The last line from the story, “Spring in Fialta”:
But the stone was as warm as flesh, and suddenly I understood something I had been seeing without understanding–why a piece of tinfoil had sparkled so on the pavement, why the gleam of a glass had trembled on a tablecloth, why the sea was ashimmer: somehow, by imperceptible degrees, the white sky above Fialta had got saturated with sunshine, and now it was sun-pervaded throughout, and this brimming white radiance grew broader and broader, all dissolved in it, all vanished, all passed, and I stood on the station platform of Mlech with a freshly bought newspaper, which told me that the yellow car I had seen under the plane trees had suffered a crash beyond Fialta, having run at full speed in to a truck of a traveling circus entering the town, a crash from which Ferdinand and his friend, those invulnerable rogues, those salamanders of fate, those basilisks of good fortune, had escaped with local and temporary injury to their scales, while Nina, in spite of her long-standing, faithful imitation of them, had turned out after all to be mortal.
Sorry to be so lax with the posting, friends, but I am writing other things. But this, I wanted to share.
One Response
October 16th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I read Lolita some time ago - while on a crusade of sorts to read some of the “famous” books. The thing that struck me most was how society - and therefore our reaction - had changed to the story.
The passage above is fantastic…
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