Irene Masing-Delic

Bio: Irene Masing-Delic is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 3 citations.

The "Overcoat" of Nabokov's Luzhin: Defense as Self-Destruction

Abstract: This essay examines the protagonist of Nabokov’s 1930 novel The Defense as a character who has much in common with Gogol’s Bashmachkin from “The Overcoat” (1842). Both seek refuge from “real” life in their respective art: calligraphy in Bashmachkin’s case, and chess in Luzhin’s. The two protagonists’ fascination with abstract patterns and disinterest in “real” life results in a transfer of their sexuality from individuals to personified objects, or objectified people: Bashmachkin turns his overcoat into his “wife”; Luzhin gets married but turns his wife into an “overcoat” whose function it is to protect him from the chills of life. There is no “defense” against the games life that plays with the characters, however, and, like Akaky Akakievich, Luzhin destroys himself in his very quest for a protective wrap.

Nabokov's Otherworld.

Abstract: A major reexamination of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov as \"literary gamesman, \" this book systematically shows that behind his ironic manipulation of narrative and his puzzle-like treatment of detail there lies an aesthetic rooted in his intuition of a transcendent realm and in his consequent redefinition of \"nature\" and \"artifice\" as synonyms. Beginning with Nabokov's discursive writings, Vladimir Alexandrov finds his world view centered on the experience of epiphany--characterized by a sudden fusion of varied sensory data and memories, a feeling of timelessness, and an intuition of immortality--which grants the true artist intimations of an \"otherworld.\" Readings of The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lolita, and Pale Fire reveal the epiphanic experience to be a touchstone for the characters' metaphysical insightfulness, moral makeup, and aesthetic sensibility, and to be a structural model for how the narratives themselves are fashioned and for the nature of the reader's involvement with the text. In his conclusion, Alexandrov outlines several of Nabokov's possible intellectual and artistic debts to the brilliant and variegated culture that flourished in Russia on the eve of the Revolution. Nabokov emerges as less alienated from Russian culture than most of his emigre readers believed, and as less \"modernist\" than many of his Western readers still imagine. \"Alexandrov's work is distinctive in that it applies an otherworld' hypothesis as a consistent context to Nabokov's novels. The approach is obviously a fruitful one. Alexandrov is innovative in rooting Nabokov's ethics and aesthetics in the otherwordly and contributes greatly toNabokov studies by examining certain key terms such as commonsense, ' nature, ' and artifice.' In general Alexandrov's study leads to a much clearer understanding of Nabokov's metaphysics.\"--D. Barton Johnson, University of California, Santa Barbara

The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol

Abstract: Through careful textual readings of Gogol's most famous works, Karlinsky argues that Gogol's homosexual orientation--which Gogol himself could not accept or forgive in himself--may provide the missing key to the riddle of Gogol's personality. \"A brilliant new biography that will long be prized for its illuminating psychological insights into Gogol's actions, its informative readings of his fiction and drama, and its own stylistic grace and vivacity.\"--Edmund White, Washington Post Book World

Nabokov's Early Fiction: Patterns of Self and Other

Abstract: Dedication Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The quest of the other 2. Altering the themes of life 3. The evil differentiation of shadows 4. A fondness for the mask 5. Dimming the bliss of Narcissus 6. The struggle for autonomy 7. The transforming rays of creative consciousness Notes Abbreviation Bibliography of works cited.