“History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain.”
Nabokov, Pale Fire, p. 173 (1962)
Also: Did not know this about Nabokov: Vladimir's son Dimitri, aiming to become an opera star, had his debut in a 1961 production of La Bohème in Milan, a production which also featured another young rising opera star named Luciano Pavarotti!
From the Foreword:
“Immediately after my dear friend’s death [the poet John Francis Shade] I prevailed on his distraught widow to forelay and defeat the commercial passions and academic intrigues that were bound to come swirling around her husband’ manuscript … by signing an agreement to the effect that he had turned over the manuscript to me … “
Very similar to what happened with Tolstoy, as depicted in the movie The Last Station. Terrific movie, worth seeing if you haven't already.
BTW, this interest of yours seems to have a touch of wistfulness about it.
I often disagree with you, but I do hope everything's OK with the rest of your life. I'm not trying to get personal here, maybe my woman's intuition is all screwed up or on overdrive.
Mind you, I haven't read all 999 lines of that poem …
Hah! No nothing so remarkable. I'm on March Break right now — I continued on my plans despite our Parliamentarians — and simply catching up on some non-work reading and noting, as I come across them, some particularly well-formed phrases ..
Okey dokey. Everything's copacetic, I'm glad to hear. We can return to arguing when your break's over. Enjoy.