Never Forgotten

"Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest
passions known to man." ---V. Nabokov

 "Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death
 should not be an even greater one."
     --- V. Nabokov

Literary interlude: An Evening of Russian Poetry

Vladimir Nabokov. An Evening of Russian Poetry

'…seems to be the best train. Miss Ethel Winter of the Department of English will meet you at the station and…'

From a letter addressed to the visiting speaker



The subject chosen for tonight's discussion
Is everywhere, though often incomplete:
when their basaltic bank become too steep,
most rivers use a kind of rapid Russian,
and so do children talking in their sleep.
My little helper at the magic lantern,
insert that slide and let the colored beam
project my name or any such-like phantom
in Slavic characters upon the screen.
The other way, the other way. I thank you.

On mellow hills the Greek, as you remember,
fashioned his alphabet from cranes in flight;
his arrows crossed the sunset, then the night.
Our simple skyline and a taste for timber,
The influence of hives and conifers,
reshaped the arrows and the borrowed birds.


Here's the complete text.