He examines his face thoroughly, sees flaws and makes half-hearted, destructive attempts to rectify them, only to make things worse. He is annoyed by others and by himself. This could be the story of his life, and it is. Nabokov has managed to summarize a good portion of this character's self-image into a segment of one page.
Olesha has himself contemplating life as seen through the mirror and sees it as warped and confusing, being sometimes the opposite of what he perceives it will be.
Both men also refer to perspective, Olesha talking about proportions and how things appear as if gazing through the wrong end of binoculars. "How improbable the change of proportions," he says and thus refers to how things that one wishes were small are large and vice versa. This is a theory that psychologists use and that Piaget, in his books on the developing child brings out as a person begins to realize spatial concepts, as well as historical concepts in space. The perception of where others stand in relation to oneself is the beginning of a relationship and when the man in Olesha's scene with the mirror comes rushing up and he asks him where he came from, the answer was "I myself invented me." This is a statement about space and how one may or may not occupy space. If the man who made the statement did not really exist, then he would not have said "I myself invented me." Yet his saying this means that he does exist and in realizing that he exists because he has invented himself, refers back to Descartes' belief that "cogito ergo sum," or "I think, therefore I am."
Just as his looking into the mirror makes him immediately able to focus on the tiniest part of his face, on the very hairs growing from his chin, whereas before his world had been much larger. This reference to perspective does not have the same result as Olesha's thoughts. Nabakov's Fyodor merely utilizes the ability to make small things larger than they need to be. Every incident during his time in the bathroom becomes worthy of thought and emotion. He is a man who focuses on the foreground and is not able to see the larger picture, or off into the distance. The details are important to him, not the gist of life.
In conclusion, both authors treat the themes of the mirror and of perspective in these two passages that have been selected from their books, but in different ways. Nabokov as a closeup picture of Fydor and Olesha as a means by which to analyze the world and its relationship to himself.
Works Cited
Cornwell, Neil "Dar [the Gift]." The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 June 2002. http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5747.
Maslenikov, Oleg a. "Russian Symbolists: The Mirror Theme and Allied Motifs." Russian Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1957), pp. 42-52
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Gift. New York: Vintage. Reissue edition, 1991.
Olesha, Yuri K. (Translated by Thomas Berczynski). Envy. New York: Ardis Publishers. 1979.
