Retropost #70: 25 de diciembre de 2004

25 de diciembre

Fun, fun, fun!

Un día da para mucho, sobre todo si uno se fija en los detalles. Recomiendo examinar de cerca los reflejos de las bolitas del árbol de navidad. Sobre un cuento navideño de Vladimir Nabokov, un detalle o fragmento:

As he faces the blank page struggling with several Christmas motifs, his concentration is interrupted by his neighbour, a card-holding Communist, who drops in to ask for a pen. Alone again, Novodvortsev is distracted by an involuntary flash of memory as he fiddled with the idea of Christmas trees (a motif first mentioned by Golïy): he remembers one particular Christmas long ago, and  

the woman he loved in those days, and all of the tree's lights reflected as a crystal quiver in her wide-open eyes when she plucked a tangerine from a high branch. It had been twenty years ago or more-how certain details stuck in one's memory.... 

The memory flash has an ephiphanic vividness well described by Boyd (with reference to another Nabokov story): "the unique complex of particulars becomes an instant unbearably vulnerable and poignant, fading even now from memory—but surely, surely, preserved in the past?" (1990: 238).

Bitácoring: Visita con huella en Por la boca muere el pez. Sobre católicos homosexuales y otros entes problemáticos.

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