Historical and literary aspects of the plot of V.V. Nabokov's story "Ultima Thule"

The subject basis of the story "Ultima Thule" is the situation of the loss of the loved one owing to her death. The story is a conversation of artist Sineusov with his dead wife, in which he describes his dialogue with Falter. The character of V.V. Nabokov's story hopes that his beloved hears it, though she is far and unconscious. It should be noted that at the threshold of the 19th-20th centuries the subject of posthumous experience of the person was very popular and appeared in a large number of works devoted both to the experiences of "posthumous existence", and to commenting on these experiences by scientific theologians, in particular. The idea of real communication with the spirits of the dead arose at the intersection of natural-science and philosophical concepts at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. In 1774 a German doctor from Vienna F.A. Mesmer became interested in the healing practice by means of magnets and electricity. Mesmer's followers concentrated attention on the research of magnetic sleep-walking, which was later named hypnosis. Some phenomena described by the researchers of magnetism became literary plots and motives. Great interest was also caused by the crime and seduction subject in the condition of hypnosis. The plot of the story "Ultima Thule" can be perceived as a plot variation about a medium who received an "otherworldly revelation" in the somnambulism condition. Initially, the hero of the story is in a steady plot about the contact with the spirits of the dead or the "fallen spirits" replacing them by means of a medium. This type of the plot is attractive for V.V. Nabokov due to its ambiguity and internal discrepancy. That is why it is reproduced fragmentarily, the author shows all the inconsistent moments of the plot. Motives contradicting each other lead to the internal crisis of the plot, and it becomes the internal motivation of a new plot creation directly on the "fragments" of the previous one. The consciousness of the hero belongs to several levels of the uniform reality at the same time. Being in the "Falter plot" he is afraid that the spirit of his wife will answer him by knocking at the table-top; being in the plot of "uniform reality" he understands live connection with the soul of another person, feels the world as existing in the memory or imagination of the dead wife and, in turn, considers himself as the keeper of her world. That is, he does not perceive the world of the dead as the "otherworldly", but feels that his wife and he exist in the uniform reality.

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