She Was Like Marat Only With Nobody

The Commentator May Be Excused For Repeating What He Has Stressed In His Own Books And Lectures, Namely That "offensive" Is Frequently But A Synonym For "unusual;" And A Great Work Of Art Is Of Course Always Original, And Thus By Its Very Nature Should Come More Or Less As A Shocking Surprise.

My Mind Speaks English, My Heart Speaks Russian, And My Ear Prefers French.

Imagination Without Knowledge Leads No Farther Than The Back Yard Of Primitive Art, The Child's Scrawl On The Fence, And The Crank's Message In The Market Place. Art Is Never Simple.

It Is Certainly Not Then-not In Dreams- But When One Is Wide Awake, At Moments Of Robust Joy And Achievement, On The Highest Terrace Of Consciousness, That Mortality Has A Chance To Peer Beyond Its Own Limits, From The Mast, From The Past And Its Castle Tower. And Although Nothing Much Can Be Seen Through The Mist, There Is Somehow The Blissful Feeling That One Is Looking In The Right Direction.

My Private Tragedy, Which Cannot, And Indeed Should Not, Be Anybody's Concern, Is That I Had To Abandon My Natural Idiom, My Untrammeled, Rich, And Infinitely Docile Russian Tongue For A Second-rate Brand Of English, Devoid Of Any Of Those Apparatuses–the Baffling Mirror, The Black Velvet Backdrop, The Implied Associations And Traditions–which The Native Illusionist, Frac-tails Flying, Can Magically Use To Transcend The Heritage In His Own Way.