“Look at the harlequins!” is the last completed novel by the famous writer Vladimir Nabokov. The main character is Vadim Vadimovich, a Russian-American writer (like Nabokov himself), writes memoirs about his creative and personal life. In both, Vadim Vadimovich fulfills the behest of his great-aunt. “Enough of the cackling! – she used to exclaim. – Look at the harlequins!.. Trees are harlequins, words are harlequins. Both situations and problems. Add any two things together - witticisms, images - and you have a trio of buffoons! Come on! Play! Invent the world! Create reality! And he did it! Despite the large number of parallels between the author and the hero of the novel, this “story of love and prose” should still not be perceived as an autobiography; rather, the novel is a parody of it. But perhaps in “Harlequins” Nabokov does not play with the reader for the umpteenth time, but rather sums up his thoughts about life and writing? Or he tries to dot the i’s, anticipating the future of his works: “Ah, they will drive them into the steppe, my Harlequins, / into gullies, to other people’s chieftains! / Will their geometry, their Venice / be called buffoonery and deception”? Nabokov leaves the answer to the reader to find on his own and thereby includes him in the process of creation.