"because the tears rolling down the faces were too big and too slow." [from Look at the Harlequins] It's interesting this, because in the novel "The Gift," I forget which page now, Fyodor parodies what sounds as if it were a description of the Eisenstein film "The Battle Ship Potemkim" using almost these same words about the fat tears sliding slowly down the faces--maybe I misidentified the film in that book. By the way it's fun to compare Nabokov's different references over time. In the Gift, during the dream conversation between Fyodor and Konchaeyev at the end of chapter one, discussing Nabokov, Fyodor says that there is one good image from "The Brothers Karamazov," an image of wet stain from a glass on tabletop. In Nabokov's "lecture on Russian Literature," when he trashes Dostoyevsky, he uses this very image, saying it's a paltry stage prop, supplying the scene with just the few items necessary to make them go and nothing which might make them live and breathe.