In his Introduction to "Vladimir Nabokov: The American
Years", on page 4 ( Princeton University Press) Brian Boyd writes: "Nabokov felt with a stab of pleasure that that moment of
surprised discovery would stay with his son forever - as it did. He always
considered that to recognize a future recollection at the moment it happened, to
know with certainty that this particular moment would later be
recalled, was somehow to cheat the tyranny of time, and that to glimpse
someone else's future recollection was even rarer, a brief escape from
the prision of the self." (Cf. TD,131; Gift, esp.16,106,354;
Lolita,88)
I was reading a story that became part of Herman
Broch's "Die Schuldlosen", published in America after H.Broch had to
leave his native Austria while fleeing from Hitler during WWII. It was
published a year before his death in 1951, in New Haven, US.
I came across a sentence that made me remember
Nabokov's recognition of a "future recollection" and I thought it
might be interesting to bring it up to the list. Unfortunately my translation will
carry many imprecisions since I don't have the English version and Broch's
own undulating magic rendering will thereby be lost.
Here is the paragraph that touched
me in particular:
"One usually forgets what exists
between distinct stages in one's life. While he was crossing the
street, getting through the thin current of people that hurried to the station,
A. became certain that he would never forget that
instant and that he would include it among those moments que would recall at the
time of his death so that he might take it with him to eternity. He would
probably be unable to explain why he was chosing that floating moment in
particular, it was so fleeting if compared with others that were clearly
defined. The swiftness in which he crossed the street made him feel
something divine as if he were advancing over a sublime rainbow
when his lightness in motion and limb had invaded his inmost being
without disturbing his conscious reasoning. If anyone asked what was he
thinking about at that time he might have answered that he was worried about the
rent... ("The Prodigal Son", first version, spring
1933; fifth and last version, Spring 1950)."
Astronomers are now able to describe distant dead stars
they can see as extant because the light they emitted seven minutes, or ten
years or a hundred years before is still
travelling towards them. We can set the course of a sail boat by a star that has
already exploded and changed into something else while its luminous span
still encompasses our short lives. Perhaps VN's or Broch's "eternal"
recollections resulted from an apprehension of the light shed by a real past now
transformed into a future event... Who knows? But the intensity and
"truthfulness" of their described certainties had this appeal for me, suggesting
something more complex than a mere memory feat and wishful thinking into
infinity...