Analysis of the Motives in “The Visit to the Museum” by V. Nabokov

Abstract

“The Visit to the Museum” is one of few Nabokov’s short stories that can be attributed to “Petersburg text”. The motives — mythological, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Hoffmann, Petersburg text of early 20 century — have served to deepen the sense of the text and by no means contradict each other. These motives reveal ambivalent nature of Nabokov motive: Petersburg pre-text of the Gold and Silver Ages of the Russian literature implies biography and works of Nabokov when he wrote “The Gift”. Poststructural type of motive analysis, as described in works by B. M. Gasparov, allows to simultaneously analyse and follow the text, as well as overcomes rigidness of system approach, thus revealing the game structure of the texts which predetermines the mechanisms of sense creation. Refs 14.