Sep
16

Lolita, 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 feet. Lo. Lee. Ta.
–Vladimir Nabokov, from Lolita

About

Poets think in lines, prose writers in sentences; the best of both work from sound to sense, with an ear for the music in their compositions. S for Sentence celebrates lyricism in prose, the play and craft at work in the artful sentence. We post a sentence a month along with comments by a guest writer on the craft that shapes it, on what makes it great. In one or two sentences.
—Pearl Abraham, Editor
This sentence declares both the main character’s passion for Lolita as well as the author’s passion for the English language, one as erotic as the other. No one evokes passion quite as well as Nabokov. In a single sentence, he makes the soul sin and the tongue dance; he lights up words –all those brilliant l’s and tapping t’s-- with his synesthesia, a neurological condition that allowed him to see letters in colors.
—Lara Vapnyar, author of Jews in My House and Memoirs of a Muse