Planets like racehorses

Vladmir Nabokov, “La Veneziana.” In The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1997).

From Nabokov’s note on the story:

“La Veneziana” (Venetsianka) was written mainly in September 1924; the manuscript is dated October 5 of that year. The story remained unpublished and untranslated until the current collections, becoming the title story for the French and Italian volumes. The recently completed English version was printed separately in a special edition celebrating the sixtieth birthday of Penguin, England, in 1995.

This passage, from page ninety of this volume, is the most Nabokovian passage I’ve hit on thus far.

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