Nabokov, Vladimir. Stories: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Book: New York. 1995. Transcribed 10/14/19.
Should note did not get in any way deep into this. Infatuated with the first story. A little bit put off by some of the others. Brought to Monhegan. Not quite a beach read. Red in the back of an AC-less car. Somehow appropriate. (12/27/19)
“The Wood-Sprite”
- (3) “I was pensively penning the outline of the inkstand’s circular, quivering shadow. In a distant room a clock struck the hour, while I, dreamer that I am, imagined someone was knocking at the door, softly at first, then louder and louder. He knocked twelve times and paused expectantly.”
- (4) “But no, those were not the kinds of sounds we make. Once, toward evening, I skipped out into a glade, and what do I see?”
- (5) “ ‘He went off to knock about some distant sea, and put me ashore on a foggy coast—go, brother, find yourself some friendly foliage. But I found nothing, and ended up here in this foreign, terrifying city of stone.”
- (5) “He fell silent. His eyes glistened like wet leaves, his arms were crossed, and, by the wavering light of the drowning candle some pale strands combed to the left shimmered so strangely.” “Russian Spoken Here”
- (6) “A man’s soul can be compared to a department store and his eyes to twin display windows.”
“Sounds” - (14) “The piano had raised its lacquered wing, under the wing lay a lyre, and little hammers were rippling across the strings.”
- (14) “Every now and then, through the frenzy of the fugue, your ring would clink on the keys as, incessantly, magnificently, the June shower slashed the windowpanes. And you, without interrupting your playing, and slightly tilting your head, were exclaiming, in time to the beat, ‘The rain, the rain… I am go-ing to drown it out…’
But you could not.” - (14) “Abandoning the albums that lay on the table like velvet coffins, I watched you and listened to the fugue, the rain. A feeling of freshness welled in me like the fragrance of wet carnations that trickled down everywhere, from the shelves, from the piano’s wing, from the oblong diamonds of the chandelier.
- (14) “I myself, you, the carnations, at that instant all became vertical chords on musical staves. I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical parcels comprising different kinds of consance: the trees, the water, you… All was unified, equivalent, divine…. Rain was still mowing down the sunlight. The puddles looked like holes in the dark sand, apertures onto some other heavens that were gliding past underground.”
- (15) “Its interior was reverberant, sumptuous, and cool.”
- (15) “Your love was a bit muted, as was your voice. One might say you loved askance, and you never spoke about love.
- (16) “I wanted to transfuse myself thus into all of nature, to experience what it was like to bean old boletus mushroom with its spongy yellow u nderside, or a dragonfly, or the solar sphere.”
- (17) “I glanced in passing at an azure map, and thought, That’s how all of Russia is—sunlight and hollow”
- (17) “On the floor under the workbench, the shavings curled like flimsy locks.”
- (17-8) “And suddenly it was supremely clear to me that, for centuries, the world had been blooming, withering, spinning, changing solely in order that now, at this instant, it might combine and fuse into a vertical chord the voice that had resounded downstairs, the motion of your silke shoulder blades, and the scent of pine boards.”
- (20) “I knew what you needed: simple feelings, simple words. Your silence was effortless and windless, like the silence of clouds or plants. All silence is the recognition of a mystery. There was much about you that seemed mysterious.”
- (20) “A silvery tremor traversed the matte-textured bushes.
- (21) “I set off at a run, not because there was any great rush, but because everything around me was running—the iridescent of the bushes, the shadows of the clouds on the damp grass, the purplish flowers scurrying for their lives into a gully before the mower’s lightning.”
- (22) “I had once been splintered into a million beings and objects. Today I am one; tomorrow I shall splinter again. And thus everything in the world decants and modulates. That day I was on the crest of a wave…. My soul’s musical ear knew and comprehended everything.”
- (23) “The wagtail, the cigarette holder in my hand, your words, the spots of sunlight on your dress… It could not have been otherwise.”
- (23) “I interrupted you with my silence. A spot of sunlight slid from your skirt onto the sand as you moved slightly away.”
- “An instant passed. During that instant, much happened in the world: somewhere a giant steamship went to the bottom, a war was declared, a genius was born. The instant was gone.”
- (24) “A bat darted above the rose-colored mirror surface. The reflection of the foliage looked like black lace.”
- “I passed the isbns in one soundless sweep along the firmly packed path. Mooing sounds floated past through the lusterless air, some skittles flew up with a clatter. Then farther along, on the highway, in the vastness of the sunset, amid the faintly vaporous fields, there was silence.”