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Re: QUERY: Source for Nabokov passage from love letter
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Hello,
Is this the passage you were referring to?
"Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love ? from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter ? to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time." (/Speak, Memory/, 296)A similar notion is encountered in a letter to Elizabeth Marinel Allan and Marussa Marinel (25 August 1940):
"We fervently hope that you may move to this country. We too have a feeling of interplanetary remoteness, some ungodly distance separating us from the dearest and most precious of friends." (/Selected Letters/, 33)Hope this helps,
Didier Machu
NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU> a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to find a passage that I read in a Nabokov book, however I only
> have the very vaguest recollection of it. The clues I can remember are:
>
> - I'm almost certain it was the end of a love letter
> - It used the sun rising or setting, or perhaps the turning of the earth, as
> a device to illustrate the distance between the letter-writer and his love.
> - I'm also pretty sure that Martin Amis used it somewhere, either putting
> the words into one of his own characters or quoting it in some critical work.
>
> I know there is almost nothing to go on, but maybe someone will recognize
> what I'm talking about.
>
> thank you,
>
> Paul Nulty
>
> 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/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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/
Is this the passage you were referring to?
"Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love ? from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter ? to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time." (/Speak, Memory/, 296)A similar notion is encountered in a letter to Elizabeth Marinel Allan and Marussa Marinel (25 August 1940):
"We fervently hope that you may move to this country. We too have a feeling of interplanetary remoteness, some ungodly distance separating us from the dearest and most precious of friends." (/Selected Letters/, 33)Hope this helps,
Didier Machu
NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU> a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to find a passage that I read in a Nabokov book, however I only
> have the very vaguest recollection of it. The clues I can remember are:
>
> - I'm almost certain it was the end of a love letter
> - It used the sun rising or setting, or perhaps the turning of the earth, as
> a device to illustrate the distance between the letter-writer and his love.
> - I'm also pretty sure that Martin Amis used it somewhere, either putting
> the words into one of his own characters or quoting it in some critical work.
>
> I know there is almost nothing to go on, but maybe someone will recognize
> what I'm talking about.
>
> thank you,
>
> Paul Nulty
>
> 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/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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/