6 - The struggle for autonomy

Summary

During the mid 1930s Nabokov's work reaches ever greater degrees of complexity. The author shifts his focus from the subjective quality of personal vision to a probing investigation of the artifice which lies at the core of the fictional world itself. The creative activities of Nabokov's protagonists and the relationships they establish with others in the diegetic world reflect the activities and relationships of the creative entities in the extradiegetic world. As a result, the self–other relationship takes on new implications and meanings: ambiguity and multivalency emerge as central characteristics in Nabokov's fiction. Works such as “The Leonardo” (“Korolek”) and Invitation to a Beheading (Priglashenie na kazn') display Nabokov's increasing readiness to challenge the conventions of realist fiction, and they stimulate the reader to a new understanding of the nature of the fictional construct.

“THE LEONARDO”

The short story “The Leonardo,” published in July 1933, manifests the growing ambiguity built into Nabokov's works in the mid-1930s. The writer's unusual treatment of the self–other relationship on both the diegetic and extradiegetic levels foreshadows his subsequent achievements in Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift. While the story's plot foregrounds a struggle between a pair of contrasting character types in the diegetic world, the tensions depicted in that relationship find an echo in the narrator's relationship to his characters and to creativity in the extradiegetic world.