Under the sign of illegitimate

The English name of the novel is “Bend Sinister” - a heraldic term meaning an inclined strip drawn from the upper right corner of the coat of arms to the lower left. The corresponding Russian term is left wrap . This strip, in particular, is a distinctive feature of the emblems that were given to illegitimate children of aristocrats.

In the preface to the novel (1963 edition), Nabokov explained that “the choice of this name was an attempt to create an idea of ​​a silhouette broken by reflection, of distortion in the mirror of being, of a stray world, of an ominously left-handed world. The flaw in the name is that it prompts an important reader who searches in the book for “general ideas” or “human content” (which is basically the same thing) to look for them in this novel as well. ”

The novel takes place in a certain state, which contains features of European dictatorships of the 20th century, in particular, Hitler’s Germany, as well as features of the Soviet regime: state ideology - the so-called Equilism - establishes the identity of every citizen and denies any differences of one person from another. This state is led by dictator Paduk (which gives rise to numerous associative ranks: in particular, for the Russian reader this name bears, firstly, the meaning of “fall”, and secondly, reminds of a spider; in addition, there is a version that this name - a recording of the French “pas duc”) and his “Party of the Middle Man” (which is also an allusion to Soviet reality). The protagonist of the book, a world-famous philosopher Adam Krug, was a classmate of Paduc and mocked him as a child, dismissively calling him Toad. Now, having become a dictator, Paduk is “looking for leverage” to get the influential Professor Krug to work for the state and promote philosophy. Initially, only acquaintances of the Circle are arrested, but then - of him as well. Paduk invites him to work for himself, and the Circle agrees, but only with the condition of the inviolability of his son David. His condition is accepted with pleasure, and David is taken to the State Rest House, as they say to the Circle. When Krug comes there to pick up his son, it turns out that the boy was mistakenly sent to the Institute for the Study of Abnormal Children and as a result of an accident he died. The government immediately invites the Circle to personally kill the one who is guilty of this. The circle utters a curse before representatives of the ministry, for which he is imprisoned in a spacious cell. Another proposal is made to the Circle: in exchange for the release of 24 opponents of Equilism, the perpetrators are punished, but by this moment the Circle is crazy and rushes to Paduk in the final to kill him.

“The plot of the novel originates in a rain puddle, bright, like a transparent broth. The circle watches her from the window of the hospital in which his wife dies. An oblong puddle, similar in shape to a cage ready to split, subtematically appears again and again in the novel, appearing as an ink spot in the fourth chapter, blots in the fifth chapter, spilled milk in the eleventh chapter, trembling, resembling the appearance of an infusorium, ciliary thought in chapter twelve , the footprint of the phosphorescent islander in chapter eighteenth, and the imprint left by living in the thin fabric of space - in the final paragraph. The puddle, which flares up again and again in this way in the consciousness of the Circle, remains connected with the image of his wife, not only because he was looking at the sunset inserted into this puddle standing at the death bed of Olga, but also because this puddle inaudibly hints to him about mine communication with him: she is a hole in his world, leading to another world, full of tenderness, colors and beauty. ” (Preface to the novel, 1963).

The style of the novel sharply distinguishes it from all other things of Nabokov. If before that all the novels (except the incomplete one) contained echoes of reality — real geographical objects, refracted biographical details, people who had prototypes (although Nabokov himself had repeatedly denied any realism in his novels), then about “Under the Sign of the Illegitimate "Nabokov wrote:" The influence of my era on this book of mine is as negligible as the influence of my books, or at least of this book of mine on my era. There is no doubt that some reflections can be distinguished in the glass, directly created by the idiotic and miserable regimes that we all know and that have climbed under my feet for my whole life: worlds of torment and tyranny, fascists and Bolsheviks, philistine-philistines and baboons in boots. There is also no doubt that without these abominable models I would not be able to stuff this fantasy with pieces of Leninist speeches, chunks of the Soviet constitution and lumps of Nazi mischief. ”

In Under the Sign of the Illegitimate Births, Nabokov intentionally creates an illusory and constantly changing chronotope due to explicit alogisms in the descriptions of space, paradoxical comparisons and some shift of time intervals in the perception of characters.

One of the most important means of transforming a state created in a novel into a mirage is an invented language (as in Pale Fire and an incomplete novel) - "a mutt mix of German and Slavic languages."

• The novel "Under the Sign of the Illegitimate"