The Nature of Textual Binarity: Nabokov's "Christmas"

Abstract

The story's binary structure is set forth in Nabokov's title. "Rozhdestvo" [Christmas], both thematically and etymologically, may be decoded as a positively marked event. The ontological status of any holiday is normally marked with a plus sign since such events are set apart from the plane of the everyday, the ordinary, the routine, and, as such, constitute an opposition to the latter. Thus, the conelation "time/event," i.e., "when something happens" and "what happens," must find positive expression. However, the story's main action (the death of the protagonist's son) is patently a negative event whose perception is greatly intensified due to the "time" of what is taking