Prokofiev, Max. “Terra Falsa”. 2021

The hypothesis of Max Prokofiev’s (Saint Petersburg State University) essay, “Terra Falsa,” is that Sineusov is not only the narrator of Nabokov’s Ultima Thule, being largely in charge of the story world. Sineusov made up the details of his story, alluding to Alexander Pushkin, Laurence Sterne, and the Bible, as well as to Nabokov’s previous narrative. However, Sineusov would not like to be the creator of this newborn world; desiring to gain his wife, a “ghostly goal” and “earthly creation,” he tried to hide himself, to imitate an ordinary character. Falter, who had overstepped the borderline in the opposite direction (from charagters to riches), seemed to be his only chance to learn the process of this “turning inside out.” Having failed, Sineusov was left the only option which aimed at trying not to get rid, but, conversely, to increase his phantom pain in order to thin down a screen between his own reality on the one hand and the reality of Terra Falsa, which included his wife, on the other.