2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Today, Vladimir Nabokov is usually classified as a Russian-speaking writer living abroad. However, in Russia he failed to gain due fame, so the most outstanding works were written abroad. This is also Masha (1926), Nabokov's first novel. The work was published under the pseudonym V. Sirin - it was invented by Vladimir Vladimirovich himself. A summary of Nabokov's "Mashenka" chapter by chapter will allow the reader to understand the writer's attitude towards Russia and emigration.
A few words about the life and fate of the author
Vladimir Nabokov is a controversial figure in Russian literature. Compatriots who worked within the borders of their homeland could consider him a traitor and call him the shameful word "emigrant". Abroad, he does not hesitate to give English lessons and earn a living from this. The creative growth of the writer occurs with extraordinary speed: he experiments with the form and volume of his works and from the author of storiesturns into a novelist: until 1937 he manages to write 8 novels in Russian. Among the legacy of Vladimir Nabokov, the works “Lolita”, “Protection of Luzhin”, “Gift”, “Invitation to Execution” are especially distinguished - any reader will appreciate them after reading the summary. Masha by Nabokov is also one of the author's best books.
Composition of the work
"Remembering the old novels, remembering the old love" - this epigraph begins the novel "Mashenka". Nabokov borrowed Pushkin's quote not by chance, since its interpretation can be ambiguous. In the context of the novel, love for a woman echoes love for the Motherland; Mashenka is a means through which the author expresses longing for Russia.
The book consists of twelve chapters, in which the girl's name is mentioned 43 times. The summary of Nabokov's "Mashenka" makes it possible to understand that she herself flashes only in Ganin's memoirs and does not appear in her own person. The image of the girl and her husband appears in the later novel "Luzhin's Defense", where she remains a "darling" with special eyes.
"Masha" as a farewell to Russia
While abroad, Nabokov did not stop thinking about the Motherland and in his works he repeatedly mentioned the fate of emigrants. Moving abroad for some was happy, but for others it was the other way around. The summary of Nabokov's "Mashenka" reflects this idea. Having left Russia in 1919, the writer will never be able to return, just like the main character of the work, Lev Glebovich Ganin. inhabitantsboarding house - emigrants from Russia - consider their historical homeland "damned", "mess". Only Lev Glebovich remembers her with tenderness, because it was there that he met his first love.
Vladimir Nabokov: Masha. Summary, conflict analysis
The action takes place in 1926 in a Berlin pension. Lev Glebovich Ganin appears to the reader as a young man who has tried himself in all branches of activity: he was a worker, an extra and even a waiter. Having accumulated enough money for a ticket, Ganin is ready to leave Berlin, but he is being held back by Lyudmila, a woman with whom the affair has lasted three months and is already rather fed up with him. Lev Glebovich, after much deliberation, announces to her that he has fallen in love with another woman. It turns out to be Ganin's youthful love. Summary “Mashenka” by Nabokov allows us to understand the evolution of the feelings of the protagonist, who, as it turned out, even many years after separation fondly remembers his first lover.
A photo of this girl is shown to Lev Glebovich by a certain Alferov, who is her husband. However, he does not know that Ganin and Mashenka have known each other for nine years - this was the first experience of youthful love for both. In the following days, the protagonist of the novel lives on memories when he was very young and hot. He decides to leave the boarding house on Saturday - exactly when Masha comes to her husband. Ganin deliberately sets Alferov's alarm clock for a later time so that he would be late for the station. Wishing to meet Masha, Lev Glebovich himselfleaves for the train, but changes his mind at the last minute and takes a ticket to the southwest of Germany.
The love story of Masha and Ganin
Seeing and recognizing his first lover in Alferov's photo, Lev Glebovich "looked exactly nine years younger." He recalls his happy youth and the story of his acquaintance with Mashenka. Ganin met her as a sixteen-year-old boy, recovering from typhus. He created an ideal female image for himself, being in the Resurrection Cathedral, and soon recognized him in reality. Mashenka was a swarthy girl with "burning Tatar eyes", with a sonorous voice and unusual gaiety. For the first time, Ganin met her surrounded by three friends and made an appointment for them, to which she was already alone. This is how Vladimir Nabokov brought two loving hearts together.
Mashenka… A summary of the chapters allows the reader to understand the nature of this girl. Teenage dates were sweet and innocent at the same time. They both knew that they would soon part ways: Ganin was destined to leave for St. Petersburg, but the “snow era of love” in this city resumed in November, when Masha arrived in the city. Both were burdened by the fact that their families did not know each other, so instead of meetings, teenagers spent evenings talking on the phone. On New Year's Eve, their dates ended and resumed only in the summer - it was then that Mashenka, as if convinced of the infinity of this relationship, said to Ganin: “I am yours. Do whatever you want with me. The young Leo did nothing illegal that day with his beloved, fearing thatin the park, someone might notice them. Their last meeting took place a year later on the train, after which Ganin and Mashenka exchanged tender letters during the war years. They soon lost each other. It is not known whether Mashenka remembered her first love, but Ganin experienced a pleasant shock only when he saw her in Alferov's photograph.
The image of Mother Russia in the novel
The heroes of the work have different attitudes towards their historical homeland: some emigrants are happy that they left the hated land, while others, on the contrary, are bored in Berlin. It is in Russia that the forest edges, fields, special sunrises and sunsets, native to Ganin and Nabokov, are located. “Without our emigrant love, Russia is a cover,” says Podtyagin, one of the inhabitants of the boarding house. The same idea is shared in his book by Vladimir Nabokov. "Mashenka" (a brief summary of the work allows the reader to understand the true experiences of the writer himself) is a novel that has become a cry from the heart and an image of farewell to mother Russia.
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