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Fwd: Re: Appropriate VN wedding text?
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How about the following passage from Speak Memory, page 297 in the Vintage
edition?
"When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me,
unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of
something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation
of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch
itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of
the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his
position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all
time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its
mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation,
ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and
thought within a finite existence."
As a non-Nabokov suggestion, I must say that Donne's "The Good-Morrow" is
perfect for a wedding reading.
Patricia Pierson
> From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> Reply-To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 18:45:42 -0700
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Appropriate VN wedding text?
>
>
> A friend of mine has do a reading at a wedding. She has trawled through most
> of English literature for something suitable, but hasn't found anything that
> is just right - something general about the nature of love or the meeting of
> hearts and minds, etc. Is there anything that springs to mind in Nabokov
> that could perhaps be deemed suitable for such an occasion? The text needn't
> be more than half a page or so.
>
> TA Colquhoun
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----
edition?
"When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me,
unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of
something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation
of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch
itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of
the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his
position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all
time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its
mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation,
ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and
thought within a finite existence."
As a non-Nabokov suggestion, I must say that Donne's "The Good-Morrow" is
perfect for a wedding reading.
Patricia Pierson
> From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> Reply-To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 18:45:42 -0700
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Appropriate VN wedding text?
>
>
> A friend of mine has do a reading at a wedding. She has trawled through most
> of English literature for something suitable, but hasn't found anything that
> is just right - something general about the nature of love or the meeting of
> hearts and minds, etc. Is there anything that springs to mind in Nabokov
> that could perhaps be deemed suitable for such an occasion? The text needn't
> be more than half a page or so.
>
> TA Colquhoun
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----