Child in Time. Autobiographic Battles of Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of autobiography as a form of anthropological practice of yourself. The autobiography of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Other Shores” has been investigated from this perspective in connection with his other works. The philosophical side of Nabokov’s memoirs is considered here. This made it possible to formulate the main problems of the writer’s autobiographical work: the ratio of memory and imagination when plotting, the difference between fact and event in the structure of memory, the degree of individual freedom from coercion of objective historical circumstances, the possibility of discerning the meaning of one’s own biography long before the end of physical life. As a result of the study, Nabokov’s autobiography is characterized as a struggle against time for personal immortality. In this struggle, the writer is not so much expressing as creating yourself. He takes an active position in the act of remembrance, directing memory into the mainstream of the search for the meaning of his past, starting from early childhood. A person who remembers himself gets the opportunity to break out of the linear course of time, to distinguish repetitions in the past and read them as signs of his biography. Finally, reconfiguring biographic optics allows the author to come to a point of view from which he, through ordinary objects, begins to see not only the past and the future in their mutual transition, but also eternity. Thus, the writer avoids the main threat hanging over the mortal creature – the prospect of its annihilation.