A. S. Pushkin vs. E. A. Poe: the History of V. V. Nabokov's Performative Utterances

The aim of this article is to examine the ways Nabokov alluded to Pushkin and Poe in his fiction and to explore his articulated views of the two geniuses. Lolita, Nabokov's most popular American novel, contains numerous allusions to both Pushkin and Poe. The number of incidental mentionings of Poe in Nabokov's later fiction tends to decrease. After the late 1960s when he was unanimously acknowledged as one of the most important living American authors, Nabokov demonstrates his derogatory attitude to Poe 16 times. Nabokov's opinion of Pushkin, however, was constantly high if not exalted. The article advances a hypothesis that in Lolita Nabokov used allusions to both Pushkin and Poe as a Friend or Foe Identification system. It did work with Poe and failed with Pushkin. The article presents Nabokov's articulated opinions of Pushkin and Poe as a sequence of Austin type performative utterances, to the extent, "I am a Russian-American Author, though you've failed to understand that : - "I am a great American Author, if you say that" - "I am a great Author".