Summary of Nabokov's "Mashenka." The main conflict and autobiography of the novel

Today, Vladimir Nabokov is usually referred to the category of Russian-speaking writers living abroad. However, in Russia he failed to get proper fame, so the most outstanding works were written abroad. This is also the "Mashenka" (1926) - the first novel by Nabokov. The work was published under the pseudonym V. Syrin - it was invented by Vladimir Vladimirovich himself. Nabokov's summary of "Mashenka" by chapters will allow the reader to understand the writer's attitude to Russia and emigration.

A few words about the life and fate of the author

Vladimir Nabokov is a controversial figure in Russian literature. Compatriots who created within the homeland, could consider him a traitor and call the shameful word "emigrant". Abroad, he does not hesitate to give lessons in English and earn it for living. The creative growth of the writer occurs with extraordinary rapidity: he experiments with the form and volumes of his works and from the author of stories turns into a novelist: until 1937 he manages to write 8 novels in Russian. Among the legacy of Vladimir Nabokov works "Lolita", "Protection of Luzhin", "Dar", "Invitation to Execution" are especially noteworthy - they will be appreciated by any reader, after reading the summary. "Masha" Nabokov also refers to the best books of the author.

Composition of the work

"Recollecting the old years of novels, remembering the former love" - this epigraph begins the novel "Mashenka." Nabokov borrowed Pushkin's quotation casually, since its interpretation can be ambiguous. In the context of the novel, love for a woman echoes with love for the Motherland; Mashenka is a means through which the author expresses longing for Russia.

The book consists of twelve chapters, in which the girl's name is mentioned 43 times. Nabokov's brief "Mashenka" allows us to understand that she herself flashes only in Ganin's memoirs and does not appear in person. The image of the girl and her husband appears in the later novel "The Protection of the Luzhin", where she remains "darling" with special eyes.

"Mashenka" as a farewell to Russia

While abroad, Nabokov never ceased to think about the Motherland and in his works repeatedly mentioned the fate of emigrants. Moving abroad for some was happy, but for others - on the contrary. The summary of Nabokov's Mashenka reflects this idea. Leaving Russia in 1919, the writer will never be able to return back, like the protagonist of the work Lev Glebovich Ganin. Inhabitants of the boarding house - emigrants from Russia - consider their historical homeland to be "damned", "a mess". Only Lev Glebovich recalls her with tenderness, because it was there that he met his first love.

Vladimir Nabokov: "Masha". Summary, conflict analysis

The action takes place in 1926 in the Berlin boarding school. Lev Glebovich Ganin seems to the reader a young man who has tried himself in all fields of activity: he was a worker, an extrasist and even a waiter. Having accumulated enough money for a ticket, Ganin is ready to leave Berlin, but he is held by Lyudmila - a woman whose romance lasts three months and is already fed up with him. Lev Glebovich after long meditations announces to her that he fell in love with another woman. She finds Ganina's youthful love. A brief description of Nabokov's "Mashenka" makes it possible to understand the evolution of the feelings of the protagonist, who, as it turned out, even many years after parting with tenderness recalls his first lover.

A picture of this girl Leo Glebovich shows a certain Alferov, who belongs to her husband. However, he does not know that Ganin and Mashenka are familiar for nine years - this was the first experience of youthful love for both. In the following days, the protagonist of the novel lives with memories, when he was very young and hot. From the boarding house, he decides to leave on Saturday - just when Mashenka comes to see his husband. Ganin purposely sets Alferov's alarm clock for a later time so that he is late for the station. Wishing to meet Mashenka, Lev Glebovich himself goes to the train, but at the last minute changes his mind and takes a ticket to the south-west of Germany.

The love story of Mashenka and Ganin

Having seen and recognized Alferov's first lover in his photo, Lev Glebovich "looked exactly nine years younger". He remembers the happy youth and the story of his acquaintance with Mashenka. Ganin met her as a sixteen-year-old boy, recovering from typhus. He created himself an ideal female image, being in the Resurrection Cathedral, and he learned it in a short time in real life. Mashenka was a swarthy girl with "burning Tatar eyes," with a sonorous voice and unusual gaiety. For the first time Ganin met her surrounded by three girlfriends and appointed them a meeting, on which she was already alone. And brought down two loving hearts Vladimir Nabokov.

Mashenka ... A brief summary of the chapters allows the reader to understand the nature of this girl. The adolescents' meetings were sweet and at the same time innocent. They both knew that soon they would be separated: Ganin was destined to leave for St. Petersburg, but the "snow age of love" in this city resumed in November, when Mashenka arrived in the city. Both were burdened by the fact that their families were not familiar, so instead of meeting teenagers spent evenings in telephone conversations. Under the New Year, their meetings ended and were resumed only in the summer - just then Masha, as if convinced of the infinity of these relations, told Ganina: "I'm yours. Do with me whatever you want. " There was nothing wrong with that young Lion that day with his beloved, fearing that someone might notice them in the park. Their last meeting took place a year later on the train, after which Ganin and Mashenka exchanged gentle letters in the war years. Soon they lost each other. It is not known whether Masha remembered her first love, but Ganin experienced a pleasant shock only when he saw her in a photograph of Alferov.

The image of Mother Russia in the novel

The heroes of the work have different attitude to the historical homeland: some emigrants are happy that they left the hateful land, while others are bored in Berlin, on the contrary. It is in Russia are native to Ganin and Nabokov forest edges, fields, special sunrises and sunsets. "Without our emigrant love of Russia - a cover" - says Podtyagin, one of the inhabitants of the boarding house. This idea is shared by Vladimir Nabokov in his book. "Mashenka" (the short content of the work allows the reader to understand the true experiences of the writer himself) - a novel that became a cry of the soul and a way of saying goodbye to Mother Russia.