Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011276, Fri, 25 Mar 2005 10:00:38 -0800

Subject
reversals
Date
Body
EDNOTE. While we are on the subject of “reversals”……





“Terror” 1926 (Head Inversion) p. 119


“In vain did I try to master my terror by recalling how once in my childhood, on waking up, I raised my still sleepy eyes while pressing the back of my neck to my low pillow and saw, leaning toward me over the bed head, an incomprehensible face, noseless, with a hussar’s black mustache just below its octopus eyes, and with teeth set in its forehead. I sat up with a shriek and immediately the mustache became eyesbrows and the entire face was transformed into that of my mother which I had glimpsed at first in an unwonted upside-down aspect.”
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