Vladimir Nabokov. En memoria de L. I. Shigaev : Клуб изучающих испанский языкVladimir Nabokov. En memoria de L. I. Shigaev
Vladimir Nabokov. IN MEMORY OF L. I. SHIGAEV
as nature. If the talk did happen to turn, say, to poetry, his contribution would be limited to a statement like "No, say what you will, but Lermontov is somehow closer to us than Pushkin." And when I pestered him to quote even a single line of Lermontov, he made an obvious effort to recall something out of Rubinstein's opera The Demon, or else answered, "Haven't reread him in a long while, 'all these are deeds of bygone days,' and, anyway, my dear Victor, just let me alone." Incidentally, he did not realize that he was quoting from Pushkin's Ruslan and Ludmila.
In the summer, on Sundays, he would invariably go on a trip out of town. He knew the outskirts of Berlin i