Download - My Essays & Musings/ up to July 2014
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Essays & Musings
Contents: 1. ...! 3
2. : - :) 7
3. ? 13
4. , ... 21
5. 30
6. 59
7. Remembering J. D. Salinger 63
8. 71
9. ... 75
10. [Wislawa Szymborska] 78
11. - 82
12. 87
13. 96
14. How I messed up an essay 112
(continued...)
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15. ( -2) 116
16. , ! 123
17. ... 141
18. 146
19. ! 148
20. exhilaration 151
21. 156
22. 159
23. A story without an author 160
24. Notes on the narrative of Crime and Punishment 162
25. What we talk about really when we talk about reality 167
26. : The Gift 172
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June 11, 2011 *
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. : He was an out and out solitary; there was not one really congenial friend to comfort him -- and between one and none there gapes, as always between something and nothing, an infinity.
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: Prose is not be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not
quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations Prose
should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to
what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings
unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone
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February 26, 2011 *
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[The good readers] approach to a work of fiction is not governed by
those juvenile emotions that make the mediocre reader identify himself with this or that character and "skip descriptions".
March 24, 2011 *
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: As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope, for
the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself
to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so like myselfso
like a brother, reallyI felt that I had been happy and was happy
again.
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June 29, 2014 *
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December 6, 2013 *
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There were times when I had nothing else inside me except
reproaches driven by rage, so that, although physically well, I
would hold on to strangers in the street because the
reproaches inside me tossed from side to side like water in a
basin that was being carried rapidly.
Sunday 19th July 1910
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. July 28, 2010 *
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Remembering J. D. Salinger
I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and
all those dopes thought I was terrific, Id hate it. I wouldnt even want
them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I
were a piano player, Id play it in a goddam closet.
Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
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; , , , ; , , ; : Phonies ! , :
If there is an amateur reader still left in the world or anybody who
just reads and runs I ask him or her, with untellable affection and
gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife
and children.
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. goddam, and all, swear to
God, I know its crazy .
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February 4, 2010 *
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; , . . It would be a condescention on his part to do that. .
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. In a world thickly covered with meaningless pulp, this is what the underneath essence that really counts. This is the essential world. A world sans superficiality. , , . . .
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): Every seperate day in the year is a gift presented to only one man
the happiest one; all other people use his day, to enjoy the sunshine or
berate the rain, never knowing, however, to whom that day really
belongs; and its fortunate owner is pleased and amused by their
ignorance. A person cannot foreknow which day exactly will fall to
his lot, what trifle he will remember forever: the ripple of reflected
sunlight on a wall bordering water or the revolving fall of a maple
leaf; and it often happens that he recognizes his day only in
retrospection, long after he has plucked, and crumpled, and chucked
under his desk the calendar leaf with the forgotten figure.
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: ...but all in all it is not my favorite piece, and if I include it in this collection it is only becasue the act of retranslating it properly is a precious personal victory that seldom falls to a betrayed authors lot.
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(April 17, 2009) *
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[Wislawa Szymborska]
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: Crossiet, January 16, 1852
There are in me, literally speaking, two distinct persons: one who is
infatuated with bombast, lyricism, eagle flights, sonorities of phrase and the
high points of ideas; and another who digs and burrows into the truth as
deeply as he can, who likes to treat a humble fact as respectfully as a big
one, who would like to make you feel almost physically the things he
reproduces; this latter person likes to laugh, and enjoys the animal sides of
man...
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Bombast: . Lyricism: . Sonorities of phrase: .
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: What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a
book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which
would be held together by the strength of its style, just as the earth,
suspended in the void, depends on nothing external for its support; a
book which would have almost no subject, or at least in which the
subject would be almost invisible, if such a thing is possible. The
finest works are those that contain the least matter; the closer
expression comes to thought, the closer language comes to coinciding
and merging with it, the finer the result. I believe that the future of Art
lies in this direction. I see it, as it has developed from its beginnings,
growing progressively more ethereal, from the Egyptian pylons to
Gothic lancets, from the 20,000-line Hindu poems to the effusions of
Byron. Form, as it is mastered, becomes attenuated; it becomes
dissociated from any liturgy, rule, yardstick; the epic is discarded in
favor of the novel, verse in favor of prose; there is no longer any
orthodoxy, and form is as free as the will of its creator...
It is for this reason that there are no noble subjects or ignoble
subjects; from the standpoint of pure Art one might almost establish
the axiom that there is no such hing as subject, style in itself being an
absolute manner of seeing things.
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As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope, for the first time,
in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference
of the world. Finding it so like myselfso like a brother, reallyI felt that I had
been happy and was happy again.
: As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes,
I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for
the first time to the benign indifference of the world. And finding it so much like
myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that I had been happy, and that I was still
happy.
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? You see, I don't give a damn about Christian Judgment Day or Hindu
Karma phalam, or Islamic Yawm ad-Din. I am not secular either, I am anti-
religious. And my God is such a sweet guy to boot :-) He won't judge anybody on
anything.
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. . June 2009 *
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: When the head of state didnt play guitar
Not everybody drove a car
When music really mattered and when radio was king
When accountants didnt have control
And the media couldnt buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didnt know everything
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In seventy-seven and sixty-nine revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesnt care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
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1941 . .
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I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire
generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has
us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we dont
need. We are the middle children of history man! No purpose, no place. We have
no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war ... our Great
Depression is our lives.
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; , . , . Deep down inside, I know that I am fucking faking it. ( , . .
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ploughing through !
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! . (, . .
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.) (October 26, 2008)
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How I messed up an essay . ` '. . .
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(ENOUGH!! I don't feel like writing it anymore. . , . . .
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.) Carl Sagan Can We Know the Universe?
(August 18, 2008)
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( -2) , vantage point .
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! . , . , , . I guess then, we are all prisoners of space too. 1980 2060 (Oh! the greedy me!) . .
(August 18, 2008) *
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May 17, 2011 *
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[1] How to Read and Why. , , .
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. , , Doors closing, . .
[3] . ) , , ...) .
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. ) . (.
[4] . , , , .
[5] I am not a child of nature;'her wonders' move me less than those of the Arts. She crushes me without inspiring any 'great thoughts' in me. I feel like saying to
her inside myself: 'It's all very fine. I came from you just a while ago, in a few
moments I shall return thence; leave me alone, I need other amusements.'
The Alps, moreover, are out of proportion of man's being. They're too big to
be of any use. This is the third time they have provoked an unpleasant reaction in
me. I hope it's the last.
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, . : The better part of life is spent saying: it's too
early, and then it's too late. , , . , . , , .
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July 27, 2009 *
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April 17, 2011 *
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exhilaration . .
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. : . . . ? : . -- . .
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' ' : There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go.
I was starting to think that the reason it matters to care so passionately about
something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
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November 10, 2008 *
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, . ; ; (!), , , ; ; , , , , ; , , .... ENOUGH!! I don't feel like describing this insipid image anyway; let's get down to something more enchanting.
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. ; , ...
. . , . ! ! , condescending . . , . ; - , - . , , , . , , ? . . !
. , , , . But that kills all the fun. .
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Sometimes, it sucks to be a big man. It really does!! April 2, 2008 *
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February 18, 2010 *
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A story without an author ! !
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, . ( The Lady with the Dog .) : For sale: baby shoes, never worn. . .
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( )
: Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her
head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her
lover like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and
she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she
passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be
made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end.
I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The
road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it;
and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she
did, I observed her to be in tears.
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, . , .... .
. I like to see it as a story without an author (in the literal sense; not in some
Flaubertian sense). A story that life itself wrote in first-person narration the
narrator incidentally being Johnson. It's complete with an engaging beginning,
distinct characterizations (she had read the old romances, I resolved to begin as
I meant to end), brief but essential description (The road lay between two
hedges), and a piercing ending.
(Above selection is from the book Life of Samuel Johnson by James
Boswell) July 3, 2010 *
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Notes on the narrative of Crime and Punishment
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1865 . . ()
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.
: the story must be narrated by the author and not by the
hero. (
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? : Narration from the point of view of the author, a sort of invisible but omniscient being, who doesnt leave his hero
for a moment. , . (Omnipresent
narration) . :
This astonishing, shifting formulation as the (subjective) authors point of
view fades into the more abstract and detached ominiscient being, and then in a
doubling back tethers the omniscient author to the heros side, foreshadows, as we
shall see, the lineaments of a revolutionary new form in the history of the
novelone that is central to the novels power and scope and to its direct grasp
upon its readers.
:
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: Dostoyevsky is the first novelist to have fully accepted and dramatized the principle of uncertainity or indeterminacy in the presentation of character.
. , ,
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. form presupposes a material . October 8, 2008 *
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What we talk about really when we talk about reality
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. ? ( ); . , , . (Collective reality)
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tangible . .
(I am thinking about the ultimate range of Valmiki and Shakespeare now). , , ? . . .
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; . , ( )
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; . . ; mystic view . .... ? ?
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; .
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. ; . (Self-contained World). ; subjective reality . ; internal logic . A writer has no obligation to any reality except his own. ***
, , .
May 15, 2008 *
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: The Gift , :
Try some day to write a novel in which the artist (the real artist) is the
hero, you will see what great, but delicate and restrained, vigor is in it, how he
will see everything with an attentive eye, curious and tranquil, and how his
infatuations with the things he examines and delves into, will be rare and
serious. You will see also how he fears himself, how he knows that he cannot
surrender himself without exhaustion, and how a profound modesty in regard
to the treasures of his soul prevents him from scattering and wasting them. The
artist is such a fine type to do, that I have never dared really to do him. I do not
consider myself worthy to touch that beautiful and very complicated figure;
that is aiming too high for a mere woman. But if it could certainly tempt you
some day, it would be worthwhile.
( . , ; , ; , , . ; ,
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I dont agree with you that there is anything worthwhile to be done
with the character of the ideal artist; he would be a monster. Art is not made to
paint the exceptions, and I feel an unconquerable repugnance to putting on
paper something from out of my heart. I even think that a novelist hasnt the
right to express his opinion on any subject whatsoever. Has the good God ever
uttered it, his opinion? That is why there are not a few things that choke me
which I should like to spit out, but which I swallow. Why say them, in fact!
The first comer is more interesting than Monsieur Gustave Flaubert, because
he is more general and there fore more typical.
( ; . ; , .
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, )
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: ( ). , . .
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. , , , , , ( ) . ( ):
You can depict wine, love, women and glory on the condition that you
are not a drunkard, a lover, a husband or a private in the ranks. If you
participate in life, you dont see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy
it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of
nature.
( , , , , . :
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175
. , , .)
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.)
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; , , . .
, ( , ):
Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as
stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between. Imagination, the supreme delight
of the immortal and immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy
it too much. I rebel against this state of affairs.
:
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. , , . ,
, . . The Gift . ( , , ; . , .)
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.
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, . .
. (
, , ), , ( , , , ; , , ):
There he is, a special, rare and as yet undescribed and unnamed
variant of man, and he is occupied with God knows what, rushing from lesson
to lesson, wasting his youth on a boring and empty task, on the mediocre
teaching of foreign languageswhen he has his own language, out of which he
can make anything he likesa midge, a mammoth, a thousand different clouds.
What he should be really teaching was that mysterious and refined thing which
he aloneout of ten thousand, a hundred thousand, perhaps even a million
menknew how to teach: for examplemulti-level thinking: you look at a
person and you see him as clearly as if he were fashioned of glass and you
were the glass blower, while at the same time without in the least impinging
upon that clarity you notice some trifle on the sidesuch as the similarity of the
telephone receivers shadow to a huge, slightly crushed ant, and (all this
simultaneously) the convergence is joined by a third thoughtthe memory of a
sunny evening at a Russian small railway station; i.e., images having no
rational connection with the conversation you are carrying on while your mind
runs around the outside of your own words and along the inside of those of
your interlocutor. Or: a piercing pityfor the tin box in a waste patch, for the
cigarette card from the series National Costumes trampled in the mud, for the
poor, stray word repeated by the kind-hearted, weak, loving creature who has
just been scolded for nothingfor all the trash of life which by means of a
momentary alchemic distillationthe royal experimentis turned into
something valuable and eternal. Or else: the constant feeling that out days here
only pocket money, farthings clinking in the dark, and that somewhere is
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177
stocked the real wealth, from which life should know how to get dividends in
the shape of dreams, tears of happiness, distant mountains. All this and much
more he would have been able to teach, and teach well, to anyone who
wanted it, but no one wanted itand no one could, but it was a pity, he would
have charged a hundred marks an hour, the same as certain professors of
music. And at the same time he found it amusing to refute himself: all this was
nonsense, the shadows of nonsense, presumptuous dreams. I am simply a poor
young Russian selling the surplus from a gentlemans upbringing, while
scribbling verses in my spare time, thats the total of my little immortality. But
even this shade of multifaceted thought, this play of the mind with its own self,
had no prospective pupils.
* * * . (
.) 1935-37 . .
( .)
, 1952 , . ,
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178
It is the longest, I think the best, and most nostalgic of my Russian
novels. It portrays the adventures, literary and romantic, of a young Russian
expatriate in Berlin, in the twenties; but hes not myself. I am very careful to
keep my characters beyond the limits of my own identity.
. (Pnin), (Laughter in the dark) , , (Lolita), (Pale Fire) . :
1922 ; , ( ) , ! . .
, , . , . , ; , .
.
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, ). . .
(
: Bedlam turned back in to bethlehem thats Dostoevski for you). , , .
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179
; , , , . :
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. .
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, , . :
, . .
. Laughter in the dark :
Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus.
He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of
a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.
This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there
not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space
on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a mans
life, detail is always welcome.
, . Caress the detail, the divine detail . , , , ,
.
,
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, , ; .
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(
. fate ). , . . , , ; .
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. , .
( ) .
, , . ( ) .
1926 .
. , ? . . 1917 () . , (tsars) , ; . , . , ; . , , , .
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, . . () .
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1916, , . . .
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, .
1926 . . .
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196
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Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes,
imagined ones must close some day.
Onegin from his knees will rise
but his creator strolls away.
And yet the ear cannot right now
part with the music and allow
the tale to fade; the chords of fate
itself continue to vibrate;
and no obstruction for the sage
exists where I have put The End:
the shadows of my world extend
beyond the skyline of the page,
blue as tomorrows morning haze
nor does this terminate the phrase.
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197
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200
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: NABOKOV: ... the marvel of consciousnessthat sudden window
swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidst the night of non-being.
-
201
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...he knew that the external world resists the desires, however
desperate, of the world within. While he often glories in the power of human
consciousness, he also laments the absurdity of its limits: death, solitude, our
exclusion even from our own past. Thrilled by all that the mind offers but
aghast at all that it shuts out, Nabokov devotes his whole oeuvre to
ascertaining our position in regard to the universe embraced by
consciousness and to analyzing the bizarre discrepancy between the richness
of our life, as it accumulates moment by moment, and its becoming
inaccessible, so utterly unlike the present around us, as it retreats into the past
or as we advance into death. ~ from Vladimir Nabokov: Russian Years by