heroes of the novel remember their youth, studying at the gymnasium, college, how they played Cossacks - robbers, lapta; they remember magazines, poems, birch groves, forest edges...

Thus, the heroes have an ambivalent attitude towards Russia, each of them has their own ideas about the Motherland, their own memories.

Memory in a novel (using the example of Ganin)

In his memoirs, the hero plunges into his youth, where he met his first love. Mashenka’s letter to Ganin awakens in him memories of a bright feeling.

Sleep in the novel is equal to falling. Nabokov's hero passes this test. The means to awakening is memory.

The memory of Mashenka, the hero’s appeal to her image, can be compared to an appeal to the Virgin Mary for help.

N. Poznansky notes that Nabokov’s memories in their essence resemble “prayer-like conspiracies.”

So, memory plays a central role in the novel. With its help, the plot is built; their fate depends on the memories of the heroes.

That. memory is a kind of mechanism through which the dynamics in the novel are realized.

[When writing this section, the article by Dmitrienko O.A. was used. Folklore and mythological motifs in Nabokov’s novel >// Russian literature, No.4, 2007]

Mashenka - Novel (1926)

Spring 1924 Lev Glebovich Ganin lives in a Russian boarding house in Berlin. In addition to Ganin, in the boarding house live the mathematician Aleksey Ivanovich Alferov, a man “with a thin beard and a shiny plump nose”, the “old Russian poet” Anton Sergeevich Podtyagin, Klara - “a full-breasted, all in black silk, a very cozy young lady”, working as a typist and in love with Ganina, as well as ballet dancers Kolin and Gornotsvetov. “A special shade, a mysterious affectation” separates the latter from other boarders, but, “speaking in all conscience, one cannot blame the pigeon happiness of this harmless couple.”
Last year, upon his arrival in Berlin, Ganin immediately found a job. He was a worker, a waiter, and an extra. The money he has left is enough to leave Berlin, but to do this he needs to break up with Lyudmila, whose relationship has been going on for three months and he is pretty tired of. But Ganin doesn’t know how to break it. His window looks out onto the railroad track, and therefore “the opportunity to leave teases me relentlessly.” He announces to the hostess that he will leave on Saturday.
Ganin learns from Alferov that his wife Ma-
Shenka. Alferov takes Ganin to his place to show him photographs of his wife. Ganin recognizes his first love. From that moment on, he is completely immersed in the memories of this love; it seems to him that he has become exactly nine years younger. The next day, Tuesday, Ganin announces to Lyudmila that he loves another woman. Now he is free to remember how nine years ago, when he was sixteen years old, while recovering from typhus in a summer estate near Voskresensk, he created for himself a female image, which a month later he met in reality. Mashenka had a “chestnut braid in a black bow,” “Tatar burning eyes,” a dark face, a voice “moving, burr, with unexpected chest sounds.” Mashenka was very cheerful and loved sweets. She lived in a dacha in Voskresensk. Once, with two friends, she climbed into a gazebo in the park. Ganin started talking to the girls, they agreed to go boating the next day. But Mashenka came alone. They began to meet every day on the other side of the river, where an empty white manor stood on a hill.
When, on a black stormy night, on the eve of leaving for St. Petersburg for the beginning of the school year, he met her for the last time in this place, Ganin saw that the shutters of one of the windows of the estate were slightly open, and a human face was pressed against the glass from the inside. It was the watchman's son. Ganin broke the glass and began to “beat his wet face with a stone fist.”
The next day he left for St. Petersburg. Mashenka moved to St. Petersburg only in November. The “snowy era of their love” began. It was difficult to meet, wandering for a long time in the cold was painful, so both remembered summer. In the evenings they talked on the phone for hours. All love requires solitude, but they had no shelter, their families did not know each other. At the beginning of the new year, Mashenka was taken to Moscow. And it’s strange: this separation turned out to be a relief for Ganin.
Mashenka returned in the summer. She called Ganin at the dacha and said that her dad never wanted to rent a dacha in Voskresensk again and she now lives fifty miles from there. Ganin rode to her on a bicycle. I arrived already dark. Mashenka was waiting for him at the park gate. “I am yours,” she said. “Do whatever you want with me.” But strange rustling sounds were heard in the park, Mashenka lay too submissively and motionless. “It still seems to me that someone is coming,” he said and stood up.
He met Mashenka a year later on a summer train. She got off
at the next station. They never saw each other again. During the war, Ganin and Mashenka exchanged tender letters several times. He was in Yalta, where “a military struggle was being prepared,” it was somewhere in Little Russia. Then they lost each other.
On Friday, Colin and Gornotsvetov, on the occasion of receiving the engagement, Clara’s birthday, Ganin’s departure and Podtyagin’s supposed departure to Paris to visit his niece, decide to organize a “celebration”. Ganin and Podtyagin go to the police department to help him with a visa. When the long-awaited visa is received, Podtyagin accidentally leaves his passport on the tram. He has a heart attack.
The holiday dinner is not fun. Podtyagin is getting sick again. Ganin gives the already drunk Alferov something to drink and sends him to bed, while he imagines how he will meet Mashenka at the station in the morning and take her away.
Having collected his things, Ganin says goodbye to the boarders sitting at the bedside of the dying Podtyagin and goes to the station. There is an hour left before Mashenka's arrival. He sits down on a bench in the park near the station, where four days ago he remembered typhus, the estate, Mashenka’s premonition. Gradually, “with merciless clarity,” Ganin realizes that his romance with Mashenka is over forever. “It lasted only four days - these four days were, perhaps, the happiest time of his life.” The image of Mashenka remained with the dying poet in the “house of shadows”. But there is no other Mashenka and there cannot be. He waits for the moment when an express train coming from the north passes over the railway bridge. He takes a taxi, goes to another station and boards a train going to southwest Germany.
E. A. Zhuravleva