I selected one of the last paragraphs: "In Chekhov's
stories, Gorky felt, "everything is strange, lonely, motionless, helpless. The
horizon, blue and empty, melts into the pale sky, and its breath is terribly
cold upon the earth, which is covered with frozen mud." As for
Nabokov, Chekhov wrote "the way one person relates to another
the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a
slightly subdued voice." And many others — Virginia Woolf, Faulkner,
John Gardner — acknowledged the Russian master who had made mood the predominant
vehicle of conveying emotion, who said everything by leaving out more than he
put in. And so in that faraway winter, as over the last month, the slim volume
proved the truth of V.S. Pritchett's words that the real short story is
"something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing."
Nabokov's sentence about Chekhov offers us something about Nabokov
himself ( slow, important and uninterrupted self-revelation, softly
narrated). There is a word that was sufficiently ambiguous to make me stop and
wonder: " one person relates to another". He is describing not only the obvious
meaning of " a person narrates to another" but the secondary sense
in "relates", i.e, establishes a connection that becomes as important
as what is being conveyed btween the two participants.
Pritchett's words also demanded attention because a "glimpse from the
corner of the eye" is not always "a passing glimpse".
Again, spealists are invited to correct me, but I remember that our eye
uses various areas to register photo-sensations. The most sensitive
receptors are situated almost at "the corner of the eye". When there are
too many stars taking part of a clear night, to better be able to
watch a single one, the astronomer has to look at it in a slightly
out-of-focus way, to put into operation the more sensitive receptors.
Those that will discern "a real short story" among many often
brilliant others.