Word: themesâ
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...Russians at Tannenberg. The Russian commander, General Alexander Samsonov (an actual historical figure), walks through the dense Prussian forests with the remnants of his staff. "He had only wanted what was good," writes Solzhenitsyn, "but it all turned out extremely badly." This is one of the novelist's principal themes???that good intentions are not enough to make the world a better place...
...that freedom was Pale Fire. Spectacularly unread, it made no concessions to popular tastes while proving that a genius can write a brilliant novel consisting of a 999-line poem and scholarly comment on it. The book is a wintry, touching parable concerning two of Nabokov's persistent themes???the feeling of being unloved and the horror of willfully inflicted pain. Pale Fire elicited the high-water mark of Nabokov's critical acceptance. Perhaps the most perfect tribute came from Mary McCarthy, a critic rarely given to generosity or overstatemeat: this work, "half poem, half prose," she wrote...
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