Word: byzantium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perhaps most startling to the unaccustomed Western eye is the extraordinary wooden architecture of the north. It is a land of forests, and its builders developed an unexcelled skill in fashioning wood. Confronted by the domes and cupolas imported from Byzantium, they adapted these masonry-based forms to an idiom of carpentry that produced a unique style, unmatchable and now un-copyable because it depends on a craftsmanship that no longer exists...
...Lenin Mausoleum, to plan the city's reconstruction, a program that has resulted in the restoration of many churches, including the lovely 14th century Church of the Savior of the Transfiguration. In its dome can be seen the divergence of the Russian from the Byzantine model. Finding Byzantium's semispherical dome ill-suited to the heavy snow of the north, the church's original architect replaced it with a bulbous cupola, which eventually developed into the characteristic onion shape. Russian architecture was on its way to finding its own style...
...particular charm and excitement of Russian architecture is its unity in diversity. The strangest flower of Byzantium, it represents a triumph of adaptation in bending an enormously sophisticated style to the harsh honesty of ordinary wood or the rugged realities of stone. It is unique. The outsider can be happy that the Soviet Union has finally come to treasure its Russian past...
...just a conversational pleasantry. Or is it? Who can ever be sure with Nabokov? Perhaps he has something more in mind. Devout Nabokov watchers might find clues in those references to Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory. They might see implications of the fall of Rome, the rise of Byzantium, and a consequent gap between East and West that makes comparisons impossible between Anglo-Saxon writers (Shakespeare) and Slavic writers (Nabokov...
...custom that will not devalue the cachet that Washington society has always attached to invitations embossed with the lion and unicorn of Britain. As a man who professes to enjoy most of all "lurking round the edges of politics," Ambassador Freeman is bound to find plenty of entertainment in Byzantium-on-the-Potomac...