My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.
Vladimir NabokovRead
Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry connects deep, often irrational feelings with the clarity of words, allowing for a unique expression of emotions.
In this quote, Nabokov highlights the paradox of poetry, where the profound and mysterious aspects of the human experience are articulated using logical and structured language. This interplay between the emotional depth and rational expression allows poetry to convey complex feelings that may not be easily understood or expressed in everyday language, emphasizing the unique power of poetry as an art form.
Themes
PoetryEmotionLanguageExpressionIrrationalRational
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, discussing the essence of poetry.
More from Vladimir Nabokov
All quotes βLolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
Vladimir NabokovRead
A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
Vladimir NabokovRead
But that mimosa grove-the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since-until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.
Vladimir NabokovRead
...in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.
Vladimir NabokovRead
I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.
Vladimir NabokovRead
Similar quotes
When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.
Billy CollinsRead
I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem.
Lucille CliftonRead
Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.
Ken RobinsonRead
If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back.
James FentonRead
The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.
Clive JamesRead
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
Lucian FreudRead