FILM MEDIALITY IN V. NABOKOV’S PROSE

In this article, the problem of influence of cinematic visuality on the literary texts of V. Nabokov is posed. The very concept of film-mediality and its significance for Nabokov’s aesthetics are specified. A study of some features of the narrative in the Nabokov prose of the late 1920-ies and early 1930-ies, conditioned by the influence of film aesthetics, is being conducted. Those possibilities that open up to the writer and the reader the use of a kind of camera lens, a kind of «cinematic eye» are analyzed. On the material of the novels «The Luzhin Defense», «Laughter in the Dark», «The Eye», the possibilities of using techniques, motifs and conceptual models of the films in a literary work are considered with the aim of expanding the narrative boundaries – turning the plot of the narrative into a plot of observation. In view of the lack of coverage by the researchers of the issue under consideration, an attempt is made to resolve the terminological uncertainty and distinguish between the concepts of «film materiality» and «cinematography», and also to establish the meaning of the term «film-mediality» as applied to the literary (in our case – modern) text. The work is of an analytical nature and is a comprehensive study. We take into account mainly formal receptions borrowed from the cinema, transferred to the soil of literary texts and adapted to the language of
verbal art. The study of techniques helps to establish the semantic interference of cinema and literature. The influence of film-medialism on Nabokov’s narration is traced; the relationship between the observer and the observed, the object of observation and the viewer, the change of points of view and vision are explored. Theoretical reflection and practical analysis of Nabokov’s novels allow us to conclude that cinematographic
techniques and optical effects transferred to the space of the literary text help the writer to convey the fragmentation of heroes and events, and also to present the narrative as a pattern of successive moving pictures.