Vdovin, Alexey. To the Sources of Nabokov's The Gift Fourth Chapter. 2009

Th essay establishes the sources of a few marked quotations from Chernyshevski's Biography which have not been identified by commentators. They are quotations from M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N. Shelgunov's article "A Literary Property" (ascribed to Chernyshevski by mistake), M. Lemke's article from the Dobroliubov's Complete Works, and A. Volynski's book, Russian Critics. The researcher suggests that Russian Critics (1896) served as the major source of Nabokov's conception of "aesthetic trial" for Chernyshevski in The Gift. Both Volynski's style and his historical and critical methods influenced Nabokov's principles of work with documentary material and mode of narration in the fourth chapter of his novel.