Modes of ‟short-story-studies”: the individual community of the historical and literary narrative of Prince Mirsky and Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract

The article discusses some aesthetic conclusions and methods of historical and literary generalisations in combination with Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky (hereinafter Prince Mirsky) and Vladimir Nabokov. The topic is contained in a professional methodological study of criticism of the Russian diaspora, in the aspect of their traditions and innovations. In order to clarify the most reliable and textually confirmed arguments, the following research methods are used: comparative-historical, conceptual, structural-semiotic and stylistic. The scientific novelty of the observations is due to the comparison of the scientific mythology of Prince Mirsky and Vadimir Nabokov (as literary personalities) and their categorical apparatus, in particular the parallels drawn in terms of the principles of critical analysis, the problems of speech worldview and the metaphorical style of their scientific thinking, both topical and insufficiently studied aspects of the creative heritage. The reader’s perception and personal assessment underlie their aesthetic verdicts, with methodological principle bringing together the positions of Prince Mirsky and Vladimir Nabokov, who analyse the evolution of aesthetic vision as a way of depicting life forms and reflecting our ideas about it in them. Prince Mirsky, just as well as later Vladimir Nabokov, assert an aesthetic approach, refusing to perceive literature as a sermon or a “photograph of contemporaneity, both appreciate the ontological meaning and ‟individual genius” in literature. As a result, a conclusion is made about the unique individual authors’ vision of the historical topology and conceptology of Russian literature as a semiotic category, the identification of its cultural codes, ‟landmarks”, ‟strokes”, ‟masterpieces”, which form the ‟cultural synthesis” of this unique phenomenon in the reader’s perception, expressed in a unique way, in other words, about the creation of the vice versa history of Russian literature (its modus vivendi).