Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. But I think Dickens will prove stronger.” If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week. The brain only continues the spine, the wick really runs through the whole length of the candle.

Let us be proud of being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder-blades. All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. However my job is to direct and rationalize those meditations, that admiration. If it were possible I would like to devote fifty minutes of every class meeting to mute meditation, concentration, and admiration of Dickens. We just surrender ourselves to Dickens' voice-that is all. Here, there is no problem of approach as with Austen, no courtship, no dallying.

Modern authors still get drunk on his vintage. In the case of Dickens, the values are new. It seems to me that Jane Austen's fiction had been a charming re-arrangement of old-fashioned values.

In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room.

Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladimir Nabokov