Saturday, June 11, 2011

Canadian entrepreneur or excerpt from Nabokov's "Lolita"

A couple weeks ago, I had a dinner with one pretty successful Canadian/Albertan entrepreneur. Nowadays, he is investing into various projects all over the country, but before he was a farmer, on the farm which was selling its production to Procter&Gamble. This man, Jim, was born and raised on the farm, hard-working person, good-looking man, in good physical shape, 50-60 years old. We had pretty good conversation about random staff, then we started talking about English and Russian literature. I mentioned one of the greatest Russian writers - Vladimir Nabokov and his book "Lolita", that he first wrote it in English (because English, French and Russian - all three languages in which he was very fluent). Then Nabokov translated this book into Russian. I asked Jim if he knew this author and his great novel. For my great surprise, Jim not only knew this author, he also thought that he was one of the most talented writers of 20th century. But the most amazing was when Jim repeated, word-by-word, the excerpt - beginning of "Lolita", he knew it by heart, "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta". At the end, he added that he thinks that this was the beautiful beginning of the novel ever. That is why I like Canada - the country where, everyday, I meet people from different countries and with various backgrounds, people which ready to share interesting and sometimes surprising stories.