Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0001086, Mon, 8 Apr 1996 11:47:55 -0700

Subject
VN & Petersburg TV (fwd)
Date
Body
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EDITOR's NOTE. A Moscow correpondent, Sergey B. Ilyin
<isb@glas.apc.org>, reports the following item from April 3.
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Today (April3?) on Petersburg TV there was a half-hour program entitled
"Look at the Harlequins." The commentator was the prominent Nabokov
specialist (and grandson of the writer Alexei Tolstoy), Ivan Tolstoy, who
had previously distinguished himself in a 1989 article in "AVRORA,"
reporting that Nabokov had time translate all of his own English works
into Russian." The commentator remarked that the Nabokov house at
Rozhdestveno had burned down on the 10th of April 1995 (Nabokov's birthday
according to the pre-Revolutionary calendar), as if in fulfillment of
Nabokov's wish that "nothing (at least nothing material) should remain."
At this point, the commentator, having mentioned LATH!, called it "GLANCE
(vzgliani) AT THE HARLEQUINS! and asserted that "the heroine of the novel,
Countess Bredova, had with this very phrase soothed the prankish and
frolicsome hero. The commentator's remarks alternated with the boundings
of two dancers, a man in tights with diamond-shaped patchs and carrying
sparklers, and a maiden in a tight bodystocking (identified in the credits
as "Columbine-Lolita") amidst the burned out walls of Rozhdestveno. The
inevitable inescapable butterfly and a flaming chessboard were also
present.