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Владимир Набоков: The original of Laura

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Владимир Набоков The original of Laura

The original of Laura: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five--the Russian novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books--has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative--dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality--affords us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.

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Sophrosyne, a platonic term for ideal self-control stemming from man's rational core.

DN: CHAPTER SEVEN

I was enjoying a petit-beurre with my noon time tea when the droll configuration of that particular biscuit's margins set into motion a train of thought that may have occurred to the reader even before it occurred to me. He knows already how much T disliked my toes. An ingrown nail on one foot and a corn on the other were now pestering me. Would it not be a brilliant move, thought I, to get rid of my toes by sacrificing them to an experiment that only cowardliness kept postponing? I had always restored, on my mental blackboard, the symbols of deleted organs before backing out of my trance. Scientific curiosity and plain logic demanded I prove to myself that if I left the flawed line alone, its flaw would be reflected in the condition of this or that part of my body. I dipped a last petit-beurre in my tea, swallowed the sweet mush and resolutely started to work on my wretched flesh.

Testing a discovery and finding it correct can be a great satisfaction but it can be also a great shock mixed with all the torments of rivalry and ignoble envy. I know at least two such rivals of mine — you, Curson, and you, Croydon — who will clap their claws like crabs in boiling water. Now when it is the discoverer himself who tests his discovery and finds that it works he will feel a torrent of pride and purity that will cause him actually to pity Prof. Curson and pet Dr. Croydon (whom I see Mr. West has demolished in a recent paper). We arc above petty revenge. On a hot Sunday afternoon, in my empty house — Flora and Cora being somewhere in bed with their boyfriends — I started the crucial test. The fine base of my chalk white "I" was erased and left erased when I decided to break my hypnotrance. The extermination of my ten toes had been accompanied with the usual volupty. I was lying on a mattress in my bath, with the strong beam of my shaving lamp trained on my feet. When I opened my eyes, I saw at once that my toes were intact. After swallowing my disappointment I scrambled out of the tub, landed on the tiled floor and fell on my face. To my intense joy I could not stand properly because my ten toes were in a stale of indescribable numbness. They looked all right, though perhaps a little paler than usual, but all sensation had been slashed away by a razor of ice. I palpated warily the hallux and the four other digits of my right foot, then of my left one and all was rubber and rot. The immediate setting-in of decay was especially-sensational. I crept on all fours into the adjacent bedroom and with infinite effort into my bed. The rest was mere cleaning-up. In the course of the night I teased off the shriveled white flesh and contemplated with utmost delight

I know my feet smelled despite daily baths, but this reek was something special.

That test — though admittedly a trivial affair — confirmed me in the belief that I was working in the right direction and that (unless some hideous wound or excruciating sickness joined the merry pallbearers) the process of dying by auto-dissolution afforded the greatest ecstasy known to man.

I expected to see at best the length of each foot greatly reduced with its distal edge neatly transformed into the semblance of the end of a bread loaf without any trace of toes. At worst I was ready to face an anatomical preparation often bare phalanges sticking out of my feet like a skeleton's claws. Actually all I saw was the familiar rows of digits.

MEDICAL INTERMEZZO

"Install yourself," said the youngish suntanned, cheerful Dr. Aupert, indicating, openheartedly an armchair at the north rim of his desk, and proceeded to explain the necessity of a surgical intervention. He showed A.N.D. one of the dark grim urograms that had been taken of A.N.D.'s rear anatomy. The globular shadow of an adenoma eclipsed the greater part of the whitish bladder. This benign tumor had been growing on the prostate for some fifteen years and was now as many times its size. The unfortunate gland with the great gray parasite clinging to it could and should be removed at once. "And if I refuse? said A.N.D. "Then, one of these days[…"]


[Provisional ending]

Miss Ure, this is the Ms of my last chapter which you will, please, type out in three copies — I need the additional one for prepub in Bud, or some other magazine. Several years ago, when I was still working at the Horloge Institute of Neurology, a silly female interviewer introduced me in a silly radio series ("Modern Eccentrics") as a gentle oriental sage, founder of the manuscript in longhand of Wild's last chapter, which at the time of his fatal heart attack, ten blocks away, his typist, Sue U, had not had time to tackle because of urgent work for another employer, was deftly plucked from her hand by that other fellow to find a place of publication more permanent than Bud or Root. Winny Carr, waiting for her train on the station platform of Sex, a delightful Swiss resort lamed for its crimson plums, noticed her old friend Flora on a bench near the bookstall with a paperback in her lap. This was the soft cover copy of Laura issued virtually at the same time as its stouter and comelier hardback edition. She had just bought it at the station bookstall, and in answer to Winny's jocular remark ("hope you'll enjoy the story of your life") said she doubted if she could force herself to start reading it. Oh you must! said Winny. It is, of course, fictionalized and all that, but you'll come face to face with yourself at every corner. And there's your wonderful death. Let me show you your wonderful death. Damn, here's my train. Are we going together? "I'm not going anywhere. I'm expecting somebody. Nothing very exciting. Please let me have my book."

"Oh, but I simply must find that passage for you. It's not quite at the end. You'll scream with laughter. It's the craziest death in the world." "You'll miss your train," said Flora.


###

that shall keep it free from any interruption, tired eyes. Such as hypnagogic gargoyles or the entoplic swarms of a vertical line chalked against a plum-tinged darkness over one's collection of coins or insects.

-----------


a [?] or a little skeleton but that [?]


This goes with the self-destruction. In this very special self-hypnotic state there can be no question of getting out of touch with oneself and floating into a normal sleep (unless you are very tired at the start). To break the trance all you do is to restore in every chalk-bright detail the simple picture of yourself, a stylized skeleton on your mental blackboard. One should remember, however, that the divine delight in destroying, say, one's breastbone should not be indulged in. Enjoy the destruction, but do not linger over your own ruins lest you develop an incurable illness or die before you are ready to die.

The delight of getting under an ingrown toenail with sharp scissors and snipping off the offending corner affords the added ecstasy of finding beneath it an amber abscess whose blood flows, carrying away the ignoble pain. But with age I could not bend any longer toward my feet and was ashamed to present them to a pedicure.

[Last Chapter]

[Miss Ure, this is the MS of my last chapter which you will, please, type out in three copies — I need the additional one for prepub in Bud — or some other magazine.] Several years ago, when I was still working at the Horloge Institute of Neurology, a silly female interviewer introduced me in a silly radio series ("Modern Eccentrics") as a gentle oriental sage, founder of the manuscript in longhand of Wild's last chapter, which at the time of his fatal heart attack, ten blocks away, his typist, Sue U, had not had the time to tackle because of urgent work for another employer, was deftly plucked from her hand by that other fellow to find a place of publication more permanent than Bud or Root.

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