Lekmanov, Oleg. Sergei Esenin and Isadora Duncan in Nabokov's short story 'Spring in Fialta'. 2007

The article offers a gallery of possible literary prototypes that Nabokov could employ in creating the heroine's environment in this 1936 short story. Nina's automobile accident, according to Lekmanov, may be related to Isadora Duncan's similar tragic death through a number of colorful details (her yellow scarf and ballerina-like walk, mentioned in Nabokov's story, are just few of them), as well as a number of intertextual allusions to Sergei Esenin's poetry carefully embedded in the texture of "Spring in Fialta." Lekmanov also reinforces the similarity between Nina's husband (the Hungarian writer named Ferdinand) and Joseph Conrad, the prosaic writer of Polish origin. In addition to these parallels, the author suggests that Ferdinand's ambiguous companion, Segur, bears a resemblance to the poet Georgi Ivanov, Nabokov's real life literary adversary and Esenin's satellite.