The idea of "eternal return" as a game with the values of life in the novel "Mary"

The novel «Mary» by V. Nabokov is analyzed from the point of view of modernist aesthetic the important element of which is the game. In modernism, the game has become a sign of metapoetic, the author confronts a realistic representation of reality, sneers at it, parodies important religious and aesthetic values to show the value of art and creative process. With the help of intermedial methods (the connection of elements of cinema and literature) the writer transforms the reality to the game space where his characters present as marionettes. The main character Ganin shown as an aesthetic person, he has no personal principle, but is dominated by acting, he lives and plays. Using intermedial method of the connection of cinema and literature, Nabokov shows the duality of the hero. As a psychological type Ganin supplant out of his mind the reality and substitutes it «phantasms» movie where everything looks perfect. Using the post-modernist principle of deconstruction Nabokov creates the author’s model of the text with its own aesthetic sense. The writer himself sets the rules of the game on the basis of which the author creates a myth of the creative process. He offers his own aesthetic mythologem the content of which is a game as a way of the existence of the work of art in opposition to the determined reality. As the metaprose sample the novel is based on the intertextual correlations, folding of numerous allusions and interpretations on the themes and images of Russian literature. Nabokov develops two intertextual lines which constitute the work metastructure. The first is Pushkin theme, the writer interprets the novel «Eugene Onegin» by A. Pushkin in a parody direction reducing the high spiritually moral pathos of work. The second theme is linked with the interpretation of Nietzsche`s idea about «eternal return». Nabokov uses the philosophical concept of Nietzsche’s «eternal return», but not accepting it. Existential fear of the future encourages Ganin to play this «complicated solitaire» to show the absurdity and the fantastic unattainability of the idea of the «eternal engine» of life and at the same time to play a private party on the way to their happiness. The writer believes that it is impossible and not necessary to repeat the events of life, as it is necessary to perceive reality creatively transformed. Nabokov parodies the Nietzschean idea of «eternal return» as false makes it the subject of an aesthetic game, filling with own meanings because he believes the more important creative associations of the subconscious they provide game of «the meanings» in the text. With their help the artist creates his own artistic world rejecting the deterministic laws of life and setting copyright rules in art.