Владимир Набоков: Поиск по текстам произведений автора и критике. Cлово "YESTERDAY". Классическая русская литература.

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Часть текста: many of his principal guidelines for writing, reading, and performing plays. The reader is urged to bear in mind, however, 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...

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Часть текста: 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...

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Часть текста: it whenever I had nothing better to do. On the other hand, I was urged by a war-time university in New York to complete my comparative history of French literature for English-speaking students. The first volume took me a couple of years during which I put in seldom less than fifteen hours of work daily. As I look back on those days, I see them divided tidily into ample light and narrow shade: the light pertaining to the solace of research in palatial libraries, the shade to my excruciating desires and insomnias of which enough has been said. Knowing me by now, the reader can easily imagine how dusty and hot I got, trying to catch a glimpse of nymphets (alas, always remote) playing in Central Park, and how repulsed I was by the glitter of deodorized career girls that a gay dog in one of the offices kept unloading upon me. Let us skip all that. A dreadful breakdown sent me to a sanatorium for more than a year; I went back to my workonly to be hospitalized again. Robust outdoor life seemed to promise me some relief. One of my favorite doctors, a charming cynical chap with a little brown beard, had a brother, and this brother was about to lead an expedition into arctic Canada. I was attached to it as a “recorder of psychic reactions.” With two young botanists and an old carpenter I shared now and then (never very successfully) the favors of one of our nutritionists, a Dr. Anita Johnsonwho was soon flown back, I am glad to say. I had little notion of what object the expedition was pursuing. Judging by the number of meteorologists upon it, we may have been tracking to its lair (somewhere on Prince of Wales’ Island, I...

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Часть текста: в различных американских журналах. Начало всей серии публикаций было положено еще до отъезда Набокова в США. В 1936 г. он написал по-французски небольшой рассказ "Mademoiselle О", который был посвящен детским воспоминаниям, связанным с Сесиль Миотон — глуповатой и обидчивой швейцарской гувернанткой Набокова. Этот рассказ сначала появился на страницах журнала "Мезюр" (Mesures. 1936. № 2), а затем, уже в авторском переводе на английский, — в бостонском ежемесячнике "Атлантик" (1943. № 1). После того как у Набокова, благодаря стараниям Эдмунда Уилсона, завязались тесные отношения с "Нью-Йоркером", почти все автобиографические очерки, писавшиеся Набоковым в сороковые-пятидесятые годы, были опубликованы в этом журнале. Впрочем, все необходимые библиографические сведения имеются в авторском предисловии к третьей версии автобиографии «Моя связь с "Нью-Йоркером" началась (при посредстве Эдмунда Уилсона) с напечатанного ...

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Часть текста: 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! There formerly I too promenaded — but harmful is the North to me. 1 III Having served excellently, nobly, his father lived by means of debts; gave three balls yearly 4 and squandered everything at last. Fate guarded Eugene: at first, Madame looked after him; later, Monsieur replaced her. 8 The child was boisterous but charming. Monsieur l'Abbé, a poor wretch of a Frenchman, not to wear out...

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Часть текста: years since the American publication of Lolita, you've published twenty-two or so books-- new American or Antiterran novels, old Russian works in English, Lolita in Russian-- giving one the impression that, as someone has said-- John Updike, I think-- your oeuvre is growing at both ends. Now that your first novel has appeared (Mashenka, 1926), it seems appropriate that, as we sail into the future, even earlier works should adhere to this elegant formula and make their quantum leap into English. Yes, my forthcoming Poems and Problems [McGraw-Hill] will offer several examples of the verse of my early youth, including "The Rain Has Flown," which was composed in the park of our country place, Vyra, in May 1917, the last spring my family was to live there. This "new" volume consists of three sections: a selection of thirty-six Russian poems, presented in the original and in translation; fourteen poems which I wrote directly in English, after 1940 and my arrival in America (all of which were published in The New Yorker), and eighteen chess problems, all but two of which were composed in recent years (the chess manuscripts of the 1940-1960 period have been mislaid and the earlier unpublished jottings are not worth printing). These Russian poems constitute no more than one percent of the mass of verse which I exuded with monstrous regularity during my youth. Do the components of that monstrous mass fall into any discernible periods or stages of development? What can be called rather grandly my European period of verse-making seems to show several distinctive stages: an initial one of passionate and commonplace love verse (not represented in Poems and Problems)-, a period reflecting utter distrust of the so-called October Revolution; a period (reaching well into the...

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Часть текста: '1 morir non dole. Petr. I On noticing that Vladimir had vanished, Onegin, by ennui pursued again, by Olga's side sank into meditation, 4 pleased with his vengeance. After him Ólinka yawned too, sought Lenski with her eyes, and the endless cotillion 8 irked her like an oppressive dream. But it has ended. They go in to supper. The beds are made. Guests are assigned night lodgings — from the entrance hall 12 even to the maids' quarters. Restful sleep by all is needed. My Onegin alone has driven home to sleep. II All has grown quiet. In the drawing room the heavy Pustyakov snores with his heavy better half. 4 Gvozdin, Buyanov, Petushkov, and Flyanov (who is not quite well) have bedded in the dining room on chairs, with, on the floor, Monsieur Triquet 8 in underwaistcoat and old nightcap. All the young ladies, in Tatiana's and Olga's rooms, are wrapped in sleep. Alone, sadly by Dian's beam 12...

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Часть текста: them typed for submission to Toffler when he came to Montreux in mid-March, 1963. The present text takes into account the order of my interviewer's questions as well as the fact that a couple of consecutive pages of my typescript were apparently lost in transit. Egreto perambis doribus! With the American publication of Lolita in 1958, your fame and fortune mushroomed almost overnight from high repute among the literary cognoscenti-- which you bad enjoyed for more than 30 years-- to both acclaim and abuse as the world-renowned author of a sensational bestseller. In the aftermath of this cause celebre, do you ever regret having written Lolita? On the contrary, I shudder retrospectively when I recall that there was a moment, in 1950, and again in 1951, when I was on the point of burning Humbert Humbert's little black diary. No, I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle-- its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works-- at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend...

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Часть текста: rest are to be used, I suppose, as "Special to The New York Times" at some later date by A. W., if he survives, or by his successor. I transcribe some of our exchanges. You have called yourself "an American writer, born in Russia and educated in England. " How does this make you an American writer? An American writer means, in the present case, a writer who has been an American citizen for a quarter of a century. It means, moreover, that all my works appear first in America. It also means that America is the only country where I feel mentally and emotionally at home. Rightly or wrongly, I am not one of those perfectionists who by dint of hypercriticizing America find themselves wallowing in the same muddy camp with indigenous rascals and envious foreign observers. My admiration for this adopted country of mine can easily survive the jolts and flaws that: , indeed, are nothing in comparison to the abyss of evil in the history of Russia, not to speak of other, more exotic, countries. In the poem "To My Soul, "you wrote, possibly of yourself, as "a provincial naturalist, an eccentric lost in paradise. " This appears to link your interest in butterflies to other aspects of your life, writing, for instance. Do you feel that you are "an eccentric lost in paradise"? An eccentric is a person whose mind and senses are excited by things that the average citizen does not even notice. And, per contra, the average eccentric-- for there are many of us, of diffйrent waters and magnitudes-- is utterly baffled and bored by the adjacent tourist who boasts of his business connections. In that sense, I often feel lost; but then, other people feel lost in my presence too. And I also know, as a good eccentric should, that the dreary old fellow who has been telling me all about the rise of...

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Часть текста: >> 4. Well-known restaurateur. >> 5. A trait of chilled sentiment worthy of Childe Harold. The ballets of Mr. Didelot are full of liveliness of fancy and extraordinary charm. One of our romantic writers found in them much more poetry than in the whole of French literature. >> 6. “Tout le monde sut qu'il mettoit du blanc, et moi qui n'en croyois rien je commençai de le croire, non seulement par l'embellissement de son teint, et pour avoir trouvé des tasses de blanc sur sa toilette, mais sur ce qu'entrant un matin dans sa chambre, je le trouvai brossant ses ongles avec une petite vergette faite exprès, ouvrage qu'il continua fi+èrement devant moi. Je jugeai qu'un homme qui passe deux heures tous les matins à brosser ses ongles peut bien passer quelques instans à remplir de blanc les creux de sa peau.” (Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.) Grimm was ahead of his age: nowadays people all over enlightened Europe clean their nails with a special brush. >> 7. The whole of this ironical stanza is nothing but a subtle compliment to our fair compatriots. Thus Boileau, under the guise of disapprobation, eulogizes Louis XIV. Our ladies combine enlightenment with amiability, and strict purity of morals with the Oriental charm that so captivated Mme de Staël ( Dix ans d'exil). >> 8. Readers remember the charming description of a Petersburg night in Gnedich's idyl: Here's night; but the golden stripes of the clouds do not darken. Though starless and moonless, the whole horizon lights up. Far out in the [Baltic] gulf one can see the silvery sails 4 Of hardly discernible ships that seem in the blue sky to float. With a gloomless radiance the night sky is radiant, And the crimson of sunset blends with ...

Поиск по творчеству и критикеCлово "YESTERDAY"

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Cлово "YESTERDAY"