I don't have my copy of Speak, Memory close by to check, but in Другие берега (Drugie berega) Nabokov mentions how the "красное, как апельсин-королек, солнце низко висело в замерзшем сизом небе" ("red sun, like a blood orange, hung low in the frozen gray sky"). This describes the scene of his departure from Tamara. I'll need to check to see how this scene is described in the two English versions.

A little later Nabokov mentions how the smoke of Russia affected the colors of the sunset and how Blok described the same sunset in a diary entry. His connection of a smoky sunset simultaneously to loss of love and loss of homeland is worth noting.

Joseph Schlegel

PhD Candidate

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

University of Toronto