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HOME 2003-01-24
A Reading of St. Peterburg (1913) B. 12.21.74 / D. 1.18.75 The End Just finished reading this novel by Andrey Biely (a pseudonym) that I picked up a few years ago at a used bookstore near (just not) the Strand. In pencil, a (or the) previous reader�s notation informs me that it once took a month (bookended by Saturdays) to read. It�s (obviously) a winter book. Sample (by moonlight): The sky was clearing; an island roof flashed in a stream of silver. The Neva was seething. The siren of a late steamer wailed desperately, and the receding eye of a lantern glowed; the Embankment stretched away; above the yellow, gray, tawny-red box-like houses, above the gray columns, the tawny-red rococo and baroque palaces, loomed the somber walls of an enormous church, with its gold dome thrust sharply into the world of the moon: St. Isaac�s. And the Admiralty pierced the sky like an arrow. (p.230) January 1975, a month of penciling unobtrusive lines under vocabulary book words (fastidious phylloxera raucous pastiche diurnal insolvent moribund recalcitrant splayed) for a purpose undisclosed; (strange: stertorous and stertorously in the next chapter; no dictionary. . .or what was being waited for?) maybe the words were to take to a party on January 18th (Collette�s birthday. . .another pseudonym!) where a special someone, being expected, would you'd hope and pray be found; someone with a love of words to sit beside and woo, perchance to pre-safe-sexually seduce (through the lorgnette, in between the roulades, behind the tabouret). Consolation Site: Watch out!
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