|
7d063ec
|
Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged ve..
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
ff0cac6
|
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
9ef8479
|
He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
d0bdd6e
|
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
df97603
|
In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
7a685a0
|
Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entranas. Pecado mio, alma mia. Lo-li-ta: la punta de la lengua emprende un viaje de tres pasos paladar abajo hasta apoyarse, en el tercero, en el borde de los dientes. Lo. Li. Ta. Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la manana, cuando estaba derecha, con su metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura, sobre un pie enfundado en un calcetin. Era Lola cuando llevaba puestos los pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolo..
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
977681c
|
Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
3d8f2f2
|
The fire you rubbed left its brand on the most vulnerable, most vicious and tender point of my body. Now I have to pay for your rasping the red rash too strongly, too soon, as charred wood has to pay for burning. When I remain without your caresses, I lose all control of my nerves, nothing exists any more than the ecstasy of friction, the abiding effect of your sting, of your delicious poison.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
8b0c6a5
|
It was love at first touch rather than at first sight, for I had met her several times before without experiencing any special emotions; but one night as I was seeing her home, something quaint she had said made me stoop with a laugh and lightly kiss her on the hair - and of course we all know of that blinding blast which is caused by merely picking up a small doll from the floor of a carefully abandoned house: the soldier involved hears no..
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
29296ca
|
Lolita: Oh my Carmen, my little Carmen... Humbert: Charmin' Carmen. Started garglin' Lolita: I remember those sultry nights Humbert: Those pre-raphaelites Lolita: No, come on. And the stars and the cars and the bars and the barmen. Humbert: And the bars that sparkled and the cars that parkled...And the curs that barkled and the birds that larkled. Lolita: And oh my charmin, our dreadful fights Humbert: Such dreadful blights Lolita: And the ..
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
920b053
|
If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed...
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
3133071
|
If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
c14af0c
|
a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
9bd1cc2
|
I'm thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art, And this is the only immortality that you and I may share, my Lolita.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
8a19d67
|
I want you to leave your incidental Dick, and this awful hole, and come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
927d386
|
There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
bdc7b5e
|
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
9ed3579
|
Running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight
|
|
youth
wild
girls
running
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
622d1ad
|
Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
87b10bf
|
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
abb839f
|
She had spent all her life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone save her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
4aa1f83
|
The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled those displays of grouped elbow chairs on show, and beds, and lamps, and inglebooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle in the soft light of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
afd7fdb
|
We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port. With Dickens we expand. It seems to me that Jane Austen's fiction had been a charming re-arrangement of old-fashioned values. In the case of Dickens, the values are n..
|
|
nabokov
literary-fiction
lectures
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
42e3733
|
a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one's watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
682966d
|
one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and ..
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
2091054
|
I cannot help feeling there is something essentially wrong about love. Friends may quarrel or drift apart, close relations too, but there is not this pang, this pathos, this fatality which clings to love. Friendship never has that doomed look. Why, what is the matter? I have not stopped loving you, but because I cannot go on kissing your dim dear face, we must part, we must part.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
d35fd11
|
While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
eeebc79
|
A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
65482d5
|
My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered an..
|
|
metaphor
mothers
memory
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
2257cb6
|
I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
364bbb9
|
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
9caba65
|
memory can restore to life everything except smells, although nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
f1f40ae
|
Have you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and ar..
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
09cfb5b
|
The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
a2b5c59
|
El me destrozo el corazon. Tu destrozaste mi vida.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
487a0e6
|
in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
b1e10db
|
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais!
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
c380717
|
Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
59027b0
|
She might be a little introverted, livelier of movement than of conversation, neither bashful nor forward, with a soul that seemed submerged, but in a radiant moistness. Opalescent on the surface but translucent in her depths...
|
|
radiant
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
402c620
|
I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies - every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.
|
|
riddles
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
61bc061
|
Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
5cc1de3
|
But that mimosa grove-the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since-until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
21a1e5f
|
I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me.
|
|
lolita
girl
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
3269548
|
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
|
|
|
Vladimir Nabokov |