Rubins, M; (2022) Западная массовая культура 1920-1930-х гг. в перспективе русской эмигрантской прозы (В. Набоков, Король, дама, валет и И. Одоевцева, Зеркало). Revue des Etudes Slaves , 93 (2-3) pp. 369-389. 10.4000/res.5484.

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Abstract

Drawing on the novels King, Lady, Jack (1928) by Vladimir Nabokov and The Mirror ( 1939) by Irina Odoevceva, the article examines the narrative strategies deployed to represent the main topoi of mass culture in the 1920s- 1930 in the prose of Russian emigration. Despite aesthetic differences between the novels and notwithstanding the enmity between the authors, it appears that reflection on the artificial character of Western culture was relevant for both. Both use a series of parallel processes from mass culture and literature of the period. The article analyzes, on the one hand, the way in which cinematic poetics, editing and close-up processes are used, and, on the other hand, the ironic integration of fashionable literary genres – such as the “business novel” or the “sports novel” – as well as the rewriting – in the form of cross-dressing – of typical heroes of the time, from the emancipated flapper to the adventurous merchant. Stylizing the dominant code of the time, drawing inspiration from the entertaining potential and ready-made narrative schemes of mass fiction, these texts are located on the border between borrowing from an easily identifiable model and deconstruction of said model. . Key notions such as the canon, the literary hierarchy, the center and the periphery of the literary field are thus called into question, which leads to a reassessment of the very definition of “mass literature”.

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