When writer Vladimir Nabokov gave a series of lectures on world literature, he told his college students to become aware of a "telltale tingle" in their spines as they read. He concluded his series with the statement below. Read the selection carefully and then write a two to three-page essay in which you explain the central point of the passage and then describe a "tingling" intellectual or artistic experience of your own (your response to a book, theory, art work, lecture, scientific discovery, etc.). Analyze the reasons why you responded so strongly and what effect this experience has had on your cultural or intellectual growth. Your essay should be approximately 500 word count.
Vladimir Nabokov:
"The work with this group has been a particularly pleasant association between the fountain of my voice and a garden of ears -- some open, others closed, many very receptive, a few merely ornamental, but all of them human and divine. Some of you will go on reading great books, others will stop reading great books after graduation .... After all, there are other thrills in other domains: the thrill of pure science is just as pleasurable as the pleasure of pure art. The main thing is to experience that tingle in any department of thought or emotion. We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit of art which human thought has to offer."
(Excerpt from LECTURES ON LITERATURE by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright 1980 by the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov, reproduced by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company. This material may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.)
When writer Vladimir Nabokov gave a series of lectures on world literature, he told his college students to become aware of a "telltale tingle" in their spines as they read. He concluded his series with the statement below. Read the selection carefully and then write a two to three-page essay in which you explain the central point of the passage and then describe a "tingling" intellectual or artistic experience of your own (your response to a book, theory, art work, lecture, scientific discovery, etc.). Analyze the reasons why you responded so strongly and what effect this experience has had on your cultural or intellectual growth. Your essay should be approximately 500 word count.
Vladimir Nabokov:
"The work with this group has been a particularly pleasant association between the fountain of my voice and a garden of ears -- some open, others closed, many very receptive, a few merely ornamental, but all of them human and divine. Some of you will go on reading great books, others will stop reading great books after graduation .... After all, there are other thrills in other domains: the thrill of pure science is just as pleasurable as the pleasure of pure art. The main thing is to experience that tingle in any department of thought or emotion. We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit of art which human thought has to offer."
(Excerpt from LECTURES ON LITERATURE by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright 1980 by the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov, reproduced by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company. This material may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.)