Nabokov wrote his translation to inspire his reader to know the poem in Russian:It is hoped that my readers will be moved to learn Pushkin’s language and go through EO again without this crib. In art as in science there is no delight without the detail, and it is on details that I have tried to fix the reader’s attention. Let me repeat that unless these are thoroughly understood and remembered, all “general ideas” (so easily acquired, so profitably resold) must necessarily remain but worn passports allowing their bearers short cuts from one area of ignorance to another.

An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification.