The eye and optical devices: deformation of sight in Vladimir Nabokov's prose

The report deals with the analysis of the images and motifs related to visuality: images of eye and glasses, motifs of vision and blurred vision. Visual studies of Nabokov's poetics are one of the main "keys" to his aesthetics and philosophy of art. On the one hand, the eye image in Nabokov's works is realistically developed, the author gives a detailed description of the portrait of the characters, special attention is paid to the description of the eyes. On the other hand, the metaphor "eyes are the mirror of the soul" is often represented in Nabokov's Russian novels. The author gives unsightly eyes to the negative characters, or makes them suffer from myopia. A medical diagnosis is conceptualized metaphorically: myopia and its associated image of points become a metaphor for the aesthetic (The Gift) or spiritual and moral blindness of the characters (King, Queen, Knave). At the same time, the heroes, for whom the author feels sympathy, have sharp eyesight. Visual acuity in the works of Nabokov becomes an integral part of a writing gift. Such correlation is not observed in the author's English prose: in Pnin the protagonist, who evokes definitive sympathy, wears glasses; he is short-sighted and clumsy, but at the same time is endowed with an amazing ability to see the past as real as the present, a gift of sympathy for loved ones, a gift of compassion. The image of glasses and the motif of myopia are connected with the motif of reminiscence, vital for Nabokov's works. The image of points in Nabokov's novels is analyzed in the context of the Russian prose of the 1920s-1930s. The connection of this image is shown with the reception of "estrangement" (in the novel King, Queen, Knave). In Russian novels, the writer uses the prism of perception of a human being with a pathology of eyesight to describe habitual things in an unconventional perspective; however, in American ones (Ada) he uses "estrangement" to comprehend the main image of the visual organ. The article analyzes the plot-forming function of eyeglasses and deformation of vision. They are considered as the inter-and intra-textual aspects of the development of this image and motif in the author's texts. There are also philosophical aspects, connected with images of the eye in the oeuvres of Nabokov. In his texts an "enormous eye" becomes a symbol of unlimited seeing, approaching to borders of "otherworld". The motif of such "dilated lookeding" (M. Matushin), metaphysical afterlight in Nabokov's texts is connected with death. Elaboration of the image of the eye and the motif of eyesight is analyzed in context of experimenting in visual art in the beginning of the 20th century (in the works of O. Redon, R. Magritt, S. Dali).

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