Stories about artists by Vladimir Nabokov as aesthetic manifesto

The article reviews Vladimir Nabokov’s stories about artists included in “The Return of Chorb” collection: “The Passenger”, “Bachmann”, “The Word”, “Spring in Fialta”. These stories are analyzed in connection with the author’s clearly expressed reflections on the nature of creativity and the purpose of art. Despite the differences in the type and structure of the narrative, they allow us to identify the author’s strategy which emphasizes his ideas about the nature of creativity, the relationship between art and reality. It is concluded that in these stories Vladimir Nabokov reflected a deeply lyrical and autobiographical idea of the connection between two worlds in the consciousness of his favorite hero-creator - the world of real and imaginary, space-time of the present and the past. This unity is facilitated by the various qualities of the artistic nature of Nabokov’s hero - the active work of memory and heart, anxiety, excitement during the creative act, contrastingly opposed to indifference and heartlessness. The author’s aesthetic ideas in the analyzed stories make it possible to consider them as an artistic manifesto of the writer.