НАРЦИС И ЖУДЊА ЗА ОДРАЗИМА – ДВОЈНИЦИ НАБОКОВИЈАНЕ
NARCISSUS AND LONGING FOR REFLECTIONS – DOUBLES IN NABOKOVIANA

Summary/Abstract: There are two basic groups of doubles, “I-type” and “You-type” ones. You-doubles are similar identities who change roles and represent separate beings. I-doubles are created by decomposition, and dividing of one and the same individual psyche. I-doubles appear in various forms, such as shadows, reflections, ghosts, demons, etc. Nabokov’s novels are imbued with various prisms of duality. Konchayev, the writer’s ideal double, his alter-ego from the future, appears in Gift. Ada and Van Vin, the main characters of the novel Ada or Ardor, are representation of a two-syllable ideal version of Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokoviana’s first schizophrenic is Smurov, the protagonist of the novel The Spy, whose perception splits after a failed suicide. Herman Karlovich (Despair) found his double in the tramp Felix. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is an installation of metaleptic double that exists only in the memory of other characters. Clare Quilty is an “I-double” of Humbert Humbert (Lolita). In complex and cryptic Pale Fire, duality arises from several narrative planes. Finally, the protagonist of the novel Look at the Harlequins is the writer’s doppelganger, “a non-identical twin, a parody...” The splitting of Nabokov’s characters, their fragments, shadows and images through several dimensions, their madness and need for the author and “reality”, repeat the theme of Narcissus who longs for his reflections.

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