Набоковская герменевтика пушкинского мира в стихотворении «Лилит»
Nabokov's hermeneutics of the Pushkin world in the poem "Lilith"

Summary/Abstract: Specifying motifs occurring in the texture of the entire oeuvre of Nabokov the paper aims at re-evaluating Nabokov’s early poetry via the analysis of the poem Lilith. By determining the lyrical persona Pushkin identified in this case with Nabokov, one may perceive the poem as the description of the journey in the other world reminiscent of Dante’s way through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise and accomplished by Pushkin, whose fragmentary Rusalka can be looked upon as the subtext of Nabokov’s poem. Nabokov several times claims his spiritual kinship with the most famous Russian poet, regarding him as his own ancestor and views his poetical heritage as the genuine embodiment of pure poetry. Considering the background to the poem—originally the pornographically biased theme was suggested by the émigré poet Khodasevich—the reader is undoubtedly presented the problem of amor ascendens and amor descendens represented in the description of the scene of the encounter with the Rusalka, Lilith, whose depiction is penetrated with profound eroticism. Nevertheless, the author’s intention rather appears to be directed towards conveying the spiritual concept of sexuality, especially if we take into account Nabokov’s never-ending polemic with Freud’ s theory of human civilization. The figure of the Rusalka traditionally represented in Russian folk legends and originating in the beliefs about mermaids and water nymphs is closely related to other Nabokov heroines, most typically to Lolita.

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