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Re: BIRTHDAY: Returning to the party
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Susan Elizabeth Sweeney: Nabokov says, at the close of Chapter 8 of Speak, Memory, "I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past. [ ] the same faculty of impassioned commemoration, of ceaseless return, that makes me always approach that banquet table from the outside, from the depth of the park--not from the house--as if the mind, in order to go back thither, had to do so with the silent steps of a prodigal, faint with excitement." [ ] This is the opening of one of my favorite passages in Nabokov's memoir -- where one particular memory, presented as a silent film, comes to life with the addition of sound, culminating in "the confused and enthusiastic hullabaloo of bathing young villagers [who remain unseen], like a background of wild applause." I love the way the movement of the remembered faces (and later even their "mute lips serenely moving in forgotten speech") shifts to the dappled patterning of light and shade (a favorite motif of Nabokov's) and, best of all, the mental tiptoeing of the narrator as he retraces, as quietly as possible, the steps that will lead him back.
Jansy Mello: Indeed! "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" ( this is a line that carries me over to John Shade's, only to show how wrong my association had been ), retrieving past confessions and hilarious parlor games, as Walter Miale's revived chicken. Or recovering G.M. Hopkins' pied beauty* ( I think Nabokov only mentions this Jesuit poet's name once, in "Lolita", but I often cannot avoid springing the two together, with more success than it happens with Elizabeth Browning's poem ).
Beth and her baloons have lighted my day, thanks!
One question, though. After I read Nabokov's "with the silent steps of a prodigal," I looked it up in Speak,Memory searching for a misprint, because the absence of "son" after "prodigal" surprised me - unless Nabokov was all the time speaking from the perspective of the biblical son on his way back home.
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*"Glory be to God for dappled things- / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; / Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; / Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough; / And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim."
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Jansy Mello: Indeed! "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" ( this is a line that carries me over to John Shade's, only to show how wrong my association had been ), retrieving past confessions and hilarious parlor games, as Walter Miale's revived chicken. Or recovering G.M. Hopkins' pied beauty* ( I think Nabokov only mentions this Jesuit poet's name once, in "Lolita", but I often cannot avoid springing the two together, with more success than it happens with Elizabeth Browning's poem ).
Beth and her baloons have lighted my day, thanks!
One question, though. After I read Nabokov's "with the silent steps of a prodigal," I looked it up in Speak,Memory searching for a misprint, because the absence of "son" after "prodigal" surprised me - unless Nabokov was all the time speaking from the perspective of the biblical son on his way back home.
..............................................................................................................................................
*"Glory be to God for dappled things- / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; / Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; / Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough; / And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/