Article

Name: Chance as an instrument of authorial manipulation: A narrative strategy for depicting the relationship between Self and Others in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Despair”

Authors: Victoria V. Antonovich, Marina A. Khatyamova

Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: This article examines the narrative function of chance as a mechanism of authorial world-modeling in “Despair” by Vladimir Nabokov. The analysis focuses on the plot-defining episode of Hermann’s accidental encounter with the tramp Felix, whom the protagonist-narrator per-ceives as his double. The study argues that this apparent coincidence performs several intercon-nected functions: it catalyzes Hermann’s crisis of self-identification, drives the dynamics of the plot, and becomes the central mechanism for exposing his pretensions to the status of a demiurgic author capable of subjugating reality. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which Nabokov, as the true demiurge of the text, deploys chance on multiple structural levels in order to construct a sophisticated game with reader perception. Through the figure of the unreliable narrator, Hermann’s manipulation of other characters, and his attempts at illusory cocreation with an ideal reader, the novel reveals the fundamental distinction between existential manipulation and genuine artistic play. Chance thus emerges not as an arbitrary event but as a deliberate narrative device that discloses an underlying artistic order and structures the dialogic relations within the “author–text–reader” triad. By situating Nabokov’s novel within the contexts of Symbolist and Acmeist aesthetics, as well as the dialogic philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin and Martin Buber, the article demonstrates that authentic artistic creation becomes possible only at the boundary of interaction with the Other. Ultimately, “Despair” affirms the impossibility of substituting artistic creativity with real-life manipulation and presents art as the only sphere of genuine transformation.

Keywords: V. Nabokov, Despair, chance, narrative strategy, authorial manipulation, unreliable narrator, double, reader's perception, dialogue

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