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

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Часть текста: little street presented a peculiar sight. A big black glossy Packard had climbed Miss Opposite’s sloping lawn at an angle from the sidewalk (where a tartan laprobe had dropped in a heap), and stood there, shining in the sun, its doors open like wings, its front wheels deep in evergreen shrubbery. To the anatomical right 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 ...

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Часть текста: States. In New York I eagerly accepted the soft job fate offered me: it consisted mainly of thinking up and editing perfume ads. I welcomed its desultory character and pseudoliterary aspects, attending to 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 understand) the...

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Часть текста: 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...

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Часть текста: that revision and successive drafts are superfluous: the tale can be extruded in a single, extremely long, growing ever longer, parti-colored stream, like the endless rope of silk handkerchiefs a conjuror extracts with mock amazement from his black satin sleeve, or, for that matter, from the mouth of a compliant, if somewhat sheepish, volunteer. But Nabokov's death still comes as an unpleasant shock, an absurdly anomalous element at the end of the series, as if the final section of the streamer were not one last, particularly colorful piece of silk, but a live worm, a rotting plum, or some other equally strange bit of inexplicable detritus. Thank you, Madam, you may return to your seat. That Nabokov did not die of natural causes is only now beginning to be publicly acknowledged. His "mysterious" death, variously attributed to a fall, a viral infection, pneumonia, or mundane cardiac arrest, is now known to have been caused, or at least hastened along, by a special, nearly untraceable poison whose unpronounceable name I will not reveal here for fear that some unbalanced individual bearing a grudge against a family member, former love, noisy neighbor, or Department Head 1 might seek it out. The substance is readily available. It is odorless, flavorless, and difficult to...

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Часть текста: английском языке. Novel, 1970 г. Novel [1970] During a visit in the last week of August, 1970, Alfred Appel interviewed me again. The result was printed, from our careful jottings, in the spring, 1971, issue of Novel, A Forum on Fiction, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. In the twelve 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...

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Часть текста: of life. «Цели такого исследования состоят не в том, чтобы методами психологии анализировать литературный материал, но в том, чтобы методами филологии анализировать то психологическое явление, которое описано литературным материалом» (“The purposes of such studies are not to use the psychological methods for the literary analysis, but to use the literary methods in order to analyze the psychological phenomenon, which is described in the literary text”) [20, с.9]. These studies are interdisciplinary, for they are situated on the boundaries of different academic fields, such as physiology, medicine, philosophy, psychology, literary and cultural studies, and semiotics. V.M.Kovalzon, The Doctor of Biology and a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, defines the process of sleeping as “...особое генетически детерминированное состояние организма человека и других теплокровных животных (т.е. млекопитающих и птиц), характеризующееся закономерной последовательной сменой определенных полиграфических картин в виде циклов, фаз и стадий» (“.a special, genetically determined state of the human body and the body of other warm-blooded animals (mammals and birds), which is characterized by the logical succession of certain multi-graphic pictures in the form of cycles, phases and stages” ) [6, с.311]. The process of sleeping is inevitably accompanied by the phases of dreams, which some scholars describe as the period of paradoxical sleeping. According to J.M. Lotman, a dream is «семиотическое зеркало, и каждый видит в нем отражение своего языка» (“.a semiotic mirror, and everyone beholds in it the reflection of his or her own language”) [9, с.124]. V. N. Toporov, while chronologically cataloguing literary dreams from the texts of I. S....

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Часть текста: perfectly recalled. Do you see any themes working through from one episode to another? Everyone can sort out convenient patterns of related themes in the past development of his life. Here again I had to provide pegs and echoes when furnishing my reception halls. Is the strongest tie between men this common captivity in time? Let us not generalize. The common captivity in time is felt differently by different people, and some people may not feel it at all. Generalizations are full of loopholes and traps. I know elderly men for whom "time" only means "timepiece." What distinguishes us from animals? Being aware of being aware of being. In other words, if I not only know that I am but also know that I know it, then I belong to the human species. All the rest follows-- the glory of thought, poetry, a vision of the universe. In that respect, the gap between ape and man is immeasurably greater than the one between amoeba and ape. The difference between an ape's memory and human memory is the difference between an ampersand and the British Museum library. Judging from your own awakening consciousness as a child, do you think that the capacity to use language, syntax, relate ideas, is something we learn from adults, as if we were computers being programed, or do we begin to use a unique, built-in capability of our own-- call it imagination? The...

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Часть текста: to dissemble; diversely to repeat the same; try gravely 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 rapture, while he left them without regret, hardly remembering their love and spite. 8 Exactly thus does an indifferent guest drive up for evening whist: sits down; then, when the game is over, he drives off from the place, 12 at home falls peacefully asleep, and in the...

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Часть текста: на самом деле. Если не так, требует, чтобы прочли другой рассказ — правдивый. Оставим такой подход к книгам детям и юношеству. Разумеется, если вам скажут, что г-н Смит видел, как мимо него просвистело синее блюдце с зеленым рулевым, тут спросить, правдив ли рассказ, необходимо, поскольку его достоверность так или иначе повлияет на всю вашу жизнь, непосредственно вас затронет совершенно практическим образом. Но не спрашивайте, правда ли то, что написано в романе или стихотворении. Не будем себя дурачить; будем помнить, что никакого практического значения литература не имеет в принципе — за исключением того совершенно особого случая, когда человек собирается стать преподавателем литературы. Девушки Эммы Бовари никогда не было; книга «Госпожа Бовари» пребудет вовеки. Книги живут дольше девушек. В книге присутствует тема адюльтера и есть ситуации и намеки, которые шокировали ханжеское, мещанское правительство Наполеона III. Более того, роман преследовался по суду за непристойность. Можете себе представить? Как будто произведение художника бывает непристойно. Рад сообщить, что Флобер выиграл дело. Случилось это ровно сто лет назад. А в наши дни, в наше время… Но не будем отвлекаться. Рассматривать роман мы будем так, как желал бы этого Флобер: с точки зрения структур (он называл их mouvements), тематических линий, стиля, поэзии, персонажей. В романе тридцать пять глав, в каждой около десяти страниц, ...

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Часть текста: seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident “what d’you think you are doing?” was all I got for my pains. To the wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she wouldinvariably, with icy precisionplump for the former. There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. Did I mention the name of that milk bar I visited a moment ago? It was, of all things, The Frigid Queen. Smiling a little sadly, I dubbed her My Frigid Princess. She did not see the wistful joke. Oh, d not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impressin that I did not manage to be happy. Readeer must understand that in the possession and thralldom of a nymphet the enchanted traveler stands, as it were, beyond happiness. For there is no other bliss on earth comparable to that of fondling a nymphet. It is hors concours , that bliss, it belongs to another class, another plane of...

Поиск по творчеству и критикеCлово "GROWING"

Поиск по творчеству и критике
Cлово "GROWING"