The Guide to the Otherworldly: the V. F. Khodasevich’s Pretexts in the Russian-Language Works of V. V. Nabokov

The article examines allusions and textual borrowings in V.V. Nabokov’s prose, the source of which is the poetry of V.F. Khodasevich. Attention is focused on those borrowings that are associated with the design of the idea of otherworldliness. Since both writers did not explicitly declare their philosophical views, it is difficult to identify the ontological nature of the second reality in their works. But it is obvious that both make the subject of the image the possibility of a different, more harmonious dimension of being. In general, for Khodasevich, its achievement is possible when going beyond the visible world, and for Nabokov, when subjectively transforming reality. It is shown that the “textile” metaphor of otherworldliness as a hidden pattern or the underside of life could have been suggested to Nabokov by Khodasevich’s poem “Without Words”. We have traced the roll calls in the implementation of the motives of death-flight, transforming reflection in a mirror surface, transcendence, etc. Special attention is paid to the refraction of the cross-cutting plot about the soul from Khodasevich’s book “Heavy Lyre” in V.V. Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading”.