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

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Входимость: 4. Размер: 34кб.

Часть текста: of Oleg (перевод Набокова) The Song of Igor's Campaign, Igor son of Svyatoslav and grandson of Oleg Translated by Vladimir Nabokov Exordium Might it not become us, brothers, to begin in the diction of yore the stern tale of the campaign of Igor, Igor son of Svyatoslav? Let us, however, begin this song in keeping with the happenings of these times and not with the contriving of Boyan. For he, vatic Boyan if he wished to make a laud for one, 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 Sula; glory rings in Kiev; trumpets blare in...

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Часть текста: — 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 illumined at the window, poor Tatiana is not asleep and gazes out on the dark field. III With his unlooked-for apparition, the momentary softness of his eyes, and odd conduct with Olga, 4 to the depth of her soul she's penetrated. She is quite unable to understand him. Jealous anguish perturbs her, 8 as if a cold hand pressed her heart; as if beneath her an abyss yawned black and dinned.... “I shall perish,” says Tanya, 12 “but perishing from him is sweet. I murmur not: why murmur? He cannot give me happiness.” IV Forward, forward, my story! A new persona claims us. Five versts from Krasnogórie, 4 Lenski's estate, there lives and thrives up to the present time in...

Входимость: 2. Размер: 52кб.

Часть текста: 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 had roamed those remote woods, was an admirable marksman, and with his. 38 actually managed to hit a hummingbird, though I must say not much of it could be retrieved for proofonly a little iridescent fluff. A burley ex-policeman...

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Часть текста: через край. С непокрытой головой плавают вдалеке фонари, их лучи беспрерывно протянулись в дождливый сумрак. Вода в бадьях продолжает переливаться через край. Итак, я погружаюсь в твои пасмурные глаза, в мерцающую черноту узких аллей, где журчит и шелестит ночной дождь. Улыбнись мне. Почему ты смотришь на меня так пасмурно и мрачно. Теперь утро. Всю ночь звёзды пронзительно кричали детскими голосами, и, кто-то на крыше терзал и ласкал скрипку острым смычком. Смотри, солнце перевалилось через стену, словно сияющий парусник. Ты выдыхаешь туманом всё обволакивающий дым. Пылинки начинают кружиться в твоих глазах, миллионы золотых миров. Ты улыбнулась! Мы выходим на балкон. Весна. Внизу, посреди улицы, жёлто-кудрявый малыш быстро-быстро рисует бога. Бог растянулся от одной стороны улицы до другой. Малыш сжимает в руке кусок мела, маленький кусок белого угольного карандаша, и сидя на корточках, поворачивается, вычерчивая широкую линию. У этого белого бога большие белые пуговицы и развёрнутые наружу ступни. Распятый на асфальте он смотрит в небеса круглыми глазами. Белой дугой рот. Бревно-образная сигара появилась у него во рту. Винтовыми толчками малыш изображает спиралевидный дым. Руки в...

Входимость: 2. Размер: 58кб.

Часть текста: 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 darling’s mind and...

Входимость: 2. Размер: 54кб.

Часть текста: a trot. Plowing up fluffy furrows, a bold kibitka flies: the driver sits upon his box 8 in sheepskin coat, red-sashed. Here runs about a household lad, upon a hand sled having seated “blackie,” having transformed himself into the steed; 12 the scamp already has frozen a finger. He finds it both painful and funny — while his mother, from the window, threatens him... III But, maybe, pictures of this kind will not attract you; all this is lowly nature; 4 there is not much refinement here. Warmed by the god of inspiration, another poet in luxurious language for us has painted the first snow 8 and all the shades of winter's delectations. 27 He'll captivate you, I am sure of it, when he depicts in flaming verses secret promenades in sleigh; 12 but I have no intention of contending either with him at present or with you, singer of the young Finnish Maid! 28 IV Tatiana (being Russian at heart, herself not knowing why) loved, in all its cold beauty, 4 a Russian winter: rime in the sun upon a frosty day, and sleighs, and, at late dawn, the radiance of the rosy snows, 8 and gloam of Twelfthtide eves. Those evenings in the ancient fashion were celebrated in their house: the servant girls from the whole stead 12 told their...

Входимость: 2. Размер: 53кб.

Часть текста: 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 more or less my mistress (despite the stimulants, her “nervous, eager chri a heroic chri ! had some initial trouble, for which, however, he amply compensated her by a fantastic display of old-world endearments), good Charlotte interviewed me about my relations with God. I could have answered that on that score my mind was open; I said, insteadpaying my tribute to a pious platitudethat I believed in a cosmic spirit. Looking down at her fingernails, she also asked me had I not in my family a certain strange strain. I countered by inquiring whether she would still want to marry me if my father’s maternal grandfather had been, say, a Turk. She said it did not matter a bit; but that, if she ever found out I did not believe in Our Christian God, she would commit suicide. She said it so solemnly that it gave me the creeps. It was then I knew she was a woman of principle. Oh, she was very genteel: she said “excuse me” whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope and ahnvelope, and when talking to her lady-friends referred to me as Mr. Humbert. I thought it would please her if I entered the community trailing some glamour after me. On the day of our wedding a little interview with me appeared in the Society...

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Часть текста: to put it in judicious France, " the aurelian, " as the poets said in grove-rich England, the "fly doctor," as they wisecracked in advanced Russian circles) who wished to acquire from books a general notion of the fauna of Europe, including Russia, was compelled to scrabble for his crumbs of information in entomological journals in six languages and in multivolume, hard-to-find editions such as the Oberthьr books or those of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich. The absence or utter inadequacy of "references" in the atlases ad usum Delphini, the tedious perusal of the index of names enclosed with an annual volume of a monthly journal, the sheer number of these journals and volumes (in my father's library there were more than a thousand of the latter alone, representing a good hundred journals) - all this had to be overcome in order to hunt down the necessary reference, if it existed at all. Nonetheless, even in my exceptionally propitious situation things were not easy: Russia, particularly in the north, dwelt in a mist, while the local lists, scattered through the journals, totally haphazard, scanty, and cruelly inaccurate in nomenclature, only maddened me when at last I ferreted them out. My father was the preeminent entomologist of his time, and very well off to boot, but the ordinary amateur, unable to dispatch his scouts throughout Russia, and denied the opportunity - or not knowing how - to gain access to specialized collections and libraries (and an accidental boon, the hasty inspection of collections at a lepidopterological society or in the cellar of some museum, does not satisfy the true enthusiast, who needs to have the boon always at hand), had no choice but to hope for a miracle. And that ...

Входимость: 2. Размер: 46кб.

Часть текста: a semblance of Lolita’s script causing me almost to collapse as I leant against an adjacent urn, almost my own. Whenever that happenedwhenever her lovely, childish scrawl was horribly transformed into the dull hand of 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...

Входимость: 1. Размер: 43кб.

Часть текста: 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 me, while Mrs. Haze, a career girl at heart, sought some suitable job in the nearest city. Mrs. Haze had seen the whole situation very clearly: the bespectacled, round-backed Herr Humbert coming with his Central-European trunks to gather dust in his corner behind a heap of old books; the unloved ugly little...

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Cлово "DAWN"