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мог бы стоять — но нет, он там не стоит
Berberova has supplied the dissolved epigraph for Nabokov
studies... or at least a frequent point of discursive depature.
In fact, one could make a case that the best books are composed of
epigraphs too thoroughly dissolved to permit reconstruction. The
words
and themes swim about, but a single syntax eludes the reader. With
some
books, it isn't clear whether a term of negation is or is not part
of the
epigraph. With other books (i.e. Chevengur), the glue that would
bind the
lexical elements is radically insufficient.
Eric Naiman