I..1.  Traditionally, it is considered that there are two basic types of bilinguals: individuals who feel confident when using two differing codes, but whose ‘first’ language(1) is determinable (usually by ignorance or inappropriate use of speech  clichés, stereotypes and/or ignorance of intertextual signs or, more rarely, by pronounciation, interferences in syntactical structures or individual lexical units) and individuals who use differing codes in exactly the same way as monolinguals use their respective languages. On the basis of this, the following types of bilingualism can be observed: 1) complete independence and autonomy of linguistic codes, i.e. the presence of two differing concepts for two different languages; 2) the coexistence of two languages within the single semantics of the ‘dominant’ language(2), i.e. a single concept for differing linguistic signs; 3) the subordination of the ‘second’ language to the ‘first’, in which the translation of concepts and units(3) takes place. Taking such an interrelation of languages as a starting point, the first type can be defined as ‘coordinate bilingualism’ and the second type as ‘subordinate bilingualism’. In the first case, languages are acquired before the age of six or before the onset of puberty and, as a rule, by means of the oral intercourse of the ‘one person – one language’ principle. In the second case, the mastery of languages also takes place before puberty, but not within the family (for example, the children of immigrants who speak one language with their family and another language outside the home, and the ‘dominant’ language will not necessarily be the familial language). In the third of the cases examined here, the second language is already ‘foreign’ and is assimilated in an indirect way, through deliberate learning. Other definitions of bilingualism are also encountered; they differ from each other, in principle, only in the terminology used. For example, ‘early bilingualism’ and ‘late bilingualism’ (i.e. exactly the same opposition of bilingualism acquired before puberty [cases 1 and 2] and after the onset [case 3]), or ‘balanced bilingualism’ (the first of the abovementioned cases) and ‘dominant bilingualism’ (cases 2 and 3).

All these definitions and, above all, the division of differing types of bilingualism into groups has proven to be extremely useful for psycholinguistic research, however they have presented no advantage whatsoever to the field of neurolinguistics where the difference between ‘acquiring a language’ and ‘assimilating a language’ is considered more relevant, by virtue of the functioning of various structures in the brain(4). Langauge can be assimilated through two channels: ‘native language’ is usually acquired in an informal setting with the involvement of implicit memory (and in this case, we speak about the mastery of a language), whereas a ‘non-native’ language is assimilated through grammatical rules and the activation of cerebral mechanisms of translation and the switching on of explicit memory. In this connection with neurology and neurolinguistics,  it can be proposed that both hemispheres account for language acquired in an oral form, whereas language ‘assimilated’ in an empirical way is located in the left hemisphere.  

If language belongs to commonality, then bilingualism appears to be a subjective characteristic of the individual (i.e. belongs to parole but not langue) and, therefore, a description of its distinctive features can be based only upon observation of the bilingual behaviour of each separate bilingual individual. We won’t start to address the rather contentious question of whether it is legitimate to refer to ‘ideal’ bilingualism, i.e. about the bilingual’s identical experience on all linguistic levels and in all communicative situations within the framework of differing linguistic cultures, in which both languages(5) are connected to an equal degree to his/her emotional core. It would be far more expedient to admit to the existence of differing degrees of both  coordinate and subordinate bilingualism and to study each concrete case separately, examining 1) the level of mastery of differing linguistic codes and the speech activity linked to each of them; 2) the function carried out by each of the languages and, finally, 3) the degree of interference to the languages. The proposed division would lead logically towards the allocation, in the process of studying the phenomenon of bilingualism, of three basic perspectives: linguistic (i.e. the internal informative and expressive organisation of speech activity), psychological (i.e. the manifestation of bilingualism and its consequences on mental dynamism and the personality’s behaviour) and sociological (i.e. the function of bilingualism within the framework of the societal and cultural context of commonality).

 I.2. Language is a universal way of safekeeping, forming and presenting knowledge of various levels and simultaneously appears as the primary object of analysis in the study of mentality, insomuch as we do not have any other method of revealing it. If culture were to be examined as a certain language and the sum total of all the texts written in this language, then it should be acknowledged that during a child’s assimilation of a language, his/her consciousness is not pervaded with grammatical rules but rather with texts, which he/she memorizes and on the basis of which he/she learns to produce independently. To all intents and purposes, for the speaker of a language, the text becomes something primary and carries the function of ensuring the ‘common memory of the collective’, and the language is calculated from the texts and becomes somewhat a secondary abstraction. In the consciousness of people connected together with language and history there consequently exists a certain collection of texts and cultural clichés, representations and standard symbols, onto which a certain content is secured. All these constitute the cultural memory of the speakers of a certain language/culture – invariant images of the world, without which the existence of any communicative system would be impossible. Invariant images of the world are developed socially and do not correspond to individual semantic formations as such. It is already generally accepted that the possession of a language does not come down to simply an understanding of the lexical meaning of words, i.e. only denotations. To the contrary, the encyclopedia and not the dictionary forms the basis of linguistic competence, in which it is meant precisely the complete volume of linguistic and cultural memory of association. Intertextual knowledge is a part of the encyclopedia, and any linguistic personality is not only the utilized subject but is inevitably formed under its influence. This means that a speaker’s textual potential is placed deeply within his/her linguistic-mental complex. This potential operates on a subconscious level and is activated depending on the pragmatic conditions of communication. I propose we name the field of cultural memory, represented by a certain collection of texts, the intertextual encyclopedia, examining the intertexts as centres which are organizing whole fields of culture around themselves.

The method and time of language acquisition (one or more) turn out to be decisive factors in the individual’s (who can define his/herself as bilingual or as monolingual) consciousness, determining his/her speech behaviour and also playing a most important role, when the bilingual’s intertextual encyclpedia is situated in the centre of studying. If language is assimilated in an informal setting and before the onset of puberty, then the aggregate of texts in this language are simultaneously acquired and a single, active linguistic-cultural complex is formed. Failing which, when a language is acquired separately from texts, intertextual knowledge is ‘studied’ and more often than not remains merely a passive ‘load’ towards linguistic competence. Precisely by this principle, the question of intertextual signs of base cognitive processes, which lie beyond comprehension, and their transformation when switching from one linguistic code to another, is particularly interesting in the consciousness and speech activity of those bilinguals whose bilingualism manifests itself not in a simple knowledge of two codes, but on the deeper level of particularly individual possession of two systems of thinking. It is not necessary to prove the proposition that absolute equivalents don’t exist, even in so-called ‘related languages’ and that connotation varies, depending on culture and the encyclopedia of separate individuals. Therefore the experience felt within the framework of one cultural space, when transferred into another, entails what is more or less a profound ‘adaptation’ of the situation in two different perspectives – linguistic and mental, and this can be traced with the most obviousness in autotranslations.

 “I am an American writer who was born in Russia and educated in England, where I studied French literature before spending 15 years in Germany,” Nabokov(6) spoke about himself in an interview in 1973. The writer’s bilingualism was an integral part of his childhood, recorded in “Drugiie Berega” and in “Speak, Memory” and which can be defined without reservation as coordinate. English, along with Russian, was the language of communication in the home and the children, who had English governesses throughout their childhood, learnt to read in English before Russian. The use of three languages in everyday life (Russian, English and, more rarely, French) led to constant code-switching(7), to which Nabokov was accustomed from childhood and subsequently made the basic communicative distinctive feature of “Ada”.

In 1919 Nabokov began his education at Cambridge and nearly completely switched to English, however he tried his utmost not to forget or ‘contaminate’ his Russian. The writer didn’t use English as his creative language until 1929 and he even tried to restrict translation work to the Russian language. Until the mid 1930’s, V. Sirin in this way was precisely a Russian writer and in his last ‘Russian’ novel, “Dar”(“The Gift”), there is not yet any trace of linguistic contamination. When the writer finally moved to the United States, he decided to temporarily abandon his ‘Russian language identity’ and switched completely to English, already signing his works with the name Vladimir Nabokov. How can such a decision be explained - by the biography of the writer who was forced to find readers and, consequently, the necessity of conquesting an extensive English speaking audience or by the archetypal subject of Russian philology, the ‘outlet for speech’ which was implemented through the life and creative acts of O. Mandelshtam, A. Dobroliubov and V. Khlebnikov? It would be too simplistic to propose some sort of unequivocal answer to the above question and, moreover, it would overstep the parameters of the present research. It is more relevant to us that from the end of the 1950’s we can already speak of Nabokov as a developed bilingual

writer whose works are interlinguistic situations in content and form and the writer’s autotranslations, in particular his idea in 1953 of transforming “Conclusive Evidence” to “Drugiie Berega”, played an important role.

The writer’s relationship with autotranslations was complex and contradictory. In a letter to J. Laughlin he complained about the ‘mental asthma’ translation work provoked in him, insomuch as the processes activated in him strongly differed from intellectual operations and arose from the perception, comprehension and spontaneously reading writing in different languages – both native and foreign(8). In 1942, Nabokov wrote:

The translation of my Russian books is in itself a nightmare. If I were to do it myself, it would obviously prevent me from writing anything new(9).

Out of all of Nabokov’s autotranslations, the semantic semiotic operation in the transference of intertextual signs in “Conclusive Evidence”(1951) – “Drugiie Berega”(1954) – “Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited”(1967)(10) is particularly interesting. If we take into account the uniqueness of the creative of this ‘linguistic metamorphosis’(“Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited” is the result of numerous revisions which were made over a period of thirty years) and also the fact that we have in front of us not only a writer’s autobiography, but an autocommentary about the whole body of Nabokov’s works, containing the principle of the authorial references, implicit intertextual connections and autoquotations, then it is permissible to consider the intertextual correlations between a Russian autobiography and its English version as representative of all Nabokov’s autotranslations, which constitute a synthesis in which versions of different languages fuse together in one hypothetical text, revealing the mechanism of interaction in the consciousness of the bilingual writer of various linguistic codes and the Weltanschauung caused by this.

I propose we examine the phenomenon of autotranslation as a particular case of intercultural communication, the direction and character of which is, in many respects, determined by the linguistic and cultural competence of the communicators, their ‘horizon of expectation’ which requires reconstruction and the defining consciousness of the involvement of some communicative strategies or another, including intertextual. The functional typology of intertextual correlations, which are traced in the created multilinguistic versions of Nabokov himself, can be presented in the following manner:

The substitution of the initial intertext (X1) with the functional equivalent (X2) in the version of the other language (X1 ® X2). The given transformation will expose the main technique used in the construction of a Nabokovian text, the basic theme of which is the author’s playing with the reader. Analogous to any act of intercultural communication based on the acting moment (punch line), the most important factor in the creation of the conditions needed for the addressee’s ‘recognition’ of the intertext or the pun, behind which must follow the addressee’s reaction, which is programmed to some extent. The mechanism used in the creation of the moment of play (punch line) explicates, for example, in the transition of “Drugiie Berega” to the English autobiographical version:

К этому времени я уже не нуждался в каком-либо надзоре, учебной же помощи он не мог мне оказать никакой, ибо был безнадежный неуч (проиграл мне, помню, великолепный кастет, побившись со мной об заклад, что письмо Татьяны начинается так: “Увидя почерк мой, вы верно удивитесь”)

<...>(11) (At time I no longer needed any kind of supervision, he couldn’t give me any educational help, as he was a hopeless ignoramus (I remember that he lost his magnificent knuckle-duster to me in a bet that Tatiana’s letter began like this: “When you see my handwriting you will probably be surprised”)).

In the English version, reference to the canonical text of Russian culture is replaced with a text which functions analogously within the framework of English culture:

 <...> since, at that late date, neither my brother nor I needed much the educational help that an optimistic patron of his had promised my parents the wretch could give us. In the course of our very first colloquy he casually informes me that Dickens had written Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which led to a pounce bet on my part, winning me his knuckle-duster (12)

Exactly the same strategy can be observed in the writer’s other autotranslations. For example, German in “Otchaianiie” (the Russian version of “Despair”) says:

В школе мне ставили за русское сочинение неизменный кол, оттого что я по-своему пересказывал действия наших классических героев: так, в моей передаче “Выстрела” Сильвио наповал без лишних слов убивал любителя черешен и с ним - фабулу, которую я впрочем знал отлично(13). (At school I always got a bad mark for my Russian essays because I used to retell the actions of our classical heroes in my own way: so, in my essay on ‘Vystrel (The Shot)’, Silvio, with no messing about, killed the lover of cherries with him, on the spot – a plot which I knew very well, however.)

But German, in “Despair” (the English version) reminisces about different classical heroes – Shakespeare’s.

When rendering “in my own words” the plot of Othello (which was, mind you, perfectly familiar to me) I made the Moor sceptical and Desdemona unfaithful. (14)

The cited examples help us to trace how, in transfering from one linguistic code to another, the ‘switching on’ of a whole series of texts, and consequently intertexts, connected to the given language, takes place in the consciousness of the writer-bilingual.

The creation of a commentary on the intial intertext (X1 ® X1’). It would appear that this transformation is linked to a fundamental and integral aspect of intercultural communication, and namely with the dissemination of cultures speaking other languages ‘in breadth’ or ‘in depth’: ‘in breadth’ signifies that ‘culture is capturing a new layer of society quickly, but superficially, in simplistic forms, as a general familiarity but not an internal assimilation, as an affected norm, but not as a creative transformation’ at the same time as expansion ‘in depth’ proposes that ‘the circle of cultural “speakers” does not perceptively change, but acquaintance with culture becomes deeper, its assimilation becomes more creative and its manifestation more complex’. The given intertextual strategy, which can be named ‘enlightenment’ reflects, moreover, Nabokov’s conscious tenet of activating the ‘two-worlds’ motif which to some extent is characteristic of a biligual’s consciousness.

 In the following example, in particular, we encounter intertexts which date back to various literary sources and, we can even say, to different cultural contexts – Russian (Anna Karenina and the Lady with the Lapdog) and French (Emma Bovary) with an explanation in the English version of the ‘least well-known’ allusion – the Chekovian ‘Lady with the Lapdog’- by means of explication of the source within the text itself:

 Итак, Луиза стоит на плоской кровле своего дома, опершись белой рукой на каменный парапет <...> а лорнет направлен - этот лорнет я впоследствии нашел у Эммы Бовари, а потом его держала Анна Каренина, от которой он перешел к Даме с собачкой и был ею потерян на ялтинском молу(15)

That lorgnette I found afterward in the hands of Madame Bovary, and later Anna Karenin had it, and then it passed into the possession of Chekhov’s Lady with the Lapdog and was lost by her on the pier at Yalta(16).

And further: Тупая эта опасность плелась за нами до апреля 1918-го года. На ялтинском молу, где Дама с собачкой потеряла когда-то лорнет <...> (17)

During the winter of 1917-18 and well into the windy and bright Crimean spring, idiotic death toddled by our side. Every other day, on the white Yalta pier (where, as you remember, the lady of Chekhov’s “Lady with the Lapdog” lost her lorgnette among the vacational crowd) <...>(18)

The complication of intercultural play is through the addition of other intertexts (X1 ® X1 + X2 + X3 etc.). For example, in the Russian ‘Lolita’, two different intertexts precede the primary one – an explicit allusion to A. S. Pushkin’s ‘Evgenii Onegin’ and an implicit allusion to L. N. Tolstoi’s ‘Anna Karenina’:

No matter how many times we reopen “King Lear”, never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert’s father’s timely tear(19).

Сколько бы раз мы ни открыли “Короля Лира”, никогда мы не застанем доброго старца забывшим все горести и подымавшим заздравную чашу на большом семейном пиру со всеми тремя дочерьми и их комнатными собачками. Никогда не уедет с Онегиным в Италию княгиня Н. Никогда не поправится Эмма Бовари, спасенная симпатическими солями в своевременной слезе отца автора(20). (No matter how many times we reopen ‘King Lear’, never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Princess N. go to Italy with Onegin. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert’s father’s timely tear.)

Explication in the autotranslation of the intial intertext and the addition of other intertexts (X1 ® X1’ + X2 + X3 etc.), as in the following example from “Drugiie Berega” and “Speak, Memory”: