To the best of my knowledge, the rather obvious influence of
Pu&shachek;kin's story on Nabokov's novel has previously been
overlooked (suffice it to mention Sergej Davydov's entry on
Nabokov and Pushkin
in
—An imperfect blend of Russian and German cultural
conventions which serves as an impetus for the narration. Thus, in
Russian
passion for gambling sits uneasily with his German
stinginess, which initiates his attempts to circumvent the power of
chance (it is curious, by the way, that Russia has borrowed its
playing-card terminology from none other country than Germany, through
such intermediaries as the Czechs, the Poles, the White Russians and
the Ukrainians; see B. O. Unbegaun, a realistic portrayal of the Russian
émigré's way of not seeing the natives of the countries
into which he happened to fall [&ellipsis;], except as celluloid or cardboard
figures
(A.Field,
—A special significance attached to certain numbers. Cf., for
instance, the trojka, semerka, tuz
sequence as
interpreted by Lauren G. Leighton in his article in Dreyer,
a derivative from the German
drei,
might be used as a subtle reminder of
Pu&shachek;kin's trojka.
—The narrative device of an anecdote which is mentioned but
remains untold (cf.
—The motif of half-dead, half-alive characters (cf., for
example, the old Countess in flat, but very complicated
protagonists in
—The motif of insanity (the sordid end of Pu&shachek;kin's Hermann and the delirium of Franz and Martha in Nabokov's piece).
—The motif of the bitter irony of fate (cf. Pu&shachek;kin's
Dama va&shachek;a ubita
and the unexpected death of
Martha in
As for the motif of cards itself, this is where the difference
between Pu&shachek;kin and Nabokov comes to the fore. According to
Jurij Lotman (see his essay
Nabokov is not the only Russian writer who displays the preference
for the programmatic
function of cards. To name but
one, Lev Tolstoj reportedly decided the fate of Katju&shachek;a
Maslova in his leitmotif of gambling and divination central to Russian
culture
(John E. Bowlt in