Les incipits : NABOKOV, Nabokov's Dozen.

Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull.
(Spring in Fialta)

In 1899, in the ponderous, comfortable padded St Petersburg of those days, a prominent cultural organization, the Society for the Advancement of Russian Literature, decided to honour in a grand way the memory of the poet Konstantin Perov, who had died half a century before at the ardent age of four-and-twenty.
(A Forgotten Poet)

In the early years of this century, a travel agency on Nevski Avenue displayed a three-foot long model of an oal-brown international sleeping car.
(First Love)

Fot the fourth time in many years they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to bring a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind.
(Signs and Symbols)

Meaning ?
(The Assistant Producer)

Luring aside ont of the trolley-car numbers, the street started at the corner of a crowded avenue.
(The Aurelian)

One of my representative — a modest, mild bachelor, very efficient — happened to win a pleasure trip at a charity ball given by Russian refugees.
(Cloud, Castle, Lake)

I happen to have a disreputable namesake, complete from nickname to surname, a man whom I have never seen in the flesh but whose vulgar personality I have benn able to deduce from his chance intrusions into the castle of my life.
(Conversation Piece, 1945)

Dear V.
('That in Aleppo Once...')

In the first floriferous days of convalenscence after a severe illness, which nobody, least of all the partient himself, expected a ninety-year-old organism to survive, I was admonished by my dear friends Norman and Nura Stone to prolong the lull in my scientific studies and relax in the midst of some innocent occupation such as brazzle or solitaire.
(Time and Ebb)

Some years ago Dr Frickle asked Lloyd and me a question that I shall try to answer now.
(Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster)

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.
(Mademoiselle O)

The name of the planet, presuming it has already received one, is immaterial.
(Lance)


Vladimir NABOKOV, Nabokov's Dozen. Thirteen stories, 1958.