Her intense and pure religiousness took the form of her having equal faith in the existence of another world and in the impossibility of comprehending it in terms of earthly life. All one could do was to glimpse, amid the haze and the chimeras, something real ahead, just as persons endowed with an unusual persistence of diurnal cerebration are able to perceive in their deepest sleep, somewhere beyond the throes of an entangled and inept nightmare, the ordered reality of the waking hour.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Nabokov describes a deep religious faith that accepts an unknowable other world, likening it to fleeting glimpses through dreams.
- In plain terms
- Faith embraces an unknowable realm beyond daily life.
- What can you take from it?
- Accept that some truths lie beyond rational comprehension.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What is the value of mystery in faith?
- How do we balance belief and reason?
Another view
Such acceptance can discourage critical inquiry.
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