On Jun 18, 2012, at 2:21 AM, Alexey Sklyarenko wrote: The land of liberty and its great statue are mentioned in Pnin (Chapter Two, 5): And at last, when the great statue arose from the morning haze where, ready to be ignited by the sun, pale, spellbound buildings stood like those mysterious rectangles of unequal height that you see in bar graph representations of compared percentages (natural resources, the frequency of mirages in different deserts), Dr Wind resolutely walked up to the Pnins and identified himself--'because all three of us must enter the land of liberty with pure hearts.'

By a stroke of coincidence I happen to be listening on the radio to a really very interesting piece of music* commissioned by one of the women said to have posed for Lady Liberty herself - though some claim it was her mother who modelled for Bertholdi. Better known by her married name, la princesse Edmond de Polignac, Winnaretta was the eldest of 24 children born to Isaac Merritt Singer, the man who beside founding the famous sewing machine mfg company, was also an inventor and actor. His son Paris Singer was the father of one of Isadora Duncan's children. 

Isadora fell for some glamorous conception of the soviet revolution, and after moving to Moscow in '17, married Sergei Esenin, a marriage that ended only with his mysterious death at the age of 30. She founded a school of dance there, that was finally suppressed in '39, and the teachers exiled or worse. The dancer herself famously died grotesquely, decapitated by a scarf caught in the wheels of her Bugatti or Maseratti,** and the two children born out of wedlock to Singer and the famous theater designer and personality Gordon Craig were similarly the victims of a grotesque automobile accident. For a lark, read Elsa Lanchester's account of being one of la Duncan's students ... or, even better, I think you can find her tell it on Youtube.