The recollection of children playing among other games hide and seek on Vladimir’s name-day and forgetting about Peter who was still hiding and therefore missed the picnic he was looking forward to is from VN’s short story “A Bad Day” (Obida, 1931) included in Details of a Sunset & Other Stories.
AB
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Jansy
Sent: zondag 28 april 2013 16:42
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Minor points: Surnames and name days
Jansy Mello: Your writing now follows Nabokov's stride in a way and so does Carolyn's spray of associations, inspite of their unexpected aims.
I'm glad that SES posted your reply to her query. Pnin is Timofey. Saint Vladimir's day is on July 15. Nabokov describes famous birthday parties, the most memorable are Ada's picnics in Ardis. I don't remember VN's own childhood festivities but I seem to recollect a cousin's when the kids played hide and seek and forgot all about him. Rejection, boredom and loneliness is also a part of any idyllic childhood, its dark contours perhaps.
btw, inspite of innumerous inspired angles and photography, or the play inside the play blending fictional reality and its representation, I disliked enormously the recent production of Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright. The real world of a novelist, at least its intelligibility, gains consistency by details (caress them) and I missed them all, inspite of all the luxurious lamps and trinkets.
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