" I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art.  I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author  - the joys and difficulties of creation..."

 

If Pale Fire needs a key, that will do (here I go again J).

 

To Jerry: There is more then one VN’s quote that one can apply to the slippery topic of problems and solutions. None of the writers mentioned (Orwell, Chernishevsky, Dostoyevsky) sounded as predicable to their contemporaries as they appear to us. On the opposite they surprised the early readers, which is how they survived the first wave of time. VN surprises too. It is the style, the method of surprise that is so different. Isn’t Dar about comparing two methods of art, of life (Chernishevsky vs. Godunov)? Anyone is free to look for and find the keys, of course, but if we are not careful, there is a risk of making VN sound like a musical box, which he is not: Here is that Jekyl, here is that Hyde, this sit is empty who’s in for a ride?

 

- George