Subject
Re: From Don Stanley
From
Date
Body
Hello Mr. Mylnikov
The 125 years between deaths is correct I think, 1852 to 1977, although math isn’t my strong point and unlike Nabokov pneumonia can’t be blamed. The month wasn’t specified because the focus was on time of day, but I suppose the timeline is a little fuzzy. Anyway, thank you for taking the trouble to comment.
All the best
don stanley
________________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] on behalf of Vladimir Mylnikov [vmylnikov@YAHOO.COM]
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To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: From Don Stanley
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Sender: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Poster: Vladimir Mylnikov <vmylnikov@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: From Don Stanley
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nicely done. but doesn't the author confuse Gogol's death with Chekhov - 2n=
d of July? (not 125 years, of course) As far as I recall Gogol died in Marc=
h.cheers, V.M.=20
On Thursday, June 15, 2017 12:08 AM, Dana Dragunoiu <dana.dragunoiu@GMA=
IL.COM> wrote:
=20
Dear Members of the List:
Please find below a message from Don Stanley.
Long ago I was the associate editor of a city monthly called Vancouver maga=
zine. We devised a recurring two-page profile format: big picture of the su=
bject facing a series of one- or two-line factoids;=C2=A0 sequenced, I like=
to think, artfully.
Recently I resurrected the format and profiled Nabokov for my own amusement=
.=20
It then occurred to me that members of The List might also find it divertin=
g.
The sources range in scale from big scholarly biographies to some fragments=
from the fading memory of a Vancouver telephone interviewer.=C2=A0 The pro=
file is blissfully free of citations; Google is no doubt familiar with most=
of them. Once in a while the line is blurred between paraphrase and quotat=
ion, sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for euphonious rhythm; the exact opposit=
e of Nabokov=E2=80=99s methodology in translating Pushkin, I suppose.=20
There may be a trick or two; the way he practiced at the art of deception i=
s so darn catchy.
I can=E2=80=99t reproduce the layout, and as for the picture I suggest imag=
ining your own favorite,=C2=A0 as Tristram Shandy said about his mistress. =
Maybe Nabokov in full combat mode on the paperback cover of Field=E2=80=99s=
His Life in Art or the pastel on the back dustjacket of Glory, looking as =
gaunt as his contemporary Prokofiev.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
When Dmitri kissed his still-warm forehead, his father=E2=80=99s tears well=
ed up.=C2=A0 =E2=80=9CA certain butterfly was already on the wing; and his =
eyes told me he no longer hoped that he would live to pursue it again."
He began his 1944 Gogol profile at the wrong end, a grotesque deathbed scen=
e involving an incompetent=C2=A0 physician=C2=A0 torturing his patient with=
a nest of satiated bloody leeches quick to realize their unbelievable luck=
.=C2=A0 He refers to the good doctor with four different appellations to in=
dicate the name wasn=E2=80=99t worth spelling correctly.
His paternal grandfather was State Minister of Justice under a pair of all-=
powerful Czars, the first relatively progressive,=C2=A0 the second relative=
ly not.
He was a math prodigy, but around seven years old delirium from a nearly fa=
tal fling with pneumonia burned the numbers right out of his brain.
He saw V as rose-quartz,=C2=A0 N as oatmeal greyish-yellow. The sound of a =
letter triggers a color: Synethesia. Nabokov had it. So did his mother Elen=
a, so did his wife Vera, so did his son Dmitri. Different colors, mind you.
The family=E2=80=99s St Petersburg townhouse featured 50 servants and its o=
wn large library, complete with generic shy librarian.=C2=A0 He was a multi=
millionaire teenager, with an inherited 2000 acre estate.
Came the revolution.
His father, being chancellor to the liberal Provisional Government, found h=
imself dangerously unpopular.=C2=A0 To escape Civil War Russia, barely, the=
family steamed out of Sebastopol harbor on the seedy Nadezhda. He played c=
hess on the deck with his father, somewhat distracted by the Bolsheviks=E2=
=80=99 strafing machine guns.=C2=A0 One of the knights had lost its head.
In March 28, 1922, in Berlin exile, at a political meeting, the speaker app=
roached by an assassin, his courageous father helped pin the murderer to th=
e floor, like a butterfly specimen.=C2=A0 A surprise second assassin shot h=
is father three fatal times.
Without money, without prospects, but with a vulnerable Jewish wife, he esc=
aped from Paris via St. Nazaire to America, once again on a ship, the Champ=
lain. The Germans entered Paris within a month; sinking the Champlain took =
them a little longer (at anchor, air-laid bomb).=20
No amateur chess player, he was invited to join America=E2=80=99s national =
team.
No weekend butterfly collector, in the forebodingly named Strong Opinions h=
e reported that named after him were several butterflies.=C2=A0 And a moth.
His supersized son Dmitri (6=E2=80=995) was famously brave. =E2=80=9CDo you=
climb?=E2=80=9D he said to me, meaning mountains, some of which became the=
graves of his fellow Harvard mountaineers. The morning of September 26, 19=
80,=C2=A0 on the highway between Montreux and Lausanne,=C2=A0 he totalled h=
is fifth or so Ferrari, a souped-up fiberglass 308 GTB. After 12 excruciati=
ng days in a Lausanne burn ward, he died, temporarily.=C2=A0 He was enticed=
by the bright light at the terminus of the familiar tunnel, but then turne=
d his back on beckoning death when he thought =E2=80=9Cof those who care fo=
r me and of important things I must still do."
Incredibly enough, Dmitri returned to racing in a Ferrari of a somewhat dee=
per blue.=C2=A0 Still more incredibly, he may or may not have worked for th=
e CIA, debriefing Russians who had crawled under Churchill=E2=80=99s Iron C=
urtain. He never told his father.=20
Who drove a car twice. In Russia in 1915, courtesy of an inattentive chauff=
eur, he put the family limousine in the ditch.=C2=A0 In America 35 years la=
ter, briefly entrusted with the wheel, he almost crashed into the only othe=
r car occupying a spacious parking lot. Consequently Vera chauffeured his s=
ummertime butterfly expeditions. Better than 150,000 miles.
He loathed a lot of very good writers. Not disliked, not didn=E2=80=99t car=
e for: Loathed. Loathed with an oddly ethical overlay. That fraud, that fak=
e, Toilets, T.S. Eliot.=C2=A0 Faulkner, Conrad, Hemingway: Bulls, Bells, Ba=
lls. And don=E2=80=99t get him started on rival Pushkin translators. Bracin=
g fun to read at first, but a bitter aftertaste.
He dealt in details. He felt the word Reality should never appear in public=
without quotation marks. He said General Ideas are worn passports allowing=
their bearers short cuts from one area of ignorance to another. =E2=80=9CT=
he larger the issue the less it interests me.=E2=80=9D Thus if a student at=
Cornell, one of 400 attending his Masterpieces of European Fiction (MWF,12=
),=C2=A0 your =E2=80=9CMetamorphosis=E2=80=9D exam would be something like =
=E2=80=9CDescribe the furnishings and layout of the Samsa living quarters.=
=E2=80=9D Woe betide the student who confused Kafka=E2=80=99s monstrous dom=
ed beetle (A+)=C2=A0 with a=C2=A0 monstrous cockroach (Fail; Expulsion).
To help American students approximate his name, nah-BOK-off, he composed
The querulous gawk of
A heron at night
Prompts Nabokov
To write=20
But as he said himself, Nabokov is unpronounceable.
He was half an inch short of six feet, lovely hazel eyes, thighs of a socce=
r player because his favorite butterflies lurked at high altitudes. Maybe 1=
40 pounds in 1920s Berlin. Romantically handsome, supremely confident, purp=
osefully flirtatious.=C2=A0 Catnip to the girls.
Of his sentences on occasion he the syntax almost awkwardly adjusts in orde=
r triumphantly to pounce on a strong and powerful noun!
In his 1928 Russian novel King, Queen, Knave, he brought Vera along for a t=
our of inspection. The wretched lead character Franz had noticed them envio=
usly before, like a subtle leitmotiv:=C2=A0 the butterfly net, the loud for=
eign language, the girl in a blue dress dancing with a remarkably handsome =
man in an old-fashioned dinner jacket. =E2=80=9CThe girl had a delicately p=
ainted mouth and tender gray-blue eyes, and her fianc=C3=A9 or husband, sle=
nder, elegantly balding, contemptuous of everything on earth except her, wa=
s looking at her with pride.=E2=80=9D
He nevertheless avoided metafictional excess, aleatory techniques, rebellio=
us characters like the ones running John Fowles=E2=80=99 asylum in The Fren=
ch Lieutenant=E2=80=99s Woman.=C2=A0 My characters, he said, are galley sla=
ves.
He wrote the greatest parenthesis in English=C2=A0 literature.=C2=A0 Lolita=
=E2=80=99s Humbert Humbert:=C2=A0 =E2=80=9CMy photogenic mother died in a=
=C2=A0 freak accident (picnic, lightning) =E2=80=A6=E2=80=9D
A Fort Worth, Texas rock band calls itself Picnic Lightning.
Like suffering Cincinnatus in the 200-page nightmare Invitation to a Behead=
ing, he had intimations of another world, a parallel world perhaps, or mayb=
e just this one constructed with more attention to detail.=20
He died of lungs that refused to clear, a heart that lost the beat. The imm=
ediate cause, Dmitri said on the phone, was =E2=80=9Cperfectly banal.=E2=80=
=9D=C2=A0 In his touching if grouchy =E2=80=9COn Revisiting Father=E2=80=99=
s Room,=E2=80=9D he wrote that a maid simultaneously left open a draughty d=
oor and a window.=C2=A0 An incautious, sneezing maid.=20
He died July 2, 1977 at 6:50pm, which would put it around 11 hours later th=
an Gogol 125 years before.=20
In the summer of=C2=A0 =E2=80=9877 I was a guest of the Vancouver General =
Hospital. A visitor brought the news, which I remember taking personally: I=
f a man that gifted is allowed to die, what chance for the rest of us?
At Rougemont, near Gstaad,=C2=A0 he had=C2=A0 told Dmitri =E2=80=9Cin one o=
f those rare moments when father and son discuss such matters, that he had =
accomplished what he wished in life and art, and was a truly happy man."
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existen=
ce is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
=20
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvabrin@humnet.ucla.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
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------=_Part_12976985_1075914389.1497525183476
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<html><head></head><body><div style=3D"color:#000; background-color:#fff; f=
ont-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font=
-size:13px"><div dir=3D"ltr" id=3D"yui_3_16_0_1_1497524603370_6081"><span i=
d=3D"yui_3_16_0_1_1497524603370_6082">nicely done. but doesn't the author c=
onfuse Gogol's death with Chekhov - 2nd of July? (not 125 years, of course)=
As far as I recall Gogol died in March.</span></div><div dir=3D"ltr" id=3D=
"yui_3_16_0_1_1497524603370_6081"><span>cheers, V.M.</span></div> <div clas=
s=3D"qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class=3D"yahoo_quoted" style=3D"disp=
lay: block;"> <div style=3D"font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, =
Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> <div style=3D"font-family: He=
lveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; f=
ont-size: 16px;"> <div dir=3D"ltr"><font size=3D"2" face=3D"Arial"> On Thur=
sday, June 15, 2017 12:08 AM, Dana Dragunoiu <dana.dragunoiu@GMAIL.COM&g=
t; wrote:<br></font></div> <br><br> <div class=3D"y_msg_container"><div di=
r=3D"ltr">Dear Members of the List:<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><di=
v dir=3D"ltr">Please find below a message from Don Stanley.<br></div><div d=
ir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Long ago I=
was the associate editor of a city monthly called Vancouver magazine. We d=
evised a recurring two-page profile format: big picture of the subject faci=
ng a series of one- or two-line factoids; sequenced, I like to think,=
artfully.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Recently I =
resurrected the format and profiled Nabokov for my own amusement. <br></div=
><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">It then occurred to me that me=
mbers of The List might also find it diverting.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><=
br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The sources range in scale from big scholarly bio=
graphies to some fragments from the fading memory of a Vancouver telephone =
interviewer. The profile is blissfully free of citations; Google is n=
o doubt familiar with most of them. Once in a while the line is blurred bet=
ween paraphrase and quotation, sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for euphonious=
rhythm; the exact opposite of Nabokov=E2=80=99s methodology in translating=
Pushkin, I suppose. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">=
There may be a trick or two; the way he practiced at the art of deception i=
s so darn catchy.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">I ca=
n=E2=80=99t reproduce the layout, and as for the picture I suggest imaginin=
g your own favorite, as Tristram Shandy said about his mistress. Mayb=
e Nabokov in full combat mode on the paperback cover of Field=E2=80=99s His=
Life in Art or the pastel on the back dustjacket of Glory, looking as gaun=
t as his contemporary Prokofiev.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div d=
ir=3D"ltr">=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D<br></div>=
<div dir=3D"ltr">When Dmitri kissed his still-warm forehead, his father=E2=
=80=99s tears welled up. =E2=80=9CA certain butterfly was already on =
the wing; and his eyes told me he no longer hoped that he would live to pur=
sue it again."<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He bega=
n his 1944 Gogol profile at the wrong end, a grotesque deathbed scene invol=
ving an incompetent physician torturing his patient with a nest=
of satiated bloody leeches quick to realize their unbelievable luck. =
He refers to the good doctor with four different appellations to indicate =
the name wasn=E2=80=99t worth spelling correctly.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"=
><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">His paternal grandfather was State Minister of =
Justice under a pair of all-powerful Czars, the first relatively progressiv=
e, the second relatively not.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><di=
v dir=3D"ltr">He was a math prodigy, but around seven years old delirium fr=
om a nearly fatal fling with pneumonia burned the numbers right out of his =
brain.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He saw V as ros=
e-quartz, N as oatmeal greyish-yellow. The sound of a letter triggers=
a color: Synethesia. Nabokov had it. So did his mother Elena, so did his w=
ife Vera, so did his son Dmitri. Different colors, mind you.<br></div><div =
dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The family=E2=80=99s St Petersburg t=
ownhouse featured 50 servants and its own large library, complete with gene=
ric shy librarian. He was a multimillionaire teenager, with an inheri=
ted 2000 acre estate.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">=
Came the revolution.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">H=
is father, being chancellor to the liberal Provisional Government, found hi=
mself dangerously unpopular. To escape Civil War Russia, barely, the =
family steamed out of Sebastopol harbor on the seedy Nadezhda. He played ch=
ess on the deck with his father, somewhat distracted by the Bolsheviks=E2=
=80=99 strafing machine guns. One of the knights had lost its head.<b=
r></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">In March 28, 1922, in B=
erlin exile, at a political meeting, the speaker approached by an assassin,=
his courageous father helped pin the murderer to the floor, like a butterf=
ly specimen. A surprise second assassin shot his father three fatal t=
imes.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Without money, w=
ithout prospects, but with a vulnerable Jewish wife, he escaped from Paris =
via St. Nazaire to America, once again on a ship, the Champlain. The German=
s entered Paris within a month; sinking the Champlain took them a little lo=
nger (at anchor, air-laid bomb). <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div =
dir=3D"ltr">No amateur chess player, he was invited to join America=E2=80=
=99s national team.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">No=
weekend butterfly collector, in the forebodingly named Strong Opinions he =
reported that named after him were several butterflies. And a moth.<b=
r></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">His supersized son Dmit=
ri (6=E2=80=995) was famously brave. =E2=80=9CDo you climb?=E2=80=9D he sai=
d to me, meaning mountains, some of which became the graves of his fellow H=
arvard mountaineers. The morning of September 26, 1980, on the highwa=
y between Montreux and Lausanne, he totalled his fifth or so Ferrari,=
a souped-up fiberglass 308 GTB. After 12 excruciating days in a Lausanne b=
urn ward, he died, temporarily. He was enticed by the bright light at=
the terminus of the familiar tunnel, but then turned his back on beckoning=
death when he thought =E2=80=9Cof those who care for me and of important t=
hings I must still do."<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr=
">Incredibly enough, Dmitri returned to racing in a Ferrari of a somewhat d=
eeper blue. Still more incredibly, he may or may not have worked for =
the CIA, debriefing Russians who had crawled under Churchill=E2=80=99s Iron=
Curtain. He never told his father. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><d=
iv dir=3D"ltr">Who drove a car twice. In Russia in 1915, courtesy of an ina=
ttentive chauffeur, he put the family limousine in the ditch. In Amer=
ica 35 years later, briefly entrusted with the wheel, he almost crashed int=
o the only other car occupying a spacious parking lot. Consequently Vera ch=
auffeured his summertime butterfly expeditions. Better than 150,000 miles.<=
br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He loathed a lot of ve=
ry good writers. Not disliked, not didn=E2=80=99t care for: Loathed. Loathe=
d with an oddly ethical overlay. That fraud, that fake, Toilets, T.S. Eliot=
. Faulkner, Conrad, Hemingway: Bulls, Bells, Balls. And don=E2=80=99t=
get him started on rival Pushkin translators. Bracing fun to read at first=
, but a bitter aftertaste.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"=
ltr">He dealt in details. He felt the word Reality should never appear in p=
ublic without quotation marks. He said General Ideas are worn passports all=
owing their bearers short cuts from one area of ignorance to another. =E2=
=80=9CThe larger the issue the less it interests me.=E2=80=9D Thus if a stu=
dent at Cornell, one of 400 attending his Masterpieces of European Fiction =
(MWF,12), your =E2=80=9CMetamorphosis=E2=80=9D exam would be somethin=
g like =E2=80=9CDescribe the furnishings and layout of the Samsa living qua=
rters.=E2=80=9D Woe betide the student who confused Kafka=E2=80=99s monstro=
us domed beetle (A+) with a monstrous cockroach (Fail; Expulsio=
n).<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">To help American s=
tudents approximate his name, nah-BOK-off, he composed<br></div><div dir=3D=
"ltr">The querulous gawk of<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">A heron at night<br><=
/div><div dir=3D"ltr">Prompts Nabokov<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">To write <b=
r></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">But as he said himself,=
Nabokov is unpronounceable.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=
=3D"ltr">He was half an inch short of six feet, lovely hazel eyes, thighs o=
f a soccer player because his favorite butterflies lurked at high altitudes=
. Maybe 140 pounds in 1920s Berlin. Romantically handsome, supremely confid=
ent, purposefully flirtatious. Catnip to the girls.<br></div><div dir=
=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Of his sentences on occasion he the syn=
tax almost awkwardly adjusts in order triumphantly to pounce on a strong an=
d powerful noun!<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">In hi=
s 1928 Russian novel King, Queen, Knave, he brought Vera along for a tour o=
f inspection. The wretched lead character Franz had noticed them enviously =
before, like a subtle leitmotiv: the butterfly net, the loud foreign =
language, the girl in a blue dress dancing with a remarkably handsome man i=
n an old-fashioned dinner jacket. =E2=80=9CThe girl had a delicately painte=
d mouth and tender gray-blue eyes, and her fianc=C3=A9 or husband, slender,=
elegantly balding, contemptuous of everything on earth except her, was loo=
king at her with pride.=E2=80=9D<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div d=
ir=3D"ltr">He nevertheless avoided metafictional excess, aleatory technique=
s, rebellious characters like the ones running John Fowles=E2=80=99 asylum =
in The French Lieutenant=E2=80=99s Woman. My characters, he said, are=
galley slaves.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He wro=
te the greatest parenthesis in English literature. Lolita=E2=80=
=99s Humbert Humbert: =E2=80=9CMy photogenic mother died in a f=
reak accident (picnic, lightning) =E2=80=A6=E2=80=9D<br></div><div dir=3D"l=
tr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">A Fort Worth, Texas rock band calls itself P=
icnic Lightning.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Like =
suffering Cincinnatus in the 200-page nightmare Invitation to a Beheading, =
he had intimations of another world, a parallel world perhaps, or maybe jus=
t this one constructed with more attention to detail. <br></div><div dir=3D=
"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He died of lungs that refused to clear, a =
heart that lost the beat. The immediate cause, Dmitri said on the phone, wa=
s =E2=80=9Cperfectly banal.=E2=80=9D In his touching if grouchy =E2=
=80=9COn Revisiting Father=E2=80=99s Room,=E2=80=9D he wrote that a maid si=
multaneously left open a draughty door and a window. An incautious, s=
neezing maid. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He died=
July 2, 1977 at 6:50pm, which would put it around 11 hours later than Gogo=
l 125 years before. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"> =
In the summer of =E2=80=9877 I was a guest of the Vancouver General H=
ospital. A visitor brought the news, which I remember taking personally: If=
a man that gifted is allowed to die, what chance for the rest of us?<br></=
div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">At Rougemont, near Gstaad,&=
nbsp; he had told Dmitri =E2=80=9Cin one of those rare moments when f=
ather and son discuss such matters, that he had accomplished what he wished=
in life and art, and was a truly happy man."<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br=
></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense t=
ells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eterni=
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The 125 years between deaths is correct I think, 1852 to 1977, although math isn’t my strong point and unlike Nabokov pneumonia can’t be blamed. The month wasn’t specified because the focus was on time of day, but I suppose the timeline is a little fuzzy. Anyway, thank you for taking the trouble to comment.
All the best
don stanley
________________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] on behalf of Vladimir Mylnikov [vmylnikov@YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 4:13 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: From Don Stanley
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Poster: Vladimir Mylnikov <vmylnikov@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: From Don Stanley
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------=_Part_12976985_1075914389.1497525183476
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nicely done. but doesn't the author confuse Gogol's death with Chekhov - 2n=
d of July? (not 125 years, of course) As far as I recall Gogol died in Marc=
h.cheers, V.M.=20
On Thursday, June 15, 2017 12:08 AM, Dana Dragunoiu <dana.dragunoiu@GMA=
IL.COM> wrote:
=20
Dear Members of the List:
Please find below a message from Don Stanley.
Long ago I was the associate editor of a city monthly called Vancouver maga=
zine. We devised a recurring two-page profile format: big picture of the su=
bject facing a series of one- or two-line factoids;=C2=A0 sequenced, I like=
to think, artfully.
Recently I resurrected the format and profiled Nabokov for my own amusement=
.=20
It then occurred to me that members of The List might also find it divertin=
g.
The sources range in scale from big scholarly biographies to some fragments=
from the fading memory of a Vancouver telephone interviewer.=C2=A0 The pro=
file is blissfully free of citations; Google is no doubt familiar with most=
of them. Once in a while the line is blurred between paraphrase and quotat=
ion, sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for euphonious rhythm; the exact opposit=
e of Nabokov=E2=80=99s methodology in translating Pushkin, I suppose.=20
There may be a trick or two; the way he practiced at the art of deception i=
s so darn catchy.
I can=E2=80=99t reproduce the layout, and as for the picture I suggest imag=
ining your own favorite,=C2=A0 as Tristram Shandy said about his mistress. =
Maybe Nabokov in full combat mode on the paperback cover of Field=E2=80=99s=
His Life in Art or the pastel on the back dustjacket of Glory, looking as =
gaunt as his contemporary Prokofiev.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
When Dmitri kissed his still-warm forehead, his father=E2=80=99s tears well=
ed up.=C2=A0 =E2=80=9CA certain butterfly was already on the wing; and his =
eyes told me he no longer hoped that he would live to pursue it again."
He began his 1944 Gogol profile at the wrong end, a grotesque deathbed scen=
e involving an incompetent=C2=A0 physician=C2=A0 torturing his patient with=
a nest of satiated bloody leeches quick to realize their unbelievable luck=
.=C2=A0 He refers to the good doctor with four different appellations to in=
dicate the name wasn=E2=80=99t worth spelling correctly.
His paternal grandfather was State Minister of Justice under a pair of all-=
powerful Czars, the first relatively progressive,=C2=A0 the second relative=
ly not.
He was a math prodigy, but around seven years old delirium from a nearly fa=
tal fling with pneumonia burned the numbers right out of his brain.
He saw V as rose-quartz,=C2=A0 N as oatmeal greyish-yellow. The sound of a =
letter triggers a color: Synethesia. Nabokov had it. So did his mother Elen=
a, so did his wife Vera, so did his son Dmitri. Different colors, mind you.
The family=E2=80=99s St Petersburg townhouse featured 50 servants and its o=
wn large library, complete with generic shy librarian.=C2=A0 He was a multi=
millionaire teenager, with an inherited 2000 acre estate.
Came the revolution.
His father, being chancellor to the liberal Provisional Government, found h=
imself dangerously unpopular.=C2=A0 To escape Civil War Russia, barely, the=
family steamed out of Sebastopol harbor on the seedy Nadezhda. He played c=
hess on the deck with his father, somewhat distracted by the Bolsheviks=E2=
=80=99 strafing machine guns.=C2=A0 One of the knights had lost its head.
In March 28, 1922, in Berlin exile, at a political meeting, the speaker app=
roached by an assassin, his courageous father helped pin the murderer to th=
e floor, like a butterfly specimen.=C2=A0 A surprise second assassin shot h=
is father three fatal times.
Without money, without prospects, but with a vulnerable Jewish wife, he esc=
aped from Paris via St. Nazaire to America, once again on a ship, the Champ=
lain. The Germans entered Paris within a month; sinking the Champlain took =
them a little longer (at anchor, air-laid bomb).=20
No amateur chess player, he was invited to join America=E2=80=99s national =
team.
No weekend butterfly collector, in the forebodingly named Strong Opinions h=
e reported that named after him were several butterflies.=C2=A0 And a moth.
His supersized son Dmitri (6=E2=80=995) was famously brave. =E2=80=9CDo you=
climb?=E2=80=9D he said to me, meaning mountains, some of which became the=
graves of his fellow Harvard mountaineers. The morning of September 26, 19=
80,=C2=A0 on the highway between Montreux and Lausanne,=C2=A0 he totalled h=
is fifth or so Ferrari, a souped-up fiberglass 308 GTB. After 12 excruciati=
ng days in a Lausanne burn ward, he died, temporarily.=C2=A0 He was enticed=
by the bright light at the terminus of the familiar tunnel, but then turne=
d his back on beckoning death when he thought =E2=80=9Cof those who care fo=
r me and of important things I must still do."
Incredibly enough, Dmitri returned to racing in a Ferrari of a somewhat dee=
per blue.=C2=A0 Still more incredibly, he may or may not have worked for th=
e CIA, debriefing Russians who had crawled under Churchill=E2=80=99s Iron C=
urtain. He never told his father.=20
Who drove a car twice. In Russia in 1915, courtesy of an inattentive chauff=
eur, he put the family limousine in the ditch.=C2=A0 In America 35 years la=
ter, briefly entrusted with the wheel, he almost crashed into the only othe=
r car occupying a spacious parking lot. Consequently Vera chauffeured his s=
ummertime butterfly expeditions. Better than 150,000 miles.
He loathed a lot of very good writers. Not disliked, not didn=E2=80=99t car=
e for: Loathed. Loathed with an oddly ethical overlay. That fraud, that fak=
e, Toilets, T.S. Eliot.=C2=A0 Faulkner, Conrad, Hemingway: Bulls, Bells, Ba=
lls. And don=E2=80=99t get him started on rival Pushkin translators. Bracin=
g fun to read at first, but a bitter aftertaste.
He dealt in details. He felt the word Reality should never appear in public=
without quotation marks. He said General Ideas are worn passports allowing=
their bearers short cuts from one area of ignorance to another. =E2=80=9CT=
he larger the issue the less it interests me.=E2=80=9D Thus if a student at=
Cornell, one of 400 attending his Masterpieces of European Fiction (MWF,12=
),=C2=A0 your =E2=80=9CMetamorphosis=E2=80=9D exam would be something like =
=E2=80=9CDescribe the furnishings and layout of the Samsa living quarters.=
=E2=80=9D Woe betide the student who confused Kafka=E2=80=99s monstrous dom=
ed beetle (A+)=C2=A0 with a=C2=A0 monstrous cockroach (Fail; Expulsion).
To help American students approximate his name, nah-BOK-off, he composed
The querulous gawk of
A heron at night
Prompts Nabokov
To write=20
But as he said himself, Nabokov is unpronounceable.
He was half an inch short of six feet, lovely hazel eyes, thighs of a socce=
r player because his favorite butterflies lurked at high altitudes. Maybe 1=
40 pounds in 1920s Berlin. Romantically handsome, supremely confident, purp=
osefully flirtatious.=C2=A0 Catnip to the girls.
Of his sentences on occasion he the syntax almost awkwardly adjusts in orde=
r triumphantly to pounce on a strong and powerful noun!
In his 1928 Russian novel King, Queen, Knave, he brought Vera along for a t=
our of inspection. The wretched lead character Franz had noticed them envio=
usly before, like a subtle leitmotiv:=C2=A0 the butterfly net, the loud for=
eign language, the girl in a blue dress dancing with a remarkably handsome =
man in an old-fashioned dinner jacket. =E2=80=9CThe girl had a delicately p=
ainted mouth and tender gray-blue eyes, and her fianc=C3=A9 or husband, sle=
nder, elegantly balding, contemptuous of everything on earth except her, wa=
s looking at her with pride.=E2=80=9D
He nevertheless avoided metafictional excess, aleatory techniques, rebellio=
us characters like the ones running John Fowles=E2=80=99 asylum in The Fren=
ch Lieutenant=E2=80=99s Woman.=C2=A0 My characters, he said, are galley sla=
ves.
He wrote the greatest parenthesis in English=C2=A0 literature.=C2=A0 Lolita=
=E2=80=99s Humbert Humbert:=C2=A0 =E2=80=9CMy photogenic mother died in a=
=C2=A0 freak accident (picnic, lightning) =E2=80=A6=E2=80=9D
A Fort Worth, Texas rock band calls itself Picnic Lightning.
Like suffering Cincinnatus in the 200-page nightmare Invitation to a Behead=
ing, he had intimations of another world, a parallel world perhaps, or mayb=
e just this one constructed with more attention to detail.=20
He died of lungs that refused to clear, a heart that lost the beat. The imm=
ediate cause, Dmitri said on the phone, was =E2=80=9Cperfectly banal.=E2=80=
=9D=C2=A0 In his touching if grouchy =E2=80=9COn Revisiting Father=E2=80=99=
s Room,=E2=80=9D he wrote that a maid simultaneously left open a draughty d=
oor and a window.=C2=A0 An incautious, sneezing maid.=20
He died July 2, 1977 at 6:50pm, which would put it around 11 hours later th=
an Gogol 125 years before.=20
In the summer of=C2=A0 =E2=80=9877 I was a guest of the Vancouver General =
Hospital. A visitor brought the news, which I remember taking personally: I=
f a man that gifted is allowed to die, what chance for the rest of us?
At Rougemont, near Gstaad,=C2=A0 he had=C2=A0 told Dmitri =E2=80=9Cin one o=
f those rare moments when father and son discuss such matters, that he had =
accomplished what he wished in life and art, and was a truly happy man."
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existen=
ce is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
=20
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvab=
rin@humnet.ucla.edu
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Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/=
ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=
=3DNABOKV-L
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=3DNABOKV-L
=20
Search archive with Google:
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Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
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The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
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------=_Part_12976985_1075914389.1497525183476
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<html><head></head><body><div style=3D"color:#000; background-color:#fff; f=
ont-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font=
-size:13px"><div dir=3D"ltr" id=3D"yui_3_16_0_1_1497524603370_6081"><span i=
d=3D"yui_3_16_0_1_1497524603370_6082">nicely done. but doesn't the author c=
onfuse Gogol's death with Chekhov - 2nd of July? (not 125 years, of course)=
As far as I recall Gogol died in March.</span></div><div dir=3D"ltr" id=3D=
"yui_3_16_0_1_1497524603370_6081"><span>cheers, V.M.</span></div> <div clas=
s=3D"qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class=3D"yahoo_quoted" style=3D"disp=
lay: block;"> <div style=3D"font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, =
Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> <div style=3D"font-family: He=
lveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; f=
ont-size: 16px;"> <div dir=3D"ltr"><font size=3D"2" face=3D"Arial"> On Thur=
sday, June 15, 2017 12:08 AM, Dana Dragunoiu <dana.dragunoiu@GMAIL.COM&g=
t; wrote:<br></font></div> <br><br> <div class=3D"y_msg_container"><div di=
r=3D"ltr">Dear Members of the List:<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><di=
v dir=3D"ltr">Please find below a message from Don Stanley.<br></div><div d=
ir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Long ago I=
was the associate editor of a city monthly called Vancouver magazine. We d=
evised a recurring two-page profile format: big picture of the subject faci=
ng a series of one- or two-line factoids; sequenced, I like to think,=
artfully.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Recently I =
resurrected the format and profiled Nabokov for my own amusement. <br></div=
><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">It then occurred to me that me=
mbers of The List might also find it diverting.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><=
br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The sources range in scale from big scholarly bio=
graphies to some fragments from the fading memory of a Vancouver telephone =
interviewer. The profile is blissfully free of citations; Google is n=
o doubt familiar with most of them. Once in a while the line is blurred bet=
ween paraphrase and quotation, sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for euphonious=
rhythm; the exact opposite of Nabokov=E2=80=99s methodology in translating=
Pushkin, I suppose. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">=
There may be a trick or two; the way he practiced at the art of deception i=
s so darn catchy.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">I ca=
n=E2=80=99t reproduce the layout, and as for the picture I suggest imaginin=
g your own favorite, as Tristram Shandy said about his mistress. Mayb=
e Nabokov in full combat mode on the paperback cover of Field=E2=80=99s His=
Life in Art or the pastel on the back dustjacket of Glory, looking as gaun=
t as his contemporary Prokofiev.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div d=
ir=3D"ltr">=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D<br></div>=
<div dir=3D"ltr">When Dmitri kissed his still-warm forehead, his father=E2=
=80=99s tears welled up. =E2=80=9CA certain butterfly was already on =
the wing; and his eyes told me he no longer hoped that he would live to pur=
sue it again."<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He bega=
n his 1944 Gogol profile at the wrong end, a grotesque deathbed scene invol=
ving an incompetent physician torturing his patient with a nest=
of satiated bloody leeches quick to realize their unbelievable luck. =
He refers to the good doctor with four different appellations to indicate =
the name wasn=E2=80=99t worth spelling correctly.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"=
><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">His paternal grandfather was State Minister of =
Justice under a pair of all-powerful Czars, the first relatively progressiv=
e, the second relatively not.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><di=
v dir=3D"ltr">He was a math prodigy, but around seven years old delirium fr=
om a nearly fatal fling with pneumonia burned the numbers right out of his =
brain.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He saw V as ros=
e-quartz, N as oatmeal greyish-yellow. The sound of a letter triggers=
a color: Synethesia. Nabokov had it. So did his mother Elena, so did his w=
ife Vera, so did his son Dmitri. Different colors, mind you.<br></div><div =
dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The family=E2=80=99s St Petersburg t=
ownhouse featured 50 servants and its own large library, complete with gene=
ric shy librarian. He was a multimillionaire teenager, with an inheri=
ted 2000 acre estate.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">=
Came the revolution.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">H=
is father, being chancellor to the liberal Provisional Government, found hi=
mself dangerously unpopular. To escape Civil War Russia, barely, the =
family steamed out of Sebastopol harbor on the seedy Nadezhda. He played ch=
ess on the deck with his father, somewhat distracted by the Bolsheviks=E2=
=80=99 strafing machine guns. One of the knights had lost its head.<b=
r></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">In March 28, 1922, in B=
erlin exile, at a political meeting, the speaker approached by an assassin,=
his courageous father helped pin the murderer to the floor, like a butterf=
ly specimen. A surprise second assassin shot his father three fatal t=
imes.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Without money, w=
ithout prospects, but with a vulnerable Jewish wife, he escaped from Paris =
via St. Nazaire to America, once again on a ship, the Champlain. The German=
s entered Paris within a month; sinking the Champlain took them a little lo=
nger (at anchor, air-laid bomb). <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div =
dir=3D"ltr">No amateur chess player, he was invited to join America=E2=80=
=99s national team.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">No=
weekend butterfly collector, in the forebodingly named Strong Opinions he =
reported that named after him were several butterflies. And a moth.<b=
r></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">His supersized son Dmit=
ri (6=E2=80=995) was famously brave. =E2=80=9CDo you climb?=E2=80=9D he sai=
d to me, meaning mountains, some of which became the graves of his fellow H=
arvard mountaineers. The morning of September 26, 1980, on the highwa=
y between Montreux and Lausanne, he totalled his fifth or so Ferrari,=
a souped-up fiberglass 308 GTB. After 12 excruciating days in a Lausanne b=
urn ward, he died, temporarily. He was enticed by the bright light at=
the terminus of the familiar tunnel, but then turned his back on beckoning=
death when he thought =E2=80=9Cof those who care for me and of important t=
hings I must still do."<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr=
">Incredibly enough, Dmitri returned to racing in a Ferrari of a somewhat d=
eeper blue. Still more incredibly, he may or may not have worked for =
the CIA, debriefing Russians who had crawled under Churchill=E2=80=99s Iron=
Curtain. He never told his father. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><d=
iv dir=3D"ltr">Who drove a car twice. In Russia in 1915, courtesy of an ina=
ttentive chauffeur, he put the family limousine in the ditch. In Amer=
ica 35 years later, briefly entrusted with the wheel, he almost crashed int=
o the only other car occupying a spacious parking lot. Consequently Vera ch=
auffeured his summertime butterfly expeditions. Better than 150,000 miles.<=
br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He loathed a lot of ve=
ry good writers. Not disliked, not didn=E2=80=99t care for: Loathed. Loathe=
d with an oddly ethical overlay. That fraud, that fake, Toilets, T.S. Eliot=
. Faulkner, Conrad, Hemingway: Bulls, Bells, Balls. And don=E2=80=99t=
get him started on rival Pushkin translators. Bracing fun to read at first=
, but a bitter aftertaste.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"=
ltr">He dealt in details. He felt the word Reality should never appear in p=
ublic without quotation marks. He said General Ideas are worn passports all=
owing their bearers short cuts from one area of ignorance to another. =E2=
=80=9CThe larger the issue the less it interests me.=E2=80=9D Thus if a stu=
dent at Cornell, one of 400 attending his Masterpieces of European Fiction =
(MWF,12), your =E2=80=9CMetamorphosis=E2=80=9D exam would be somethin=
g like =E2=80=9CDescribe the furnishings and layout of the Samsa living qua=
rters.=E2=80=9D Woe betide the student who confused Kafka=E2=80=99s monstro=
us domed beetle (A+) with a monstrous cockroach (Fail; Expulsio=
n).<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">To help American s=
tudents approximate his name, nah-BOK-off, he composed<br></div><div dir=3D=
"ltr">The querulous gawk of<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">A heron at night<br><=
/div><div dir=3D"ltr">Prompts Nabokov<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">To write <b=
r></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">But as he said himself,=
Nabokov is unpronounceable.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=
=3D"ltr">He was half an inch short of six feet, lovely hazel eyes, thighs o=
f a soccer player because his favorite butterflies lurked at high altitudes=
. Maybe 140 pounds in 1920s Berlin. Romantically handsome, supremely confid=
ent, purposefully flirtatious. Catnip to the girls.<br></div><div dir=
=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Of his sentences on occasion he the syn=
tax almost awkwardly adjusts in order triumphantly to pounce on a strong an=
d powerful noun!<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">In hi=
s 1928 Russian novel King, Queen, Knave, he brought Vera along for a tour o=
f inspection. The wretched lead character Franz had noticed them enviously =
before, like a subtle leitmotiv: the butterfly net, the loud foreign =
language, the girl in a blue dress dancing with a remarkably handsome man i=
n an old-fashioned dinner jacket. =E2=80=9CThe girl had a delicately painte=
d mouth and tender gray-blue eyes, and her fianc=C3=A9 or husband, slender,=
elegantly balding, contemptuous of everything on earth except her, was loo=
king at her with pride.=E2=80=9D<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div d=
ir=3D"ltr">He nevertheless avoided metafictional excess, aleatory technique=
s, rebellious characters like the ones running John Fowles=E2=80=99 asylum =
in The French Lieutenant=E2=80=99s Woman. My characters, he said, are=
galley slaves.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He wro=
te the greatest parenthesis in English literature. Lolita=E2=80=
=99s Humbert Humbert: =E2=80=9CMy photogenic mother died in a f=
reak accident (picnic, lightning) =E2=80=A6=E2=80=9D<br></div><div dir=3D"l=
tr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">A Fort Worth, Texas rock band calls itself P=
icnic Lightning.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Like =
suffering Cincinnatus in the 200-page nightmare Invitation to a Beheading, =
he had intimations of another world, a parallel world perhaps, or maybe jus=
t this one constructed with more attention to detail. <br></div><div dir=3D=
"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He died of lungs that refused to clear, a =
heart that lost the beat. The immediate cause, Dmitri said on the phone, wa=
s =E2=80=9Cperfectly banal.=E2=80=9D In his touching if grouchy =E2=
=80=9COn Revisiting Father=E2=80=99s Room,=E2=80=9D he wrote that a maid si=
multaneously left open a draughty door and a window. An incautious, s=
neezing maid. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">He died=
July 2, 1977 at 6:50pm, which would put it around 11 hours later than Gogo=
l 125 years before. <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"> =
In the summer of =E2=80=9877 I was a guest of the Vancouver General H=
ospital. A visitor brought the news, which I remember taking personally: If=
a man that gifted is allowed to die, what chance for the rest of us?<br></=
div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">At Rougemont, near Gstaad,&=
nbsp; he had told Dmitri =E2=80=9Cin one of those rare moments when f=
ather and son discuss such matters, that he had accomplished what he wished=
in life and art, and was a truly happy man."<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br=
></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense t=
ells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eterni=
ties of darkness.<br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"> <br></div><div dir=3D"ltr"><br=
></div><div dir=3D"ltr">Search archive with Google:<br></div><div dir=3D"lt=
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ww.ada.auckland.ac.nz/" target=3D"_blank">http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/</a=
><br></div><div dir=3D"ltr">The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to A=
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