>The idea of burning at the stake because of one's superior discoveries and ideas (Giordano Bruno), trying to force faith, theory and perception meet (Johannes Kepler) and Galileo's insistent provocations against the Roman Church versus Inquisition, seem to have been themes that instigated VN and his own shining intelligence

 

Stubbornness of conspicuous mind cutting oneself off from conformity, – at all costs. That theme goes through so diverse works as ‘Invitation to beheading’, ‘Vasiliy Shishkov’, ‘Cloud, Castle, Lake’, ‘Bent Sinister’.  The story of Grisha Perelman is so Nabokovian exactly because it has so much of life, on so many levels, in one person. Did any other writer do it better?

 

- George