Wednesday, February 7, 2007

'O pure, O beautiful.'

There, he imagines looking up "at the evening star, his favorite, applying to it simile after simile, finding nothing on his evening walk more beautiful. . . .

Suddenly it speaks:

"Foolish man! What are you excited about? I'm a world too, not like the one on which you live, but noisy and dark like yours. There is sorrow and coarseness here too--and if you want to know at this very moment one of my inhabitants--a poet like you--looks on that star you call 'Earth' and whispers to it: 'O pure, O beautiful.'

Victor Nabokov

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