Vladimir Nabokov. Lance : Клуб изучающих испанский языкVladimir Nabokov. Lance
Vladimir Nabokov. LANCE
y turn out to be dead deserts lacking even the milkweed that graces our dumps. Selenogra-phers will confirm this, but then, their lenses serve them better than ours do. In the present instance, the greater the magnification, the more the mottling of the planet's surface looks as if it were seen by a submerged swimmer peering up through semitranslucent water. And if certain connected markings resemble in a shadowy way the line-and- hole pattern of a Chinese-checkers board, let us consider them geometrical hallucinations.
I not only debar a too definite planet from any role in my story— from the role every dot and full stop should play in my story (which I see as a kind of celestial chart)