Vladimir Nabokov citáty

strana 6

„Byla to láska na první pohled, na poslední pohled, na každý a kterýkoli pohled.“

„Čím více si všímáme náhod, tím častěji k nim dochází“

„Byla Lo, prostě Lo, každé ráno, kdy ve stoje a v jedné punčoše měřila metr padesát. Lolou byla v kalhotách. Dolly jí říkali ve škole. Jako Dolores se podepisovala. V mém objetí byla však vždycky Lolitou.“

„Lolita je slavná, já ne.“

„Lolita, světlo mého života, žár mých slabin. Můj hřích, má duše.“

„Mám dojem, že příliš podléhám kouzlu her.“

„… a mě napadlo- nikoli jako protest, ani jako symbol nebo něco podobného, ale prostě jako možnost nového prožitku-, že když už jsem jednou porušil všechna pravidla lidskosti, proč bych nemohl porušit pravidla silničního provozu.“

„Není vědy bez fantazie a není umění bez faktů.“

„Upřímně řečeno, odjakživa mě dráždilo samolibé přesvědčení, že zavlnění proudu vědomí, pár zemitých oplzlostí a špetka komunismu v zaneřáděném kbelíku alchymicky a automaticky stvoří ultramoderní literaturu; a budu tvrdit, dokud mě nezastřelí, že jakmile si umění zadá s politikou, neodvratně klesne na úroveň ideologické veteše.“

„Není žádné vědy bez fantazie a žádného umění bez skutečnosti.“

„Přemýšlím jako génius, píši jako distingovaný autor, mluvím jako dítě.“

„Předložíte-li normálnímu muži skupinovou fotografii školaček nebo skautek a řeknete mu, aby vybral nejhezčí, nemusí bezpodmínečně ukázat na nymfičku. Člověk musí být umělec i šílenec, bezmezně melancholický tvor s bublinkou žhavého jedu ve slabinách a věčným ohněm nesmírné smyslnosti v citlivé páteři (jak se musí hrbit a skrývat!), aby podle nevyslovitelných příznaků - jemně kočkovitého tahu lícní kosti, útlých ochmýřených končetin a jiných indicií, jež mi zoufalství, stud a slzy něhy nedovolí vyjmenovat - okamžitě rozpoznal malého anděla smrti mezi obyčejnými dětmi: stojí tam, jimi nepoznán, a není si vědom své fantastické moci.“

“While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.”

“Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”

“The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.”

“Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care.”

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

“Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.”

“Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.”

“while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space,
the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.”

“beware of ideas…”

“I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.”

“Life is a message scribbled in the dark.”

“Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle.”

“The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is pseudo-wise. The fraud is the closest ally of the true philistine. All such great words as "Beauty," "Love," "Nature," "Truth," and so on become masks and dupes when the smug vulgarian employs them. … The philistine likes to impress and he likes to be impressed, in consequence of which a world of deception, of mutual cheating, is formed by him and around him.”

“Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.”

“The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.”

“Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss
Poems that take a thousand years to die
But ape the immortality of this
Red label on a little butterfly.”

“I think he’s crude, I think he’s medieval, and I don’t want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me. I don’t have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don’t see umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons.”

“I hastened to quench a thirst that had been burning a hole in the mixed metaphor of my life ever since I had fondled a quite different Dolly thirteen years earlier.”

“To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena — all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.”

“No free man needs a God; but was I free?”

“Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O. K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.”

“You have hal…… real bad, chum.”

“Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!”

“True art is above false honor.”

“In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack of literal meaning, the blurred diminutive image of the acrobatic performance that so gloriously supplies the bravura ending for the next chapter.”

“Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!”

“As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.”

“The good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense—which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance ("Good Readers and Good Writers", p. 3).”