V. Nabokov’s Colors: Meanings and Methods of Creation

Abstract

Dictionaries of color designations give an idea of a color picture of the world belonging to the investigated author. They are a segment of the general panorama of the author’s poetic world. These dictionaries usually represent the alphabetical order of tokens denoting color, indicating the number of tokens, as
 well as quotes from text fragments with links to the source. Vladimir Nabokov created and over the years maintained the myth of his amazing relationship with color, so the study of his color picture of the world is a special case. The basis of the research is created by the authors of the article. It is «Dic-
 tionary of Color Meanings in the Lyrics of Vladimir Nabokov». The principle of its compilation is based on the «color alphabet» set forth by the writer in two autobiographical versions («Other Shores» and «Speak, Memory: An Autobiog-
 raphy Revisited», as well as in the novel «The Gift», where Nabokov actually presented a reference dictionary of his own color terms and gave color characteristics the form of a dictionary interpretation. Special attention in the article is paid
 to the most extravagant ways of endowing color meanings. An illustration of these methods is reconstruction of the meanings of the following author’s color designations: «Gallic gloss», «Smolensk porridge» and «gutta-percha» – «clyster» –
 «sienne brûl, sepia».