From the author: Several years ago, after reading four of Nabokov’s novels from the American period in a brilliant translation by Sergei Ilyin (“The True Life of Sebastian Knight,” “Pnin,” “Bend Sinister” and “Pale Fire”), I thought about one very topical problem. Is it possible, even having mastered a foreign language perfectly, preferring it to one’s native one for reasons of personal or (as one would like to think in the case of Nabokov) creative nature, to create a harmonious and invulnerable text that is the bearer of the great secret - two secrets - of human speech? Harmonious and invulnerable, that is, designed for losses in the event of possible translation into another language and at the same time not allowing such losses. A kind of “bilingual”, a werewolf, casting a double shadow on the two continents of the planet. The translation I mentioned (I repeat: brilliant) seemed to speak in favor of this possibility. The entire thick, transparent, viscous film of Nabokov’s Russian prose, which so reliably hid the weak bodies of his youthful novels from picky eyes, was transferred by the Russian master to a product whose existence in the future its first creator could not help but be concerned about when setting up his risky experiment. Ilyin’s translations are so organic that they may arouse suspicion of a hoax in an uninformed reader. Was there Ilyin? Isn't his last name too simple? Didn't Nabokov himself translate his last novels for future use? Isn’t he the author of the most detailed comments and the compiler of the “dictionary of foreign terms” attached to the publication of translations of three more “Russian” - plot - novels? But already in “Pale Fire,” having said goodbye to Russia alive and trying to resurrect it in the form of an international, genderless idol, he seems to grab himself by the hand: I didn’t write this! I am only a commentator and partly a translator. It’s a terrible confession, if you think about it.