Subject
BIRTHDAY: Returning to the party
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Date
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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. I like to imagine, in consummation and
resolution of those jangling chords, something as enduring, in retrospect,
as the long table that on summer birthdays and namedays used to be laid for
afternoon chocolate out of doors, in an alley of birches, limes and maples
at its debouchment on the smooth-sanded space of the garden proper that
separated the park and the house. I see the tablecloth and the faces of
seated people sharing in the animation of light and shade beneath a moving,
a fabulous foliage, exaggerated, no doubt, by 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.
--
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor, NABOKV-L
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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. I like to imagine, in consummation and
resolution of those jangling chords, something as enduring, in retrospect,
as the long table that on summer birthdays and namedays used to be laid for
afternoon chocolate out of doors, in an alley of birches, limes and maples
at its debouchment on the smooth-sanded space of the garden proper that
separated the park and the house. I see the tablecloth and the faces of
seated people sharing in the animation of light and shade beneath a moving,
a fabulous foliage, exaggerated, no doubt, by 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.
--
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor, NABOKV-L
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/