![]() ![]() However, the symbolic order in Nabokov’s novel works as a trap for the reader. Every single object, situation, emotion gains here symbolic meaning, pointing outside the drudgery of the nightmarish alien world – to the uncertain but hopefully less hostile unearthly dimension. This existence outside the frame of time and space in the spectral dimension of semi-transparent memories (paradoxically still more alive than the actual citizens of Berlin), seems to breed an atmosphere of significance and suspense. The novel’s setting reflects the marginal reality of the day-to-day life of the Russian emigrants in Berlin, resembling nothing as much as the hopeless waiting of the lost souls in the purgatory. Symbolism as a favorite ploy of the modernist authors becomes a target for Nabokov’s irony in his first Russian novel Mary. ![]()
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