JK off-List to JM: "You
have Vladimir Vladimirovich write "sliver of light ...." Actually,
Nabokov wrote "a brief crack of light" [...] Nabokov doesn't
exactly refer to "twin eternities"-- but rather places the emphasis in
my opinion on the darkness of those (and this is important)
'identical twins.' Nabokov starts his memoir with
conventional symbols of hopelessness and the rest of the book works against that
notion."
JM: A pertinent observation ( the correct quote
is: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense
tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities
of darkness.”*) and an enriching commentary about Nabokov's stylistic
combat between hopelessness and
another state.
I muddled my intended reference - probably
because the initial clarity of this image disappeared as
soon as it was recalled in proximity to other
- only apparently similar - observations, such as Van Veen's
belief that "our awareness of being
is not a dot in eternity, but a slit, a fissure, a chasm running along the
entire breadth of metaphysical time, bisecting it and shining — no matter how
narrowly — between the back panel and fore panel" and
the earlier conclusion about "the actual
existence of a permanently moving bright fissure (the point of perception),
between our retrospective eternity which we cannot recall and the prospective
one which we cannot know”
[BS,306 - The Library of
America,1996]
...............................................................................................................................................................
* A related SIGHTING from the Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_Crack_of_Light
):
A Brief Crack of Light, is the forthcoming thirteenth studio album
by the band Therapy?, and the third album to be released on Blast Records, part
of The Global Music Group family. It was originally scheduled to be released in
October 2011...but is now expected to be released on February 6, 2012. The album
will be preceded by a single (Living in the Shadow of a Terrible Thing) on
January 23, 2012, a video of which was filmed in November 2011...Produced by
Adam Sinclair & Andy Cairns, the album's title comes from Vladimir
Nabokov, who describes life as "A brief crack of light between two eternities of
darkness".