O Window in the Dark!
The Early Career of Vladimir Nabokov
appendix A: Echoes
The following are examples of repeated bits of imagery
and dialogue found in Nabokov’s early work (and a few more
from later books as well). This list is merely a sampling,
and is by no means exhaustive.
from Speak, Memory:
“The cradle rocks above an abyss.
. . .”
from The Defense:
“He used to be keenly affected by this
crackling and rustling, and smelly human warmth if he did
not retreat too deeply into the abysses of chess.”
“. . . in the fiery gap he had seen something
unbearably awesome, the full horror of the abysmal depths of
chess.”
from The Eye:
“‘Down with that hand,’ were the guest’s
first words, as he looked at my proffered palm — which was
already sinking into an abyss.”
from Glory:
“There were supernaturally comfortable
leather armchairs, in which the body would melt as it sank
into a yielding abyss. . . .”
“. . .He saw under his heels a prodigious precipice, a
sun-illumined abyss with, in its depths, several
outdistanced firs funning in panic after the descending
forest. . . .”
“There came a moment when without holding onto the cliff
he merely leant his chest against it, and felt the abyss
behind him strain and pull at his calves and shoulders.”
from Laughter in the Dark:
“He got out of the lift, moved forward and
stepped with one foot into an abyss — no, it was nothing,
only the step leading downstairs.”
from Speak, Memory:
“. . . the phantom of a step, padded, as it
were, with the infinitely elastic stuff of its own
nonexistence.”
from Despair:
“I have always found it difficult to loosen
my grip of the letter suspended above the abysmal chink.”
from Invitation to a Beheading:
“. . . there came a distant, feeble
‘hurrah,’ as if from an abyss. . . .”
from The Gift:
“My mother . . . uncontrollably
sobbing, allowed her perfectly celestial treasures to flow
out of their abyss into her palm.”
“As into an abyss, the river runs into the murk of the
prematutinal twilight that still hangs in the gorges.
. . .”
“Fyodor Konstantinovich descended into a blissful abyss
where the warm remnants of his slumber mingles with a
feeling of happiness. . . .”
“And there must be on the other hand an abyss of
seriousness. . . .”
“Shirin, author of the novel The Hoary Abyss (with
an Epigraph from the Book of Job). . . .”
“A lobbed ball seemed to be falling — ever more slowly
— into a dizzy abyss.”
“. . . the watery abyss of the past and the
aerial abyss of the future.”
my own favorite, from the Playboy interview:
“I wonder if I shall ever measure again with
happy hands the breadth of a lectern and plunge into my
notes before the sympathetic abyss of a college audience.”
* * *
from The Eye:
“I never thought you were such a scoundrel.”
from Glory:
“‘You scoundrel, I’ve been looking for you
since morning.’”
from Laughter in the Dark:
“‘In fact, you’re a scoundrel, sir, an
absolute scoundrel.’”
from Despair:
“In appealing to me for help this petty
scoundrel was just feeling the ground in view of future
demands.”
“‘You scoundrel,’ I uttered through my teeth with
extraordinary force, ‘you scoundrel and double-crosser.’”
“‘I want you to perish not because you are a killer, but
because you are the meanest of mean scoundrels.
. . .”
from Invitation to a Beheading:
“‘The scoundrels,’ muttered M’sieur Pierre.”
“‘Well, I never! Rodrig, you scoundrel. . . .’”
from The Gift:
“. . . if not scoundrels as the
partial Shirin maintained — then at least shade-lovers in
their bashful but deft activities.”
* * *
from The Eye:
“‘Where are your parents?’ she once asked
Smurov.
’In a distant churchyard,’ he answered, and
for some reason made a little bow.”
from Laughter in the Dark:
“‘Haven’t I met your sister once?’ queried
Dorianna in her lovely bass voice.
’My sister is in Heaven,’ answered Rex
gravely.
’Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Dorianna.
’Never was born,’ he added — and sat down on
a chair next to Margot.”
* * *
Of course, Nabokov also makes frequent use of this
echoing device within any one novel.
from The Defense:
“‘Home,’ he said softly. ‘So that’s the key to the
combination.’”
“‘Home, home,’ he muttered, ‘there I’ll combine
everything properly.’”
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