Subject
Re: Fwd: Re: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
From
Date
Body
Dear List,
Looking through my annotations to Russian Lolita (Moscow, 1991), I noticed
that I had identified the Proustian theme in the most famous letter of
Keats to Bailey dated November 22, 1817:
"...have you never by being surprised with an old Melody--in a delicious
place--by a delicious voice, fe[l]t over again your very speculations and
surmises at the time it first operated on your soul--do you remember
forming to yourself the singer's face more beautiful tha[n] it was possible
and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so--even then
you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high--that the Prototype
must be here after--that delicious face you will see..."
A feeling Keats describes here is very close to the Proustian concept of
recreating the past through a combination of a present sensation with some
sensuous recollection.
An old Melody that suddenly evokes an image rising from the past in one's
imaginative memory parallels the theme of "the little musical phrase" in
Proust that Nabokov discussed in his lectures (238--239).
Alexander Dolinin
----- End forwarded message -----
Looking through my annotations to Russian Lolita (Moscow, 1991), I noticed
that I had identified the Proustian theme in the most famous letter of
Keats to Bailey dated November 22, 1817:
"...have you never by being surprised with an old Melody--in a delicious
place--by a delicious voice, fe[l]t over again your very speculations and
surmises at the time it first operated on your soul--do you remember
forming to yourself the singer's face more beautiful tha[n] it was possible
and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so--even then
you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high--that the Prototype
must be here after--that delicious face you will see..."
A feeling Keats describes here is very close to the Proustian concept of
recreating the past through a combination of a present sensation with some
sensuous recollection.
An old Melody that suddenly evokes an image rising from the past in one's
imaginative memory parallels the theme of "the little musical phrase" in
Proust that Nabokov discussed in his lectures (238--239).
Alexander Dolinin
----- End forwarded message -----