EDNOTE. Reflections
on reading Montaigne in Saint-Petersburg:
Nabokov. "The cradle rocks above the abyss, and common sense tells us that
our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of
darkness."
Montaigne. "..why do we, from this instant which is
but a flash in the infinite course of an eternal night, and so short an
interuption of our perpetual and natural condition, death possessing all that
passed before and all the future of this moment, and also a good part of the
moment itself, derive the title of Being?"