Earl Sampson reported a
sighting: "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." ...
His quote included:
"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"...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."
JM: I recommend those who are interested
in following how love-triangles and unfulfilled romance were used to
structure plots and how these were determinedly avoided
by VN, or in how he was strongly influenced by Chekhov and Bunin,
in Maxim Shreyer's book "The World of Nabokov's Stories" (
chapter 3 and VN's apprenticeship to Chekhov.)
For Shrayer "the
otherworld in the short stories serves as a depository of idealized memories of
things unattainable or lost - often but not always a beloved woman, a
deceased person, or a distant homeland...moments when the door to the otherworld
'stands slightly ajar'".
He mentions Ellen Pifer: she "placed Nabokov's transcendent notion of love at the heart of
"Nabokov's Universe": ..."love is quite literally the power that exposes human
beings to 'alien worlds'...the 'realm of the beyond'."
VN ( in the interview "Inspiration")
mentioned with admiration this specific short-story by Cheever: " John Cheever's "The Country Husband" ("Jupiter [a black retriever]
crashed through the tomato vines with the remains of a felt hat in his mouth."
The story is really a miniature novel beautifully traced, so that
the impression of there being a little too many things happening in it is
completely redeemed by the satisfying coherence of its thematic interlacings.)
"