Часть текста: that, later in life, Father might have expressed certain thoughts differently. The lectures were partly in typescript and partly in manuscript, replete with Nabokov's corrections, additions, deletions, occasional slips of the pen, and references to previous and subsequent installments of the course. I have limited myself to what editing seemed necessary for the presentation of the lectures in essay form. If Nabokov had been alive, he might perhaps have performed more radical surgery. He might also have added that the gruesome throes of realistic suicide he finds unacceptable onstage (in "The Tragedy of Tragedy") are now everyday fare on kiddies' TV, while "adult" entertainment has long since outdone all the goriness of the Grand Guignol. He might have observed that the aberrations of theatrical method wherein the illusion of a barrier between stage and audience is shattered - a phenomenon he considered "freakish" - are now commonplace: actors wander and mix; the audience is invited to participate; it is then applauded by the players in a curious reversal of roles made chic by Soviet performers ordered to emulate the mise-en-sce´ne of party congresses; and the term "happening" has already managed to grow obsolescent. He might have commented that the quest for originality for its own sake has led to ludicrous excesses and things have taken their helter-skelter course in random theatre as they have in random music and in random painting. Yet Nabokov's own plays demonstrate that it is possible to respect the rules of drama and still be original, just as one can write original poetry without neglecting the basic requirements of prosody, or play brilliant tennis, to...

2. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Chapter four

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Часть текста: to convince one 4 of what all have been long convinced; to hear the same objections, annihilate the prejudices which never had and hasn't 8 a little girl of thirteen years! Who will not grow weary of threats, entreaties, vows, feigned fear, notes running to six pages, 12 betrayals, gossiping, rings, tears, surveillances of aunts, of mothers, and the onerous friendship of husbands! IX Exactly thus my Eugene thought. In his first youth he had been victim of tempestuous errings 4 and of unbridled passions. Spoiled by a habitude of life, with one thing for a while enchanted, disenchanted with another, 8 irked slowly by desire, irked, too, by volatile success, hearkening in the hubbub and the hush to the eternal mutter of his soul, 12 smothering yawns with laughter: this was the way he killed eight years, having lost life's best bloom. X With belles no longer did he fall in love, but dangled after them just anyhow; when they refused, he solaced in a twinkle; 4 when they betrayed, was glad to rest. He sought them without...

3. Lolita. Part Two. Chapters 1 - 2

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Часть текста: 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 you…”) turned down. Nous connmes (this is royal fun) the would-be enticements of their repetitious namesall those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac’s Courts. There was sometimes a special line in the write-up, such as “Children welcome, pets allowed” ( You are welcome, you are allowed). The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbor turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended. Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet (on whose tank the towels were unhygienically heaped) asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies; others had special...

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

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Часть текста: Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin Chapter three CHAPTER THREE Elle était fille; elle était amoureuse. Malfilâtre I “Whither? Ah me, those poets!” “Good-by, Onegin. Time for me to leave.” “I do not hold you, but where do 4 you spend your evenings?” “At the Larins'.” “Now, that's a fine thing. Mercy, man — and you don't find it difficult thus every evening to kill time?” 8 “Not in the least.” “I cannot understand. From here I see what it is like: first — listen, am I right? — a simple Russian family, 12 a great solicitude for guests, jam, never-ending talk of rain, of flax, of cattle yard.” II “So far I do not see what's bad about it.” “Ah, but the boredom — that is bad, my friend.” “Your fashionable world I hate; 4 dearer to me is the domestic circle in which I can…” “Again an eclogue! Ah, that will do, old boy, for goodness' sake. Well, so you're off; I'm very sorry. 8 Oh, Lenski, listen — is there any way for me to see this Phyllis, subject of thoughts, and pen, and tears, and rhymes, et cetera? 12 Present me.” “You are...

5. Вне Лолиты: Вновь открывая Набокова. (Проект CNN, 1999 г.). His Legacy

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Часть текста: story of our century" and "pornography," and still causes controversy 50 years after its release. But he also created a startling breadth of quality work that supports, matches and even surpasses the heights of talent he reached with the novel "Lolita." "He will be increasingly appreciated," says Jeff Edmunds, editor of Zembla, the Web site dedicated to Nabokov and his work. "He crosses national boundaries... he's not considered a modernist, or post-modernist... He's simply Nabokov." D. Barton Johnson, Professor Emeritus at University of California - Santa Barbara and former president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society, agrees. "There can, I think, be no question that Nabokov is and will remain a prominent figure in the 20th Century canon - at least in American and Russian literature," Johnson says. "Nabokov is one of the rare figures who, at the end of the century, enjoys both a wide popular readership and is firmly entrenched in academe." Nabokov writing at his lectern, Montreux, 1966 Galya Diment, Professor of Russian at University of Washington and the author of "Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel," says Nabokov's legacy is often split into two different directions. "I think in the general public he will be remembered mostly for 'Lolita," she says. "But...

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

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Часть текста: 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...

7. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Chapter two

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Часть текста: before it, freaked and flowered, lay meadows and golden grainfields; one could glimpse hamlets here and there; herds roamed the meadows; 12 and its dense coverts spread a huge neglected garden, the retreat of pensive dryads. II The venerable castle was built as castles should be built: excellent strong and comfortable 4 in the taste of sensible ancientry. Tall chambers everywhere, hangings of damask in the drawing room, portraits of grandsires on the walls, 8 and stoves with varicolored tiles. All this today is obsolete, I really don't know why; and anyway it was a matter 12 of very little moment to my friend, since he yawned equally amidst modish and olden halls. III He settled in that chamber where the rural old-timer had for forty years or so squabbled with his housekeeper, 4 looked through the window, and squashed flies. It all was plain: a floor of oak, two cupboards, a table, a divan of down, and not an ink speck anywhere. Onegin 8 opened the cupboards; found in one a notebook of expenses and in the other a whole array of fruit liqueurs, pitchers of eau-de-pomme, 12 and the calendar for eighteen-eight: having a lot to do, the old man never looked into any other books. IV Alone midst his possessions, merely to while away the time, at first conceived the plan our Eugene 4 of instituting a new system. In his backwoods a solitary sage, the ancient corvée 's yoke by the light quitrent he replaced; 8 the muzhik blessed fate, while in his corner went into a huff, therein perceiving dreadful harm, his thrifty neighbor. 12 Another slyly smiled, and all concluded with one...

8. Lolita. Part One. Chapters 23 - 27

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Часть текста: of this car, on the trim turn of the lawn-slope, an old gentleman with a white mustache, well-dresseddouble-breasted gray suit, polka-dotted bow-tielay supine, his long legs together, like a death-size wax figure. I have to put the impact of an instantaneous vision into a sequence of words; their physical accumulation in the page impairs the actual flash, the sharp unity of impression: Rug-heap, car, old man-doll, Miss O.’s nurse running with a rustle, a half-empty tumbler in her hand, back to the screened porchwhere the propped-up, imprisoned, decrepit lady herself may be imagined screeching, but not loud enough to drown the rhythmical yaps of the Junk setter walking from group to groupfrom a bunch of neighbors already collected on the sidewalk, near the bit of checked stuff, and back to the car which he had finally run to earth, and then to another group on the lawn, consisting of Leslie, two policemen and a sturdy man with tortoise shell glasses. At this point, I should explain that the prompt appearance of the patrolmen, hardly more than a minute after the accident, was due to their having been ticketing the illegally parked cars in a cross lane two blocks down the grade; that the fellow with the glasses was Frederick Beale, Jr., driver of the Packard; that his 79-year-old father, whom the nurse had just watered on the green bank where he laya banked banker so to speakwas not in a dead faint, but was comfortably and methodically recovering from a mild heart attack or its possibility; and, finally, that the laprobe on the sidewalk (where she had so often pointed out to me with disapproval the crooked green cracks) concealed the mangled remains of Charlotte Humbert who had been knocked down and dragged several feet by the Beale car as she was hurrying across the street to drop three letters in the mailbox, at the...

9. Lolita. Part Two. Chapters 27 - 31

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Часть текста: one of my few correspondentsI used to recollect, with anguished amusement, the times in my trustful, pre-dolorian past when I would be misled by a jewel-bright window opposite wherein my lurking eye, the ever alert periscope of my shameful vice, would make out from afar a half-naked nymphet stilled in the act of combing her Alice-in-Wonderland hair. There was in the fiery phantasm a perfection which made my wild delight also perfect, just because the vision was out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by the awareness of an appended taboo; indeed, it may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promisedthe great rosegray never-to-be-had. Mes fentres! Hanging above blotched sunset and welling night, grinding my teeth, I would crowd all the demons of my desire against the railing of a throbbing balcony: it would be ready to take off in the apricot and black humid evening; did take offwhereupon the lighted image would move and Even would revert to a rib, and there would be nothing in the window but an obese partly clad man reading the paper. Since I sometimes won the race between my fancy and nature’s reality, the deception was bearable. Unbearable pain began when chance entered the fray and deprived me of the smile meant for me. “ Savez-vous qu’ dix ans ma petite tait folle de voius?” said a woman I talked to at a tea in Paris, and the petite had just married, miles away, and I could not even remember if I had ever noticed her in that garden, next to those tennis courts, a dozen years before. And now likewise, the...

10. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Chapter eight

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Часть текста: with a smile the world received her; the first success provided us with wings; the aged Derzhavin noticed us — and blessed us 4 as he descended to the grave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III And I, setting myself for law only the arbitrary will of passions, sharing emotions with the crowd, 4 I led my frisky Muse into the hubbub of feasts and turbulent discussions — the terror of midnight patrols; and to them, in mad feasts, 8 she brought her gifts, and like a little bacchante frisked, over the bowl sang for the guests; and the young people of past days 12 would turbulently dangle after her; and I was proud 'mong friends of my volatile mistress. IV But I dropped out of their alliance — and fled afar... she followed me. How often the caressive Muse 4 for me would sweeten the mute way with the bewitchment of a secret tale! How often on Caucasia's crags, Lenorelike, by the moon, 8 with me she'd gallop on a steed! How often on the shores of Tauris she ...

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Cлово "WILL"