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

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Часть текста: mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart ona roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face… that look I cannot exactly describe… an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of 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...

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Часть текста: 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 sensitivity. Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradisea paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flamesbut still a paradise. The able psychiatrist who studies my caseand whom by now Dr. Humbert has plunged, I...

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Часть текста: that such honest promiscuity suggested (two young couples merrily swapping mates or a child shamming sleep to earwitness primal sonorities) made me bolder, and every now and then I would take a bed-and-cot or twin-bed 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...

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Часть текста: I hope our audience won't mind my using notes. My exploration of time's prison as described in the first chapter of Speak, Memory was only a stylistic device meant to introduce my subject. Memory often presents a life broken into episodes, more or less 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 stupidest person in the world is an all-round genius compared to the cleverest computer. How we learn to imagine and express things is a riddle with premises impossible to express and a solution impossible to imagine. In your acute scrutiny of your past, can ...

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Часть текста: person’s creed, wheresoever one places one’s faith, in river spirits, the Great Mother, a desert bush, crucified shepherds, or a bald and paunchy wise man sitting serenely under a Bo tree, an afterlife is humanly impossible to disbelieve. Even avowed atheists, I suspect, know, intuitively, implicitly, that there is something more. Whether or not there is Bog with a capital B, the possibility that human existence, with its stomach-sucking abyss of laughter and tears, tea leaves and tree bark, fleeting smiles and fleecy clouds, ineffable bliss and inconsolable despair, ends, once and for all, merely as a consequence of the sudden cessation of a small series of mechanical events (beating heart, expanding lungs) is purely and simply unthinkable--in the literal sense of that term. As a late friend of mine liked to say when confronted by a particularly short-sighted variety of seize-the-day hedonist: Life is not a dress rehearsal, true; but neither is it the final act. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a confession to make: since beginning this book, I have been haunted. By this I do not mean obsessed by my subject, nor beguiled by a dim whiff of literary fame, nor even the victim of an id?e fixe . I...

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Часть текста: 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 ...

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Часть текста: of his story. The next day I told him that my aunt had recently died, that we had never been close, that there was residual ill will between us over a trifling incident involving her adolescent grandson, my nephew, many years ago, and that I sorely wished to contact her. He looked at me strangely, suspecting, I think, a joke, but surrendered the name of his friend in Omaha without asking any questions. Discretion is a rare thing indeed. I called the professor of French, who confirmed the red scarf story and enthusiatically provided Madame Fat’s address. She had moved to Lincoln, whither I betook myself the following morning by car. (For those readers keen on fatidic dates, I note that this was the 2nd of July.) Nowadays I drive a powerful white Volvo station wagon, and the trip from Cedarn to Lincoln, pleasantly free from state troopers and jack-knifed semis, was effected beneath cloudless skies in under five hours. In keeping with her name, and contrary to the description I had received of her as frailly skeletal, Madame Fat was fat. When she answered her door, this fact created a burst of cognitive dissonance that momentarily struck me dumb: I would have had no problem referring to a bony Asian lady as Madame Fat to her face, but calling a fat woman Fat strayed well beyond the bounds of my personal sense of decorum. I quickly began considering a series of alternative pronunciations, Faht, Fate, Fuht, when she beamed at me and said: “You Doktah Keenbote! Come een, come een, welcome!” Her speech was a weird blend of...

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Часть текста: библиографы. Мои открытия, мои интересы, мои особые острова бесконечно недоступны раздраженным читателям. Точно также никогда не уступал я безудержному желанию поблагодарить благосклонного критика — или хотя бы намеком показать тому или иному дружески настроенному писателю, что смутно догадываюсь о его ко мне участливом отношении и понимании, которое каким-то невероятным образом, похоже, всегда соответствовало его таланту и оригинальности — интересный, хотя не такой уж необъяснимый феномен. Если, однако, случается, что под прицелом враждебной критики оказываются не акты художества, а такой прозаичный труд, как мой комментированный перевод «Евгения Онегина» (именуемый далее ЕО), — это иное дело. В отличие от моих романов ЕО имеет этическую сторону, а также моральную и человеческую. Речь идет о порядочности или непорядочности компилятора, его профессиональной квалификации или небрежности. Если мне говорят, что я плохой поэт, я отвечаю улыбкой; но если говорят, что я неважный литературовед, я не стесняюсь в выражениях. Не думаю, что я собрал все рецензии, появившиеся в печати после публикации ЕО; несколько отзывов, которые я наверняка держал в руках во время хаотичного ознакомления со всем этим материалом, мне не удалось обнаружить; но судя по тем многочисленным откликам, что у меня есть, можно заключить, что...

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Часть текста: from recent scholarly labors, to "get on with it." (Incidentally, the sea softly plashing against the sandy edge of this charming townlet is, at noon, a deep azure hue, recalling a certain lake in my homeland, a distant northern land. And at night, I have noticed on my insomniac rambles, the moon casts slivers of silvery light upon the ink-black waters. Do remind me to say more of this later.) The original contract for this book (signed three years ago with a then noticeably more solicitous publisher whose name I am legally bound not to mention) stipulated that the text be comprised not only of biography proper (of which the reader has already enjoyed, I trust, a taste) but also of criticism of each of Nabokov's books. In lieu of any sensible reason not to proceed in any but a chronological, or pseudo-chronological, fashion, I turn now to Korol', dama, valet , 2 a novel quite different from Mashen'ka , strangely lacking in luster, which a 28-year-old Sirin began in July of 1927 and a 29-year-old Sirin completed in June of the following year, not very far from here, I'm told. The plot, though banal, perhaps bears repeating. A brooding, not unattractive boy named Frants arrives in a large German city--manifestly Berlin though unnamed in the book--with the hope that his maternal uncle, a wealthy speculator and businessman who owns, among other things, a large department store, will assist him in making his fortune. Dreyer's callous wife, Marta, manages to seduce and ensnare the poor lad and subsequently convince him that the sole obstacle to their conjoined and connubial bliss is her husband and that he, the husband, should be done away with as quickly as possible. Much of the book revolves around their miserable affair and the plan to kill...

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Часть текста: два способа, с помощью которых отдельные буквы языка (и звуки, которые они представляют) могут приобретать самостоятельный смысл. Благодаря врожденным психологическим ассоциациям (цвет, фактура и т. д.) или визуальному сходству (V — летящая птица), алфавитные символы обретают прямое значение вне набора условностей, которые осуществляют посредничество между звуком и смыслом. Только в рамках конвенций, известных как английский и русский языки, слова «dog» и «собака» обозначают одно и то же животное. В языке семиотики связь между знаком (буквой, звуком, словом) и означаемым (смыслом) произвольна. Синестезия и иконизм — два способа соединения этого разрыва. В какой-то степени средство общения становится сообщением, хотя надо подчеркнуть, что уровень коммуникации, возможный благодаря таким явлениям, неизбежно останется весьма примитивным. Эти явления играют подчиненную роль, хотя на эстетическом уровне они эффективны. Синестетические и иконические значения привязываются к отдельным буквам и не могут «складываться». Вспомнив набоковское английское слово-«радугу» KZPSYGV, мы можем убедиться, что из таких образований не получаются «настоящие» слова. Мы попадаем в мир настоящего языка лишь тогда, когда связь между символом и смыслом условна. В предыдущей главе мы рассматривали значение буквы в произведениях Набокова. Сейчас мы перейдем от мира буквы к миру слова, где сходятся звук и смысл. С точки зрения здравого смысла считается, что слово отражает мир, что значение слова, или реальность — первична, а само слово —...

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Cлово "WISE"