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SIGHTING: "Spring in Fialta"
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In Powell's Books online Review-a-Day for Feb 15, Washington Post
Book World reviewer Michael Dirda reviews Jeffery Eugenides'
anthology "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from
Chekhov to Munro":
...
Still, what we like to read about when we read about love is
suffering. We're almost all narrative masochists: We want pain. As
Denis de Rougemont famously remarked in Love in the Western World,
there just aren't many happy love stories in Western literature:
"Unless the course of love is being hindered there is no romance; and
it is romance that we revel in -- that is to say, the self-
consciousness, intensity, variations, and delays of passion." Even
when the affair is over, we still suffer -- from memories of what was
and longings for what we imagine might have been. As Nabokov says in
his great story of unfulfillment, "Spring in Fialta," (included here
in My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead): "Occasionally, in the middle of a
conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the
steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head."
Though every reader will grouse about overlooked favorites -- where
is Laurie Colwin's "My Mistress" or John Cheever's "The Country
Husband" or Irwin Shaw's "The Girls in their Summer Dresses" or
Colette's "Gigi"? -- Eugenides has chosen splendid work. He includes
what I and many others feel to be the greatest of all modern love
stories, open to multiple interpretations, Chekhov's "The Lady with
the Little Dog." Is it a tale of adultery or of true love? Of self-
delusion or of self-transformation?
...
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Book World reviewer Michael Dirda reviews Jeffery Eugenides'
anthology "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from
Chekhov to Munro":
...
Still, what we like to read about when we read about love is
suffering. We're almost all narrative masochists: We want pain. As
Denis de Rougemont famously remarked in Love in the Western World,
there just aren't many happy love stories in Western literature:
"Unless the course of love is being hindered there is no romance; and
it is romance that we revel in -- that is to say, the self-
consciousness, intensity, variations, and delays of passion." Even
when the affair is over, we still suffer -- from memories of what was
and longings for what we imagine might have been. As Nabokov says in
his great story of unfulfillment, "Spring in Fialta," (included here
in My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead): "Occasionally, in the middle of a
conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the
steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head."
Though every reader will grouse about overlooked favorites -- where
is Laurie Colwin's "My Mistress" or John Cheever's "The Country
Husband" or Irwin Shaw's "The Girls in their Summer Dresses" or
Colette's "Gigi"? -- Eugenides has chosen splendid work. He includes
what I and many others feel to be the greatest of all modern love
stories, open to multiple interpretations, Chekhov's "The Lady with
the Little Dog." Is it a tale of adultery or of true love? Of self-
delusion or of self-transformation?
...
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm