EDITOR's NOTE. In answer to Laura De Risi's question below, there are now a bit over 600 subscribers. I encourage subscribers to submit relevant information about themselves and their interest in VN. Welcome to Ms De Risi.

This is to let you all know that a new subscriber has just joined the NABOKV-L list - it's "me"! I was so proud I'd been accepted I couldn't help sharing my enthusiasm with you (am I really bothering "hundreds of thousands of people", as the LISTSERV seems to suggest? How many of you there are?...)

I'm writing from Rome, Italy, which is where I live and was born. I'm pointing this out just because bi-(tri-)lingualism is what I have always been most interested in about Nabokov. My B.A. thesis (2 years ago) was entitled "Like a Candle Between Mirrors: Nabokov and His Reflected Languages." Not to mislead you about my age, I'll tell you that I attended an American College in Rome, the John Cabot University, as a mature student some 25 years after I got my first Italian graduation.

I've been working on Nabokov for quite a while. I'm currently writing an article about the mirroring of languages in his novels ("Intensified Reflection or Intentional Sham"?) for the next issue of an academic quarterly ("Letterature d'America" - I'll send you a summary if anyone is interested). Mirrors fascinate me as much in literature as in painting. Another article should be included in a 5-volume collection of essays about "Abito e identità." A more ambitious project of mine, finally, is about Nabokov and architecture ("The Untranslatable City"), but it's too early to tell you more.

I also do translations for a living (mostly architecture, which is the field I worked in for twenty years with my husband.) I wish some publisher would trust me with a literary translation English into Italian, but this seems never to materialize. I'll keep trying.