Meaning

Nabokov opens with an image of a cradle swinging over a void, using it to frame human life as an almost impossibly small interval of consciousness set between infinite stretches of non-existence. The tone is not despairing so much as unflinching. He asks the reader to hold that vertiginous picture clearly in mind, not to be crushed by it but to appreciate, with full awareness, just how remarkable and fragile the lit moment of a human life actually is.

Context

This sentence opens Nabokov's autobiography, a book concerned with recovering and examining the textures of his own past. Having fled Russia, then Europe, Nabokov wrote the book in English, a language that was not his first. The memoir is celebrated for its precise, luminous prose and for its almost obsessive attention to memory and sensory detail. By beginning with this philosophical statement about mortality and time, Nabokov sets the frame for everything that follows: each recovered memory matters precisely because it is set against the backdrop of oblivion on either side.

About the author

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born novelist, poet, and lepidopterist who became one of the major figures in twentieth-century literature in both Russian and English. He is perhaps best known for his novel Lolita, though his body of work is large and varied. After leaving Europe, he spent many years in the United States, where he also worked as a university lecturer. He lived from 1899 to 1977.