Posts tagged "most"

Brady Campaign State Scorecards: Most States Have Weak Gun Laws

Washington, D.C. (Vocus) February 19, 2010

Most states have weak or non-existent gun laws, helping feed the illegal gun market and allowing the sale of guns without background checks including at gun shows, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Forty-three states fail to close the loophole that allows criminals to buy guns at gun shows without Brady background checks.

Scores range from the first-ever “zero,” earned by Utah, to 79 for California. The complete scorecard results can be accessed at bradycampaign.org.

“Most states, unfortunately, are doing very little to protect citizens from gun violence. Most states are allowing dangerous people to have easy access to guns,” said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Few states have laws addressing the critical issue of gun trafficking such as requiring background checks on all gun purchases at gun shows. The Brady Campaign is advocating for legislation to close the gun show loophole at the national level.

Many states with weak gun laws have a high percentage of crime guns recovered that were originally purchased within their own state. The Brady Campaign relates this “homegrown” gun violence to the lack of gun laws in many states and nationally.

“Since most states don’t require Brady criminal background checks on all firearms including those at gun shows, gun traffickers don’t need to leave their own state to funnel illegal guns to felons and gang members,” said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign. “Many state officials have done nothing in the past year, or before, to stop the flow of illegal guns within the state, including closing the gun show loophole that allows dangerous people to walk into gun shows and buy guns without background checks” Helmke said.

California maintained the top spot with the nation’s strongest gun laws. New Jersey maintained its number two ranking and jumped ten points (to 73 points) by passing legislation to stop bulk purchases of handguns.

The categories covered by 2009 Brady Campaign State Scorecards are as follows:

    States can earn up to 35 points by taking steps needed to “Curb Firearms Trafficking.” States can fully regulate the gun dealers within its borders, limit bulk purchases of handguns, provide police certain technology to identify crime guns, and require lost or stolen guns to be reported to the police.

    States can earn up to 27 points by “Strengthening Brady Background Checks.” This involves requiring universal background checks and requiring a comprehensive permit in order to purchase firearms. Short of universal background checks, states can also close the gun show loophole, at least requiring background checks for all gun show sales.

    States can earn up to 20 points by “Protecting Child Safety” when it comes to guns. States can require that only childproof handguns be sold within their borders, require child safety locks sold with each weapon, hold adults accountable for keeping guns away from kids and teens, and require gun purchasers to be at least 21 years of age.

    States can earn up to 10 points by “Banning Military-style Assault Weapons,” as well as banning high-capacity ammunition magazines.

    States can earn up to eight points by restricting most “Guns In Public Places” to trained law enforcement and security and “Preserve Local Control” over municipal gun laws. This includes keeping guns out of workplaces and college campuses, not forcing law enforcement to issue concealed handgun permits on demand and not preventing cities from passing their own gun laws.

We acknowledge the research of Legal Community Against Violence on state gun laws. Their publication, “Regulating Guns in America,” and website served as a basis for our analysis. For more information about Legal Community Against Violence, see lcav.org.

As the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Brady Campaign, with its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, works to enact and enforce sensible gun laws, regulations and public policies. The Brady Campaign is devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.

For continuing insight and comment on the gun issue, read Paul Helmke’s blog at bradycampaign.org/blog/. Visit the Brady Campaign website at bradycampaign.org.

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New World Order – Our Leaders Are Ready. Are You?

Spread the message of freedom and individual liberty by rating and commenting on this video, as well as reposting it.

Please visit the following sites for more information:

http://infowars.com

http://restoretherepublic.com

http://prisonplanet.tv

http://campaignforliberty.com

Starring:
George Bush
Henry Kissinger
Bill Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Gordon Brown

also starring:
Barack Obama

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson

Duration : 0:5:34

Read more…

Burundi most corrupt in EA

A new corruption report suggests that Burundi is the most corrupt country in the East Africa Community. In what might come as encouraging news, Kenya has been pushed to third place, after it was overtaken by Uganda.

Duration : 0:1:57

Read more…

How to Win Your Man Back in Order to Have a Making Up Relationship With You?

How to Win Your Man Back in order to have a making up relationship with you?

Did something go wrong between you and your man? If you were well on your way to being a happy couple and then fell off track somehow, don’t give up. You can win your man back.

Steps

Ask yourself these 4 questions: Is the matter important enough to warrant an argument? Is it appropriate to argue about the matter, or at this time? Can anything be changed, made different by prevailing in the argument? Is the issue worth arguing about? If you get a NO answer to any of these questions, there is no point in arguing. Sometimes realizing there is no benefit to arguing is enough to eliminate the temptation to argue. (A mnemonic for this is “not even worth talking to.”) No Use to Me.

Stop caring about how people perceive you. The fact is, it really doesn’t matter. It’s impossible to be yourself when you’re caught up in wondering “Do they think I’m funny? Does she think I’m fat? Do they think I’m stupid?” To be yourself, you’ve got to let go of these concerns and just let your behaviour flow, with only your consideration of others as a filter—not their consideration of you. Act like there is something more important you could be doing at the moment. Find something else to do or to care about: We care about things not by their absolute importance, but by their relative importance in our lives. If you find something else to take front stage in your life, then other things will naturally take the backstage.

Develop and express your individuality. Whether it’s your sense of style, or even your manner of speaking, if your preferred way of doing something strays from the mainstream, then be proud of it. Keep an emotional distance, too. Mentally take yourself out of the situation. Let it be somebody else’s problem. “That’s not my problem” I don’t know that’s not my problem?

Word Power: What you say and how you say it are two very important factors in exuding class. Always speak at a soft to moderate tone. A loud talker can seem too forceful and may make others feel intimidated. If you have nothing good to say then don’t say anything at all – take that to heart! Cursing is also inappropriate and is very unprofessional in a business setting. Speak calmly. This shows politeness. If you talk very loudly, it will seem that you’re desperate for attention.

Act as if the person bothering you was Non-Existent.

Never smile or laugh, this shows that you hear what the person is saying!!!

Behave. It’s fun to be in a party and dance a lot, but that’s not always classy behaviour. If you’re at a party, the classy behaviour is to socialize, but speak calmly, not monopolizing all the attention.

Smile. Classy people must always seem to be in a good mood.  Show life goes on to different shit. Smiling. Learn to recognize when a discussion is no longer a discussion, but is escalating to an argument: Raised voices, flushed face or neck, hairs on the back of your neck stand up, feeling defensive. A good mutual discussion involves both sides listening and attempting to understand each other. Walk away from it not worth the arguing energy, it becomes irrelevant.

Analyse what happened and think about the reasons you still care, then think about the reasons why you shouldn’t care!!!! Avoid desperate behaviour like the plague. This is the kiss of death for the classy person. Only desperate times call for desperate measures. Take a deep breath, be strong, and move through the situation with elegance and grace. You will be the victor for it, no matter the outcome. Try not to listen too much to the content of what they’re saying back to you. Remember, they’re TRYING to push your buttons. Show them your better than them and you really cud care less about it! Say “that’s the thing” I don’t Feel anything it doesn’t have a significant purpose, reason or effect, well to me at least. Your loud, unimportant and your sweating me, like your on my heels.

Take some time to reflect on your own life. What improvements can be made? Be honest with yourself. Have you been selfish? Demanding? Argumentative? Angry? Jealous? Change your ways. Once you’ve figured out what you may have done wrong in the relationship, resist the urge to call the ex and show off your newfound self-realization. Actions speak louder than words. Just BE the new improved self, and word will spread.

Look and feel your best. Get your nails and hair done. Take a nice warm bubble bath, and pick out a nice outfit. Be sure of yourself. Assertiveness and self-confidence are naturally attractive to most people. Showing your guy you’re capable of being happy is appealing and brings a natural desire.

Anger, hurt and insecurity are the root of most insults. If you hurt someone, even unintentionally, they may respond with angry insults. Also, insecure people tend to call attention to the shortcomings of others (even if untrue) in order to cover up for their own perceived inadequacies. Don’t retaliate.

Walk away. If you’ve tried to figure out why this person is targeting you, and can find no reason, tried to joke with them to no avail, and they’re still bent on humiliating and insulting you, just leave. And until they pick a new target (and they will), avoid them. Laugh while you walk away showing that it’s not important to you at all.

Tips

Don’t keep coming back and don’t wait by making yourself available to him. You have a life, so live it! Some one else is out there right now waiting for a person like you. Don’t let your emotions get to you, because then he’ll win. Any performance that he gives is to catch your attention. So just smile and act like it doesn’t bother you if you see him making out with another girl. If your best efforts to take the wind out of their sails fail, warn others to expect random insults from that person.

Don’t take it personally. Some people are just mean. Mean people suck and have no true motives that concern me and everyone knows it. It’s them its not you.

Don’t insult them back. It just adds fuel to the fire. Keep a too positive attitude through everything; it looks like you don’t care about the whole situation. Don’t pass negative comments about what the person is saying, because that shows that you do, indeed, care?

If you’re asked why the guy/girl is acting like that toward you, say honestly that you don’t know. Doesn’t trash talk them to anyone? In that way, they look like (what they probably are) a loony freak, and you look like an innocent, injured person. If you have trouble ignoring drama, imagine you’re sitting in an airplane taking off, watching the cars and buildings get smaller and smaller. You are that small. You’re actually smaller. Your problem is only in your head. Imagine how small your head is compared to one of those cars.

Think about why others might be judging you. What must their lives be like? Are they envious of you, or even attracted to you? They might just hate you. Never mind these people; get them completely out of your life. Smirking, acting superior or completely ignoring them is probably not a good idea. Again, react with humour, it usually works best. If the insulter is just being nasty, then you can ignore them. Whatever you do, don’t act like it matters. This will make others think that you are willing to work with them, destroying any chance of being able to not care. It takes two or more to argue. By politely refusing to argue, you stay out of it. Don’t give a damn. Occupy yourself with something you enjoy; if you have a phone or Nintendo DS, play a game or write a message to someone. If you like to do crossword puzzles, do some. Go ahead!

Jealous people will try to bring you down to their level. Don’t let them. Remember you’ve got a lot going for you Period! In order for this to work, you MUST remain calm, cool and collected. Determine some activities you’ll do to help you to remain calm: my music and things that matter like my purposes. Smile! Frowning or looking timid will only draw more “non confidence” towards you. Smile at everyone you know or other friendly looking people. Remember you have just as much right to walk around as any other person. If you want them to know you are relaxed and carefree, glance every now and then at their eyes. Remember that happiness is the key to value. Enjoy your life as much as you can and make the best out of every situation. If you are truly happy, then other people won’t be able to bring you down with their judgements.

Finding happiness is the definition of success in life. Remember that the whole point of this article is to show others you are proud of yourself, and you don’t care what people perceive you as. You will gain high respect for being yourself and not trying to attach yourself to a group. People want a reaction. If you ignore them, they will realize it’s no fun to taunt and make fun of you. Show them you don’t care, and they’ll get the message. There is a difference between maintaining your inner-self and making a “reputation” for yourself. You don’t want be tacky and loud, argrumentative and miserable “SHOW PEOPLE WHO YOU ARE”, if they don’t like it, then who cares. Don’t go try to change yourself because a few people disapprove. Just smile as you walk by and just think if they are mean to me maybe they do it to make themselves feel better which means they’re pretty unhappy and of poor character.

Make fun of yourself in a humble and witty way to acknowledge that you’re not perfect and you don’t care. Replace your worries about what other people think about you with a preoccupation over your own goals, achievements, and progress!!! You mean more to yourself than you mean to others, it doesn’t matter to you. Don’t speak or act submissively – show to others that you are a wild spirit and you roam this good old world with pride, and will do what you want whether they like it or not. Don’t respect someone’s OPINION if that person is unkind and doesn’t treat you with respect – they don’t deserve it. Don’t try to get back at people, which just sink you down to their level. Ignore people who THINK they know more than you. DONT LAUGH, practice not thinking about the thing that bothers you, and take the criticism and humiliation in that’s the key point, DONT OPPOSE AND DONT GET EVEN, THATS THE KEY TO NOT CARING.

Warnings

Don’t get revenge by cheating yourself. Never tell your friends that you are having problems with your man because they’ll just end up interfering! Don’t respond to the content of their remarks. The less you say, the less likely you are to get drawn into an argument. Is it important? Ummm am Still Pretty, I Got Bigger and Better and not even worth talking to. Beneath me, not even onnnnn my level to begin with.

If you become angry, know that you won’t be able to think calmly, and you’ll probably say or do something you might regret. Words, once spoken, can never be taken back. The point is to show that I really don’t care about you, your nothing to me and your unimportant!!!! It not logic. Won’t even give you the time of day shorty, you’re a Nobody and I don’t care!!! Make sure you stress that you don’t care…..

DON’T laugh. When you see this working, you may be tempted to smile or laugh at the excitement of finally finding something that works. Don’t do it. This’ll just irritate the person and make it worse. Wait until you’re alone, and then enjoy the moment. “Have a pleasant look and be like, it doesn’t matter, and that’s it don’t keep going on and on say it and mean it by looking oh so happy and pleasant about it. A classy person is simply one who consistently exhibits classy behaviour. Focus on your behaviour and attitude rather than your feelings.

Don’t lose yourself when you’re with other friends. Be yourself. Don’t be someone else so other people will like you because, in the end, you end up hurting other people and “losing yourself”.

Indeed, life is short. Don’t let another day go by without taking a chance on happiness. You will never know until you try, so remember to make a move today. It can change or affect the rest of your life, therefore, at the very least, you can try to come out something for your ex love partner during your weekend plans. With a little practice, perseverance and patience, I believe that your relationship could be enhanced with the tips that I have shared earlier. If you have faced any problems with your loved ones, do not hesitate to visit this piece of article again.

I really have a strong belief that if you can understand what I have explained and applied what you have learnt from this piece of article, your problems can be eventually solved and your making up relationship can become more stable and stronger. I wish all the best for your making up relationship with your partner. Do always remember to spread word of mouth to your fellow friends for supporting the decision of having making up than breaking up.

Watch a video that shows you exactly what you must NEVER do, what you should do to get your ex back and why at http://hubpages.com/hub/howshouldiwoomyexback

Alternatively, you can visit this website Win Your Ex Boyfriend Back Website.

You will also learn how to reverse the situation if you have already done those things that should NEVER be done.

dhlim88
http://www.articlesbase.com/dating-articles/how-to-win-your-man-back-in-order-to-have-a-making-up-relationship-with-you-591287.html

Gift Ideas for Corporate World

Giving gifts is an incomparable scheme, the goal of that is to bring a smile to the person who will receive the gift. In turn, it leaves a lasting impression on the person that tells how much you value Gifts for Men or a Gifts for Women. No wonder why people values the idea of giving and receiving gifts. In reality, gifts are symbols of one’s point of view and feelings towards the other person. They embody our family whenever we are away from our loved ones; our friends back home whenever we pass by the memories of yesteryears, and one’s treasured person when you are at the time of coldness. That is why people put so much value on the gifts that they give and receive because they know how special it is for the person who will receive it as it is for them. When giving gifts, it can either be formal or personal. Things may vary according to who will receive the gift. Usually, it is not difficult to buy a gift for your love ones or for your friends. Unfortunately, when it comes to giving gifts in your corporate circle like your boss, a colleague, or a business partner, careful considerations must be observed. At the same time you must employ some creative thinking in order to come up with a remarkable gift.

1. Gift Giving For The Corporate World
– In Hopes Of A Promotion – Sign Of Gratitude – Way Of Saying Thank You – Peace Offering – Clear Up A Misunderstanding – Offer In Good Faith For A Contract Agreement

2. Pay Attention To Details: When it comes to corporate gifts, you should not take it for granted. Every detail must be carefully laid out and must be delicately enhanced. For example, before presenting a corporate gift, be sure that it is undamaged and unspoiled in every detail. Moreover, when presenting or giving corporate gifts, it should fit the taste of the person who will receive it. That is why it is important to consider the taste of the person, the likes and dislikes, and whatever details that will describe his or her preferences.

3. Mugs: For corporate people who addicted to coffee, you can give them mugs of different varieties. You may purchase one from the well-known coffee shops or from those that they frequently hang out. These mugs come in different designs and styles that will truly fascinate your special someone, whether personally or professionally. You can also give them personalized mugs to give that special touch. You can have their pictures printed on the mug or a picture where both of you are included.

4. Crystal Items: For so many years now, crystals are known to exude sheer elegance and sophistication. So, when choosing a gift for your lady boss, it’s best that you give her any items that have crystals on it. The most typical and appropriate gift would be jewelries with various crystals on it. Crystals put a flattering remark on everyone’s good taste and wants; hence, it is best to give them something made of crystal so as to generate positive responses.

5. Scented Candles: These candles will produce the kind of aroma that could relax the senses thereby invigorating renewed spirit and personality. There are scented candles that help eliminate stress and anxieties. Also, scented candles come in creative designs, too. So, they can be creative displays on one’s table. So, it’s a great idea to give your corporate friends some scented candles.

6. Personalized Items: These are the ultimate corporate ideas that you can use when you need to give a gift to your boss or to your colleagues. Giving them personalized items will make them feel how much you value them by exerting such efforts in order to come up with an amusing item. For example, you can buy a clock then add some personal touches like replacing the numbers with colourful buttons.

Andy Steave
http://www.articlesbase.com/relationships-articles/gift-ideas-for-corporate-world-50169.html

Why is it so unpopular to oppose the increasing government tyranny in this country these days?

Also why is it unpopular to oppose large government these days?

About 1/3 of our country, and more than 2/3 of the media are encouraging the progressive agenda which results in more powerful govt and a more dependent electorate. Anyone who wants to keep the govt out of our lives as much as possible is attacked. Those who want the govt to redistribute wealth, provide the basic needs, and destroy the rich man have the most clout and get the most air time and they will attack anyone who believes in hard work, responsibility, and capitalism

Inconsistency Assertions 3624 or Error Message 7987 in Sql Server

SQL Server errors are not hostages of only the complex operations, but while the normal and usual operations like SELECT and UPDATE are attempted; several error messages may also be seen. The error messages, as mentioned below, indicate that the SQL database is suffering from some sort of inconsistencies, but, at the ultimate resort, can make you feel need of SQL repair. However, there are few assertion error messages, which may indicate inconsistencies in the database, such as:

Msg 3624

Location: recbase.cpp:SQLServerVersion

Expression: m_offBeginVar < m_SizeRec SPID: ProcessID

Process ID: SQLServerEXEProcessID

Msg 3624

Location: p:sqlntdbmsstorengdrsincluderecord.inl:SQLServerVersion

Expression: m_SizeRec > 0 && m_SizeRec <= MAXDATAROW SPID: ProcessID

Process ID: SQLServerEXEProcessID

Research shows that when the SQL Server application tries to read data from the data page, the mentioned assertions may be observed, during which an error log file is created which records the corresponding information. Now, as there were no clear indicatives about what has caused the error to occur, SQL 2000 Service Pack 4 has changed the scene in which the problematic assertions appeared. Now, these problems come in the form of the following error message:

Error: 7987, Severity: 22, State: 1 A possible database consistency problem has been detected on database ‘<dbname>’. DBCC CHECKDB and DBCC CHECKCATALOG should be run on database ‘<dbname>’.

Thus, as the stated error messages are occurring and some inconsistencies exist in the database, you need to have MDF repair by running the DBCC CHECKDB command and resolving the reported issues. However, if you come at the stage, when removal of errors is being hard and you have no database access due to the corruption, use third party SQL recovery applications and correct the issue.

MDF recovery software is a tool to scan, repair and restore the corrupted SQL database in the original view and content. They offer a definite SQL repair help in all the database corruption scenarios. For best cure, choose best help.

Stellar Phoenix SQL Recovery uses the most powerful scanning algorithms and repairs them effectively. With Phoenix SQL recovery treatment, you would find an interactive interface to work with and a consistent MDF repair mechanism. This MDF recovery application is found to be compatible with SQL Server 2000 and 2005.

Simpson Raid
http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recovery-articles/inconsistency-assertions-3624-or-error-message-7987-in-sql-server-711739.html

In Massachusetts, what is the difference between a Sheriff, State Police, and City Police Officer?

It’s my understanding their roles are very different in other parts of the country, especially rural areas.

I see people speeding without care past Sheriffs but a State Police officer sees them, they are getting pulled over.

What’s the deal here in the Bay State? Thanks!

It depends on the county.

In Mass the state police do have a bigger role than in most states.
For most. not al counties, they supply the manpower and expertise for smaller towns and unincorporated areas. In other states that is usually done by the local county sheriffs office.

Take Suffolk (Boston area) the Sheriff can enforce all laws but the cars you see are usually just doing civil process, that is serving subpoenas and evictions and such, not enforcement work.
The sheriff also handles all of the court services (bailiffs) and jails.

The east coast states tend to have a bunch of different law enforcement jurisdictions, stuff left over from common law and colonial law days.

“Unquenchable Russia”, or Forbidden Themes in Nabokov’s Prose

“…What I feel to be the real modern world is the world the artist creates, his own mirage, which becomes a new mir (“world” in Russian) by the very act of his shedding, as it were, the age he lives in” . Such an answer Nabokov once gave to an interviewer who was interested in his opinion regarding the modern world and contemporary politics. The book which contains this interview as well as many others, is entitled Strong Opinions, and, indeed, Nabokov is well-known not only for his brilliant fiction but for his original, independent and uncompromising views on creativity, art and the place of artist in the world. Whenever interviewed, he avoided discussion of “general ideas” such as social, political and moral issues and asserted that such global concerns lay outside the realm of art: “A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don’t give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth… There can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art . A work of art, for Nabokov, is a world in itself, brought to life by one’s creative imagination. It leads its own independent existence, unrelated to its historical surroundings and realities. In the introduction to his Lectures on Literature Nabokov explains once again: “…The real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction” . In this statement, visions of cosmic grandeur and an obvious reference to the story of Adam and Eve reflect a parallel between creator-artist and creator-God. In one of his interviews Nabokov explicitly brings out this comparison: “A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world” .

Nabokov’s position is, to a degree, a reaction to the situation in Soviet Russia, where demands of the state dominated the needs of a human being, where the individual was suppressed by the collective and details by generalities. He asserts once again the power and independence of personal creativity, the ability of one’s imagination to build worlds of its own, and makes a sharp distinction between a work of fiction and everything outside of it, including the personality of its creator. “Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both truth and art” .

Nabokov insisted on a specific approach to literature from the readers as well. He renounced the usual tendencies of identifying oneself with a book’s characters, searching for clues to the social and political realities of the time the work was written, or trying to form “general ideas” about a book without absorbing all its specific details. Emotional involvement, he pointed out, could also prevent the reader from objective appreciation of the work “…A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading” .

Nabokov avoided formulating his ideas under the famous slogan “art for art’s sake” just as he avoided labels of all kinds, but this well-known phrase can undoubtedly be used to describe his views and attitudes towards literature. In this hierarchy of values, aesthetic concerns dominate all others, and the influence of a great work of art on its reader is limited to a “tingle in the spine”. However, it remains to be seen, to what extent Nabokov’s ideas penetrate his own fiction; whether his novels are entirely a product of his creative imagination or a result of the deep personal experience that saturates them with great intensity.

Nabokov changed countries and languages during his creative life, and it is interesting to analyze whether these changes affected his books. Comparing two of Nabokov’s novels, The Gift, written in Russian mostly in Berlin of the 1930s, and Pale Fire, written in English at a much later date, can provide an insight into these questions.

As Nabokov mentioned in the foreword to The Gift, “the main heroine” of the novel is Russian literature, and the main character is a writer, an emigre author Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, who shares many autobiographical details with Nabokov. Like Nabokov during his post-Cambridge years, Fyodor lives in Berlin of the 1920s, writes poetry and makes a living by giving lessons in English and French. He leads, for the most part, a solitary existence, devoting his time first and foremost to literature. Happy childhood in St. Petersburg, love of butterflies and chess problems, synesthesia, – all this Fyodor has in common with Nabokov. Description of certain episodes mirrors incidents from Nabokov’s own life, depicted much later in his autobiographical book Speak, Memory, – for example, the story of a childhood illness: high fever, obsession with numbers and a huge Faber pencil, given as a gift by the mother.

Perhaps, the most significant trait that Fyodor shares with Nabokov is passionate love of literary language, faith in the power of the written word: “Since there were things he (Fyodor) wanted to express just as naturally as unrestrainedly as the lungs want to expand, hence words suitable for breathing ought to exist” . Fyodor reflects on his youthful interest in rhyme and meter, analyzing the very mechanisms by which words interact and fit together like pieces of a puzzle to form the harmonious whole of a poem. Fyodor shares Nabokov’s dislike of generalities such as social issues or psychiatry. When he briefly considers the possibility of fulfilling his acquaintance, Mme. Chernyshevski’s yet unvoiced request to write about her son, he explains his aversion to the idea as follows: “I would have become enmired involuntarily in a “deep” social-interest novel with a disgusting Freudian reek” .

Most clearly, Fyodor’s (and Nabokov’s) views on literature are expressed in Fyodor’s (imaginary) conversations with Koncheyev – a fellow emigre poet, the only one whose work he admires and whose opinions he considers valuable. When Fyodor and Koncheyev leave a literary gathering and walk together down the street, a unique, brilliant dialogue, filled with allusions to various works of Russian literature, takes place between them. “…There are only two kinds of books: bedside and wastebasket. Either I love a writer fervently, or throw him away entirely” , – declares Fyodor, and the two proceed to discuss what, in their opinion, is the best and the worst in the works by famous Russian writers. Both are utterly uninterested in “general ideas” or the moral significance of the writings they talk about (aspects which always attracted Russian critics and gained new importance in the Soviet period), and all they do is lovingly point out purely artistic findings of this or that writer. They praise Leskov’s Jesus – “the ghostly Galilean, cool and gentle, in a robe the color of ripening plum” or “the gray sheen of Mme. Odintsev’s black silks” in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Speaking of dismissed Dostoyevski, Fyodor notes: “In the Karamazovs, there is somewhere a circular mark left by a wet wine glass on an outdoor table”, – and that, for him, is the only thing “worth saving” . As for several writers known for their beautiful depictions of nature, Fyodor ruthlessly criticizes them for mistakes in their descriptions of natural phenomena: “My father used to find all kinds of howlers in Turgenev’s and Tolstoy’s hunting scenes and descriptions of nature, and as for the wretched Aksakov, let’s not even discuss his disgraceful blunders in this field” . All these statements obviously echo Nabokov’s own approach to literature, with his love of detail, his insistence on accurate knowledge of the natural world and dismissal of any other criteria in judging works of literature.

Nabokov’s belief in the power of deception and invention in creating fiction frequently finds expression in his attempts to mislead the reader, to establish this or that false move in the development of the plot, which, after a few pages, turns out to be an illusion, a figment of the character’s imagination. The whole exchange between Fyodor and Koncheyev proves to be such an illusion: “Whose business is it that actually we parted at the very first corner, and that I have been reciting a fictitious dialogue with myself as supplied by a self-teaching handbook of literary inspiration?” However, the significance of this non-existent conversation in the novel is not limited to expression of opinions on art and display of Nabokov’s mystification devices. It shows the extent of Fyodor’s loneliness, the absence of interlocutors with whom he could share his extensive knowledge of literature and love of language: the degree of detachment from the surrounding world. In his book Speak, Memory Nabokov describes the way native Europeans were perceived by Russian immigrants in Germany or France: “These aborigines were to the mind’s eye as flat and transparent as figures cut out of cellophane, and although we used their gadgets, applauded their clowns, picked their roadside plums and apples, no real communication, of the rich human sort so widespread in our own midst, existed between us and them” . The Gift recreates that atmosphere of cultural and human isolation in which Fyodor has to dwell. Deprived of his own cultural environment, Fyodor feels nothing but resentment towards the German-speaking world he is trapped in. “The Russian conviction that the German is in small numbers vulgar and in large numbers – unbearably vulgar was, he knew, a conviction unworthy of an artist” , – and still he cannot help it, as he directs all his irrational hatred at a German who pushes him in a bus (and who, ironically, turns out to be a Russian).

Like Nabokov, Fyodor is trilingual, but his French and English in his current situation serve a purely utilitarian purpose, whereas Russian remains the language of his soul and his art. Riding a bus to one of his tedious teaching jobs, Fyodor thinks of himself: “…there he is, a special, rare and as yet undescribed and unnamed variant of man, and he is occupied with God knows what, rushing from lesson to lesson, wasting his youth on a boring and empty task, on the mediocre teaching of foreign languages – when he has his own language, out of which he can make anything he likes – a midge, a mammoth, a thousand different clouds” . This is why there are hardly any examples of word play and language switch in The Gift.

On the way to yet another hateful lesson Fyodor becomes completely immersed in the memories of Russia and his past life there, – memories ”swift and senseless, visiting him like an attack of a fatal illness at any hour, in any place” . The warm, sunny vision of the Russian countryside after a short summer rain stands out in such a sharp contrast with the surrounding colorless reality and the upcoming encounter with a hopeless pupil, that Fyodor ends up skipping the lesson and going home to his writings. This is another theme expressed in The Gift with great emotional power – the theme of nostalgia, longing for the lost homeland. Whenever faced with the question about Russia during his interviews, Nabokov gave replies such as “all the Russia I need is always with me” or “exile means to an artist only one thing – the banning of his books” . Sometimes, however, he speaks of Russia quite differently: “In the first decade of our dwindling century, during trips with my family to Western Europe, I imagined, in bedtime reveries, what it would be like to become an exile who longed for a remote, sad and (right epithet coming) unquenchable Russia, under the eucalypti of exotic resorts. Lenin and his police nicely arranged the realization of that fantasy” .

References to Russia in Nabokov’s novels, particularly The Gift, bear a trace of an overwhelming and bitter sense of loss, coming, undoubtedly, from personal experience. Like Nabokov, Fyodor transforms his inner world into art, and his poetry, born out of childhood memories, justifies, as he says, the years spent in exile. But even creative fulfillment in literature cannot fully relieve Fyodor of his nostalgia, which sometimes becomes almost a physical sensation: “For a long time he had wanted to express somehow that it was in his feet that he had the feeling of Russia, that he could touch and recognize all of her with his soles, as a blind man feels with his palms” . Again and again, he imagines an impossible return to his familiar and changed country: “And when will we return to Russia? What idiotic sentimentality, what a rapacious groan must our innocent hope convey to people in Russia. But our nostalgia is not historical – only human- how can one explain this to them?” Immediately following these lines is one of Nabokov’s central thoughts expressed through the words of his character and given a somewhat ironic ending: “It is easier for me, of course, than for another to live outside Russia, because I know for certain that I shall return – first because I took away the keys to her, and secondly because, no matter when, in a hundred, two hundred years, I shall live there in my books – or at least in some researcher’s footnote. There; now you have a historical hope, a literary-historical one…”

In this passage, there are two distinct perspectives on Russia, two different ways of perception – that of an artist and that of a simple human being, and it is the more independent, proud and detached position of an artist that Nabokov prefers to present to the world. He always vigorously protested against being identified with his characters, and, perhaps, it was his way of concealing that part of himself, which contained his own human feelings and dreams, often painful, often helplessly irresolvable. Nevertheless, just like in one of Fyodor’s childhood memories colors leak into his vision of letters and irrevocably affect his perception of language, this private and forbidden world of Nabokov inevitably enters his fiction in various guises and through different characters. Besides the theme of nostalgia, there is another highly personal development of the plot in The Gift, and it is Fyodor’s relationship with his father. Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev is an explorer who is also very absorbed in his occupation and uninterested in the major upheavals that occur in Russia. In 1917, despite the troubled situation in Russia, he departs on one of his expeditions and never returns. It is another loss that haunts Fyodor: even though there is hardly any hope of seeing his father again, he keeps dreaming of his return, imagining that one day he would meet his father on the street, or hear a phone call… In one of the most poignant episodes in the novel, the phone rings, after all, in the middle of the night, and Fyodor rushes to the house of his former landlady along the streets of Berlin which suddenly become transformed into a beautiful, mysterious world somewhat reminiscent of St. Petersburg in a white night. Fyodor enters the room and sees his father. “With a moan and a sob Fyodor stepped toward him, and in the collective sensation of woolen jacket, big hands and the tender prickle of trimmed mustaches there swelled an ecstatically happy, living, enormous, paradisal warmth in which his icy heart melted and dissolved” . And again, almost unbearably this time, the whole scene turns out to be one of Nabokov’s false twists, and Fyodor wakes up from yet another dream to a cold and empty morning.

Nabokov denied a work of art any kind of “truth” aside from artistic one, but the episode with Fyodor’s father radiates with human truth: warmth, longing, vulnerability, the void of shattered hopes… One just has to remember the tragic death of Nabokov’s own father, to understand where all this is coming from.

In The Gift, covers are often transparent, and its hero is presented from multiple angles. He is not just a writer who “treats life as a possibility of fiction”, he is a human being who sees the world through the prism of his own experience, his own joys and sorrows.

The Gift was the last novel Nabokov wrote in Russian. In 1940, he immigrated to the United States and, since then, wrote his major works only in English. The change, as he said, was not easy: “My complete switch from Russian prose to English prose was exceedingly painful – like learning anew to handle things after losing seven or eight fingers in an explosion” . Pale Fire, one of Nabokov’s English novels, was written partially at the end of his stay in America, partially in Switzerland, where Nabokov spent his later years. The novel has important structural and thematic similarities to The Gift. Like The Gift, where a whole separate chapter is devoted to Fyodor’s biography of Chernyshevsky, a book on its own, Pale Fire contains a work of literature within it – a long poem written by an American poet John Shade. The rest of the novel is a commentary, which for the most part has nothing to do with the poem itself. It is an elaborate story of remote Zembla, whose king has been swept off the throne by the revolution and fled the country. Gradually, it becomes clear that Charles Kinbote, Shade’s neighbor and the author of the commentary, is himself the fugitive king. Therefore, as in The Gift, there is a theme of exile and a theme of creativity, though in Pale Fire they take quite a different development.

As Kinbote explains, “the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of “resemblers” . Zemblan language resembles several European languages at the same time. There are obvious traces of Russian in it, and some words are borrowed almost unchanged: for example, there is a picture of bogtyr (bogatyr’ in Russian) in a Zemblan history book, and there are “stone-faced, square-shouldered komizars” (Russian: commissar) maintaining order on Zemblan streets after the revolution. Besides, French and German can be vaguely discerned in other phrases. “Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty)” , – a Zemblan nurse says to Kinbote, and one hears, besides the Russian “alkat’” and, possibly, the English “pernicious”, “mon amie”, “Gott”, and the first person of the German “mochten”.

Nabokov in his interviews stressed that Zembla is not Russia, and, indeed, there is another Russia in the novel, a totalitarian state that contributes to the Zemblan revolution. Kinbote talks about “the tainted gold and the robot troops that a powerful police state from its vantage ground a few sea miles away was pouring into the Zemblan Revolution” . Kinbote’s constantly talks about Zembla, but his memories of it lack that depth of human feeling, which marks Fyodor’s nostalgia. Even though Kinbote repeats again and again “my Zembla”, “dazzling Zembla” , tenderness that shines through the best pages of The Gift, is missing from his story. It is essentially a story of himself and his escape from the country. For a king, Kinbote shows a remarkable lack of interest in the revolution that struck his country and the possible causes which led to it. He is more preoccupied with aesthetic and literary pleasures and calls the whole business of politics “a tiresome subject” . As for the revolution, all he can say about it is that it was “tedious and unnecessary” . In Kinbote’s attitude, there is some of Nabokov’s own indifference towards social and political issues. On the whole, the theme of exile is treated in the novel with certain coldness and detachment, but there are passages, which by their warmth and profound lyricism can be compared to The Gift. For example, Kinbote comments on his roommate who gets up early in morning and plants flowers with a very curious name: Heliotropium turgenevi. “This is the flower whose odor evokes with timeless intensity the dusk, and the garden bench, and a house of painted wood in a distant northern land” . Even aside from the reference to Turgenev, it is clear that this land, for Nabokov, is no other than Russia, – not the monstrous police state in the vicinity of Zembla, but the real, immortal, beloved Russia of Nabokov’s memory. And this short passage retains more emotional freshness and power than colorful descriptions of Zemblan mountains that have no counterpart in the author’s childhood recollections.

It seems that, to Kinbote, being in exile means not so much the loss of the homeland as the loss of his name and title (which he now has to hide), and thus partially the loss of his identity, and in this way his isolation and detachment is more complete than that of Fyodor in The Gift. One of the critics of Pale Fire interprets his behavior as follows: “…he is trying to get the poet John Shade to confirm his identity, to validate the Zemblan reality which is his hope of salvation by turning it into a poem” . With maniacal persistence Kinbote keeps talking with Shade about Zembla: “I mesmerized him with it, I saturated him with my vision, I pressed upon him, with a drunkard’s wild generosity, all that I was helpless myself to put into verse” . Kinbote calls his relationship with the poet “friendship”, but, in fact, he cannot care less about Shade as a human being with his own hopes and sorrows. While commenting on the poem, he utterly neglects the parts about Shade’s wife and daughter. Sybil Shade, who protects her husband from his neighbor’s intrusions, for Kinbote, is just as annoying obstacle in the way, and to him, the tender lines that Shade devotes to his wife are nothing but “embarrassing intimacies” . Kinbote haughtily deals with the theme of Shade’s daughter, Hazel’s, suicide, obviously a very painful and personal subject for the poet, as if it was merely a stylistic device: “The whole thing strikes me as too labored and long, especially since the synchronization device has been already worked to death by Flaubert and Joyce” . When Kinbote feels lonely and afraid in his empty house, he wishes that Shade had a heart attack, – just to have an excuse to come over and escape loneliness and fear. At the end of the novel, when Shade has been mistakenly shot by the assassin, his “friend” is in no hurry to call for help: instead, he rushes to hide the poem, which, he thinks, contains the story of his own life.

In comparison to Kinbote, John Shade appears to be a much more appealing character, and he possesses some traits that bring more human warmth into his image: he can be lazy, he likes hearty meals, brandy and wine; he loves his wife and daughter and is generally more tolerant towards people who are not as bright and talented as he is. Nabokov gives his character some of his most cherished thoughts. For example, Shade, who is also a teacher of literature, expresses his views on teaching: “First of all, dismiss ideas, and social background, and get the freshman to shiver, to get drunk on the poetry of Hamlet or Lear, to read with his spine and not with his skull” . However, since Shade’s personality is seen in the novel only through Kinbote’s uncaring eyes, his inner world is more or less concealed from the reader. It is only through Shade’s poem that one can glimpse into the questions, which preoccupy the poet. The poem, on the whole, is a painful, difficult search for meaning, an attempt to make sense of the whole puzzle of human life and death, to find a way of transcending one’s mortality. No human thought or emotion can relieve one from being trapped in one’s own finite world. Everything fails except art: art for its own sake, art that contains a unique, perfectly harmonized inner reality, which can be perceived as a reflection of a greater pattern:

I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part,

Of my existence, only through my art,

In terms of combinational delight…

“Combinational delight”, indeed, is important not only in Shade’s poem but in the whole novel. As in The Gift, artistic detail is a focus of concentration in Pale Fire, but here attention is focused on an even subtler level where language itself is analyzed. Pale Fire is an example of extremely dense prose where individual words are more than just carriers of meaning: they become, in a way, themselves a subject of the novel. One of Shade’s warmest images of his family together is a memory of the evenings when both he and Sybil helped their daughter to understand really obscure words from her English textbook. A difference of one letter in the words “mountain” and “fountain” becomes crucial in the story of Shade’s attempt to penetrate the mystery of the hereafter. The book is filled with examples of word play, often involving several languages, and references to numerous works of literature (some of which are likely to be Nabokov’s own inventions). In Shade’s poem, there are such peculiar combinations as: “Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept all is allowed” , which is a mixture of Alyosha Karamazov, Raskol’nikov, and, perhaps, Italian painter Fra Angelico with his intensely spiritual religious art. But nobody in the novel is more involved in digging into words than Kinbote. He is constantly preoccupied with deciphering literary allusions, musing over interplay of words, meanings, rhymes and sounds. Nabokov mentioned in his lectures that a dictionary should be a necessary attribute of a good reader, and, ironically, Kinbote, who can hardly be called a good reader, dutifully follows the lines of Shade’s masterpiece with his dictionary. For the most part, he is obsessively searching references to Zembla and his own life story in the poem, but sometimes he simply takes aesthetic pleasure in certain lines of it:

“Lines 131-132: I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by feigned remoteness in the windowpane.

The exquisite melody of the two lines opening the poem is picked up here. The repetition of that long-drawn note is saved from monotony by the subtle variation in line 132 where the assonance between its second word and the rhyme gives the ear a kind of languorous pleasure as would the echo of some half-remembered sorrowful song…” Shade’s commentator genuinely enjoys the magic of words, and so does Nabokov, whose multilingualism, artistic sense and incomparable mastery of language found full expression in the creation of the truly marvelous poem, as well as other parts of the novel.

Perhaps, the refined world of literature allows Kinbote a way of escape from his troubled personal reality, and so it does for Shade, and, to a degree, for Fyodor in The Gift, and, ultimately, for Nabokov. In his commentary, Kinbote recounts an episode when someone in the presence of Shade tells a story of a mad railroad worker, who “thought he was God and began redirecting the trains”. “That (“mad”) is the wrong word”, – he (Shade) said. – “One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention” . Still, comparison of Nabokov’s novels shows that the most “brilliant invention” becomes truly alive only if the light of one’s own human experience, however “drab and unhappy”, illuminates it from within. In Pale Fire the walls sheltering Nabokov’s private world of memory and feeling are thicker than in The Gift, and the novel follows more closely Nabokov’s ideas of art as elegant deception, an entirely invented world which should be approached on aesthetic rather than emotional grounds. This is the major difference between Pale Fire and The Gift.

Time is likely to be one of the factors behind this change: Pale Fire was written almost twenty years later than The Gift, as greater and greater distance separated Nabokov from his Russian past with which he had stronger emotional bond than with the years spent abroad. Another important factor is, probably, language. Nabokov was very proud of his English works and repeatedly called himself an American writer, but sometimes he provided his readers with unexpected revelations such as: “My private tragedy, which cannot, indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural language, my natural idiom, my rich, infinitely rich and docile Russian tongue, for a second-rate brand of English” . In another interview, when asked which language he considered the most beautiful, Nabokov replied: “My head says English, my heart, Russian, my ear, French” . It is possible to say that for him Russian conveyed emotional power, while English had more of an intellectual appeal, and this is one of the reasons why Pale Fire, written in English, appeals to the brain more than it does to feelings.

One of the most striking confessions that bridges Nabokov’s inner world with his public self exists in a poem. An Evening of Russian Poetry, written in English in 1945, is a rhymed presentation of a public lecture which Nabokov gives to an audience of American students, predominantly female. Russian poetry is the theme of the lecture, but Nabokov approaches it in the way typical for him: he does not talk about schools, trends and periods. Again, he speaks of letters, shapes, individual intricate details, and hidden tenderness shines through his words, staying invisible for his listeners. They ask him questions about his favorite trees and stones, echoing that insensitive critic from The Gift, whose “discussion of Koncheyev’s book boiled down to his answering for the author a kind of implied questionnaire (Your favorite flower? Favorite hero? Which virtue do you prize most?)” In Nabokov’s discussion of Pushkin and Nekrasov everything merges and melts together: the sky and the grass, the beauty of verse and human feeling, – and inevitable theme of exile. Nabokov speaks of memories, saying openly: “I must remind you in conclusion that I am followed everywhere and that space is collapsible” . His private tragedy is lost on his young listeners, whose innocent inquiry prompts what becomes the most remarkable ending of a poem:

How would you say “delightful talk” in Russian?

How would you say “good night”?

Oh, that would be:

Bessonnitza, tvoy vzor oonyl i strashen;

lubov moya, otstoopnika prostee.

(Insomnia, your stare is dull and ashen,

my love, forgive me this apostasy.)

All of Nabokov’s carefully hidden private world that, he insists, “cannot, indeed should not, be anybody’s concern”, is suddenly revealed in these poignant lines: long nights, loneliness, the feeling of guilt over abandoning one’s language and nostalgia for inaccessible, unforgettable, “unquenchable Russia”.

Bibliography

1). Kernan, Alvin B. “Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in Nabokov’s Pale Fire”. Vladimir Nabokov (Modern Critical Views). Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 101-125.

2). ???????, ????????. ???. ??????: ??????, 1990.

3). Nabokov, Vladimir. The Gift. New York: Capricorn Books, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970.

4). —. Lectures on Literature. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1982.

5). —. Pale Fire. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993.

6). —. Poems and Problems. McGraw-Hill International, Inc. 1970.

7). —. Speak, Memory. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993.

8). —. Strong Opinions. McGraw-Hill International, Inc. 1973.

Elena Koutcherova
http://www.articlesbase.com/fiction-articles/unquenchable-russia-or-forbidden-themes-in-nabokovs-prose-204030.html

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