Reading with the Spine

From Nabokov’s lectures on literature, quoted in Smith’s book: “All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over.  Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic relight is between the shoulder blades.  That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science.  Let us worship the spine and its tingle.  Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame.  The brain only continues the spine; the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle.  If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week.  But I think Dickens will prove stronger.”