Speak, Memory--Ch. 11

"In order to reconstruct the summer of 1914, when the numb fury of verse-making first came over me, all I really need is to visualize a certain pavilion." --Vladimir Nabokov, page 215


This is the first sentence of Chapter 11, and I think it is a great opening sentence. I love how it makes the reader want to know what the hell he's talking about; what is this pavilion? Why is it important? What does it look like? I admire Nabokov's sharp memory as much as I do his writing. I get intimidated by how well he remembers details of his life, and then I surprise myself. Because we all have objects and places stored up in our memories in sharp detail that define certain moments for us. I think that living in a time of digital cameras and the Internet and cell phones has really messed up our memories though. This sentence is a great beginning to Nabokov's story of how he found poetry; even in his time, people were still running out of ideas apparently, as he says on page 221: "The frame impelled the picture, the husk shaped the pulp." That's reassuring to read as a modern poet when it feels like you can't say anything new; apparently writers from every era have had to deal with that feeling.