Transparent Things of the Past

Finally the Internet is working at home. It seems to be a hit or miss most of the time. A while back though I finished Nabokov's Transparent Things. One word, MAGNIFICENT! Again I have so many quotes I just don't know where to begin! His writing is lyrical and as I have discovered much better when read aloud. His words seem to come alive when heard out in the open. I am sure people on the ferry to Bainbridge thought I was quite insane! So here they are more of Vladimir's magnificent prose!

"We recognize its presence in the log as we recognize the log in the tree and the tree in the forest and the forest in the world that Jack built. We recognize that presence by something that is perfectly clear to us but nameless, and as impossible to describe as a smile to somebody who has never seen smiling eyes."

"Of the two thrills young Hugh experienced, one was general, the other specific. The general sense of liberation came first, as a great breeze, ecstatic and clean, blowing away a lot of life's rot."

"On contact with paper it acquired a shapeliness, a richness, an ostensible dash, that caused some of the less demanding reviewers in his adopted country to call him a master stylist."

"'Made in Turkey,' whispered its label."

"Hugh, a sentimental simpleton, and somehow not a very good Person (good ones are above that, he was merely a rather dear one), was sorry that no music accompanied the scene, no Rumanian fiddler dipped heartward for two monogram-entangled sakes. There was not even a mechanical rendition of 'Fascination' (a waltz) by the cafe's loudplayer. Still there did exist a kind of supporting rhythm formed by the voices of foot passengers, the clink of crockery, the mountain wind in the venerable mass of the corner chestnut." (I love the way he writes about sounds. A quote in Lolita that is my favorite is later to come that perfectly exemplifies this!)

"...if they had not been especially close fitting she would have wiggled her toes inside as a woman does when her footwear happens to be discussed in flattering terms (smiling toes taking over the making of mouths)."

"He loved her in spite of her unlovableness."

"Actually the favors of death knowledge are infinitely more precious than those of love."

"...not merely because a dying man cannot write books but because that particular one would never express in one flash what can only be understood immediately."

"Days like this give sight a rest and allow other senses to function more freely. Earth and sky were drained of all color. It was either raining or pretending to rain or not raining at all, yet still appearing to rain in a sense that only certain Northern dialects can either express verbally or not express, but versionize, as it were, through the ghost of a sound produced by a drizzle in a haze of grateful rose shrubs."

There are many more where these came from, but I must save a few for later in the year. And perhaps that is the perfect place to stop after our several days of rain!