Часть текста: even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawnto mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart ona roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face… that look I cannot exactly describe… an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustrationand every limit presupposes something beyond ithence the neutral illumination. And when you bear in mind that these were the raised eyebrows and parted lips of a child, you may better appreciate what depths of calculated carnality, what reflected despair, restrained me from falling at her dear feet and dissolving in human tears, and sacrificing my jealousy to whatever pleasure Lolita might hope to derive from mixing with dirty and dangerous children in an outside world that was real to her. And I have still other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski, some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked: “You know, what’s so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own”; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my...

2. Lolita. Part Two. Chapters 17 - 21

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Часть текста: a little lad of his, a copper case: it had an elaborate Oriental design over the lid and could be securely locked. Once glance sufficed to assure me that it was one of those cheap money boxes called for some reason “luizettas” that you buy in Algiers and elsewhere, and wonder what to do with afterwards. It turned out to be much too flat for holding my bulky chessmen, but I kept itusing it for a totally different purpose. In order to break some pattern of fate in which I obscurely felt myself being enmeshed, I had decideddespite Lo’s visible annoyanceto spend another night at Chestnut Court; definitely waking up at four in the morning, I ascertained that Lo was still sound asleep (mouth open, in a kind of dull amazement at the curiously inane life we all had rigged up for her) and satisfied myself that the precious contents of the “luizetta” were safe. There, snugly wrapped in a white woolen scarf, lay a pocket automatic: caliber. 32, capacity of magazine 8 cartridges, length a little under one ninth of Lolita’s length, stock checked walnut, finish full blued. I had inherited it from the late Harold Haze, with a 1938 catalog which cheerily said in part: “Particularly well adapted for use in the home and car as well as on the person.” There it lay, ready for instant service on the person or persons, loaded and fully cocked with the slide lock in safety position, thus precluding any accidental discharge. We must remember that a pistol is the Freudian symbol of the Ur-father’s central forelimb. I was now glad I had it with meand even more glad that I had learned to use it two years before, in the pine forest around my and Charlotte’s glass lake. Farlow, with whom I...

3. Lolita. Part Two. Chapters 9 - 16

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Часть текста: whom I looked forward to meet, proved on the whole disappointing. There was Opal Something, and Linda Hall, and Avis Chapman, and Eva Rosen, and Mona Dahl (save one, all these names are approximations, of course). Opal was a bashful, formless, bespectacled, bepimpled creature who doted on Dolly who bullied her. With Linda Hall the school tennis champion, Dolly played singles at least twice a week: I suspect Linda was a true nymphet, but for some unknown reason she did not comewas perhaps not allowed to cometo our house; so I recall her only as a flash of natural sunshine on an indoor court. Of the rest, none had any claims to nymphetry except Eva Rosen. Avis ws a plump lateral child with hairy legs, while Mona, though handsome in a coarse sensual way and only a year older than my aging mistress, had obviously long ceased to be a nymphet, if she ever had been one. Eva Rosen, a displaced little person from France, was on the other hand a good example of a not strikingly beautiful child revealing to the perspicacious amateur some of the basic elements of nymphet charm, such as a perfect pubescent figure and lingering eyes and high cheekbones. Her glossy copper hair had Lolita’s silkiness, and the features of her delicate milky-white face with pink lips and silverfish eyelashes were less foxy than those of her likesthe great clan of intra-racial redheads; nor did she sport their green uniform but wore, as I remember her, a lot of black or cherry darka very smart black pullover, for instance, and high-heeled black shoes, and garnet-red fingernail polish. I spoke French to her (much to Lo’s disgust). The child’s tonalities were still...

4. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Chapter one

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Часть текста: having grown fond of friendship's heed, I wish I could present you with a gage 4 that would be worthier of you — be worthier of a fine soul full of a holy dream, of live and limpid poetry, 8 of high thoughts and simplicity. But so be it. With partial hand take this collection of pied chapters: half droll, half sad, 12 plain-folk, ideal, the careless fruit of my amusements, insomnias, light inspirations, unripe and withered years, 16 the intellect's cold observations, and the heart's sorrowful remarks. CHAPTER ONE To live it hurries and to feel it hastes. Prince Vyazemski I “My uncle has most honest principles: when he was taken gravely ill, he forced one to respect him 4 and nothing better could invent. To others his example is a lesson; but, good God, what a bore to sit by a sick person day and night, not stirring 8 a step away! What base perfidiousness to entertain one half-alive, adjust for him his pillows, 12 sadly serve him his medicine, sigh — and think inwardly when will the devil take you?” II Thus a young scapegrace thought as with post horses in the dust he flew, by the most lofty will of Zeus 4 the heir of all his kin. Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan! The hero of my novel, without preambles, forthwith, 8 I'd like to have you meet: Onegin, a good pal of mine, was born upon the Neva's banks, where maybe you were born, 12 or used to shine, my reader!...

5. Ада, или Радости страсти. Семейная хроника. (Примечания)

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6. The Song of Igor's Campaign, Igor son of Svyatoslav and grandson of Oleg (перевод Набокова)

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Часть текста: ranged in thought [like the nightingale] over the tree; like the gray wolf across land; like the smoky eagle up to the clouds. For as he recalled, said he, the feuds of initial times, "He set ten falcons upon a flock of swans, and the one first overtaken, sang a song first"- to Yaroslav of yore, and to brave Mstislav who slew Rededya before the Kasog troops, and to fair Roman son of Svyatoslav. To be sure, brothers, Boyan did not [really] set ten falcons upon a flock of swans: his own vatic fingers he laid on the live strings, which then twanged out by themselves a paean to princes. So let us begin, brothers, this tale- from Vladimir of yore to nowadays Igor. who girded his mind with fortitude, and sharpened his heart with manliness; [thus] imbued with the spirit of arms, he led his brave troops against the Kuman land in the name of the Russian land. Boyan apostrophized O Boyan, nigh tingale of the times of old! If you were to trill [your praise of] these troops, while hopping, nightingale, over the tre e of thought; [if you were] flying in mind up to the clouds; [if] weaving paeans around these times, [you were] roving the Troyan Trail, across fields onto hills; then the song to be sung of Igor, that grandson of Oleg [, would be]: "No storm has swept falcons across wide fields; flocks of daws flee toward the Great Don"; or you might intone thus, vatic Boyan, grandson of Veles: "Steeds neigh beyond the...

7. Lolita. Part One. Chapters 18 - 22

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Часть текста: - 22 18 When the bride is a window and the groom is a widower; when the former has lived in Our Great Little Town for hardly two years, and the latter for hardly a month; when Monsieur wants to get the whole damned thing over with as quickly as possible, and Madame gives in with a tolerant smile; then, my reader, the wedding is generally a “quiet” affair. The bride may dispense with a tiara of orange blossoms securing her finger-tip veil, nor does she carry a white orchid in a prayer book. The bride’s little daughter might have added to the ceremonies uniting H. and H. a touch of vivid vermeil; but I knew I would not dare be too tender with cornered Lolita yet, and therefore agreed it was not worth while tearing the child away from her beloved Camp Q. My soi-disant passionate and lonely Charlotte was in everyday life matter-of-fact and gregarious. Moreover, I discovered that although she could not control her heart or her cries, she was a woman of principle. Immediately after she had become...

8. Lolita. Part Two. Chapters 1 - 2

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Часть текста: sleep, argument, reconciliation, insatiable illicit love. At first, in my dread of arousing suspicion, I would eagerly pay for both sections of one double unit, each containing a double bed. I wondered what type of foursome this arrangement was even intended for, since only a pharisaic parody of privacy could be attained by means of the incomplete partition dividing the cabin or room into two communicating love nests. By and by, the very possibilities that such honest promiscuity suggested (two young couples merrily swapping mates or a child shamming sleep to earwitness primal sonorities) made me bolder, and every now and then I would take a bed-and-cot or twin-bed cabin, a prison cell or paradise, with yellow window shades pulled down to create a morning illusion of Venice and sunshine when actually it was Pennsylvania and rain. We came to know nous connmes, to use a Flaubertian intonationthe stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, the adobe unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Book of the Automobile Association describes as “shaded” or “spacious” or “landscaped” grounds. The log kind, finished in knotty pine, reminded Lo, by its golden-brown glaze, of friend-chicken bones. We held in contempt the plain whitewashed clapboard Kabins, with their faint sewerish smell or some other gloomy self-conscious stench and nothing to boast of (except “good beds”), and an unsmiling landlady always prepared to have her gift (“…well, I could give...

9. Чарльз Кинбот: Серебристый свет. Подлинная жизнь Владимира Набокова. Chapter One. On Visiting Nabokov's Tomb

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Часть текста: the scholarly version of lèche-culisme (or back-slapping, for those readers of delicate sensibilities or who have no French), in which the author, feigning humility, lists the names of the people and institutions he has had occasion to consult, implying, or, more often, stating explicitly, that although all these fine folks were instrumental in establishing the book's final form, none of them can be held responsible for any of the lapses or idiocies to be found therein; for these the author alone must answer. I have opted, against the protestations of my editor, to forego this tiresome ritual. Every word, every thought, every mark of punctuation in this work is my own, except where stated otherwise according to the dictates of careful scholarship. Certainly the comments (solicited or not) of many persons have guided me in perfecting my book, but only insofar as they served as signposts of exactly the type of tired tripe I wished to avoid. The most common of these was a chilly "You can't do that," as if my book were violating some immemorial cosmic law. For all their carping about institutional constraints on the freedom of their thought and work, my fellow academicians (and even many of you, self-styled "Nabokovians") have revealed themselves to be virulently censorial when confronted by the weird fruit of my research. Few things are more depressing to an intelligent person than the revelation that a whole league of supposedly enlightened literati is in fact a mob of petulant nitwits. Chapter One On Visiting Nabokov's Tomb "Biography is a form of murder." -- J. Tenier The cemetery of the Centre Funéraire St. Martin is...

10. Lolita. Part One. Chapters 12 - 17

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Часть текста: daily the same. First he would tempt meand then thwart me, leaving me with a dull pain in the very root of my being. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how to do it, without impinging on a child’s chastity; after all, I had had some experience in my life of pederosis; had visually possessed dappled nymphets in parks; had wedged my wary and bestial way into the hottest, most crowded corner of a city bus full of straphanging school children. But for almost three weeks I had been interrupted in all my pathetic machinations. The agent of these interruptions was usually the Haze woman (who, as the reader will mark, was more afraid of Lo’s deriving some pleasure from me than of my enjoying Lo). The passion I had developed for that nymphetfor the first nymphet in my life that could be reached at last by my awkward, aching, timid clawswould have certainly landed me again in a sanatorium, had not the devil realized that I was to be granted some relief if he wanted to have me as a plaything for some time longer. The reader has also marked the curious Mirage of the Lake. It would have been logical on the part of Aubrey McFate (as I would like to dub that devil of mine) to arrange a small treat for me on the promised beach, in the presumed forest. Actually, the promise Mrs. Haze had made was a fraudulent one: she had not told me that Mary Rose Hamilton (a dark little beauty in her own right) was to come too, and that the two nymphets would be whispering apart, and playing apart, and having a good time all by themselves, while Mrs. Haze and her handsome lodger conversed sedately in the seminude, far from prying eyes. Incidentally, eyes did pry and tongues did wag. How queer life is! We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo. Before my actual arrival, my landlady had planned to have an old spinster, a Miss Phalen, whose mother had been cook in Mrs. Haze’s family, come to stay in the house with Lolita and...

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