Владимир Набоков в русле орнаментальной прозы : к вопросу о терминологических разногласиях

Abstract

Vladimir Nabokov and russian ornemental prose That Nabokov as a Russian writer was formed within the Silver Age of Russian culture is an established fact in literature on Nabokov. An important aspect of the Silver Age, however, has been left out and that is the diffusion of the so-called ornamentalism in literature and the way in which Vladimir Nabokov's prose carries on the tradition of Russian ornamental prose. The notion of ornamentalism has been interpreted in contemporary Russian studies but hardly ever with reliance on the examples from Nabokov's prose. This may be the reason that ornamentalism is considered diffused: what is taken into consideration are the preceding (the so-called medieval) pletenie sloves and some peculiar contemporary forms (e.g. the so-called skaz), and the new influences derived from the Western cultural sphere (Wagner and Nietzsche) besides. In the article the author recalls the importance that the ornament had in visual arts and the accompanying theory in the early twentieth century. Later on the notion moves into verbal arts and philology. The concept therefore emerges exactly from this zone of interference. In Nabokov's writings, the role of verbal ornamentalism can be looked at from various points among which the most important is the level of the construction of a work.