Terra Incognita (short story)

The narrator, Vallière, his friend Gregson and Cook, who looks like "a Shakespearean jester, " escape from Zonraki, trying to cross a hitherto unknown country and reach the hills of Gurano. Their mission is unfortunate. Valier has a fever . Cook escapes with porters Badonians, supplies and collections. Gregson and Vallière decide to move on, soon the repentant Cook again joins them, who, obviously, lagged behind the Badonians. The narrator experiences hallucinations throughout the journey. From time to time they begin to “ambiguously go through” a wardrobe, ceiling, wallpaper, armchair, a glass with a teaspoon, a pillow, but these images, upon closer inspection, dissolve in the environment. Gregson and Cook quarrel and, in the end, kill each other. The narrator remains alone, his reality is a tropical world with two corpses; forces gradually leave him. He tries to record something, but the notebook slips out of his hands. Fumbling around the blanket, he cannot find her.

Nabokov, who later built more complex fantasy worlds with Zembla and Zoorlandia, captivates the reader in the tropical hell of Badonia, located between the mysterious land of Zonraki and the elusive hills of Gurano, where the scent of Vallieria mirifica is mixed with the smell of Ipecacuana (emetic). It seems to Vallière that he is dying at the end of a fateful journey, but he remains a narrator, albeit unreliable. The situation of the sick person’s room invades the story from time to time and, perhaps at the very end (in the form of a blanket), prevails over a tropical episode - a hallucination of a feverish mind. On the other hand, a tropical experience may turn out to be real, and an apartment with a patient’s bed is only a product of a dying consciousness. Intertwined, the two worlds challenge the reader - he decides how to understand reality.

The plot of the story "Terra Incognita" is included in the list of famous dreams of Russian literature .