Open AccessK. CHUKOVSKY AND V. NABOKOV: GLIMPSES OF THEIR PERSONAL AND LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS
Author(s) -
И. В. Пудиков
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
voprosy literatury
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 0042-8795
DOI - 10.31425/0042-8795-2018-2-180-206
Subject(s) - narrative , anagrams , face (sociological concept) , literature , art , sociology , history , philosophy , aesthetics , linguistics , management , economics , task (project management)
The relationship between K. Chukovsky and V. Nabokov is a topic little covered by scholars. Even less is written about the mutual literary influence of the two preeminent Russian authors. The article examines their journals, letters and literary works to reveal the development of their artistic disputes. Doyens of Russian culture, the two simply couldn’t have ignored each other, especially as they met in person before the Revolution and thanks to literary circumstances. The article shows that each one’s personal and artistic opinions were bound to cause a clash of worldviews, which indeed took place on paper, and continued without any face-to-face polemics. The author finds a lot of similarities in the two writers’ creative method: they both demonstrate astonishing literary erudition, synthesize new imagery, plots and narrative forms. Both favoured formalistic and stylistic experimentation, literary game and cryptography, pranking, puns, allusions, and anagrams.