Vostorg and Vdokhnovenie

"The Russian language, which otherwise is comparatively poor in abstract terms, supplies definitions for two types or stages of inspiration, vostorg and vdokhnovenie, which can be paraphrased as 'rapture' and 'recapture.' The difference between them is mainly of a climatic kind, the first being hot and brief, and the second cool and sustained. The kind alluded to up to now is the pure flame of vostorg, initial rapture, which has no conscious purpose in view but which is all-important in linking the breaking up of the old work with the building up of the new one. When the time is ripe and the writer settles down to the actual composing of his book, he will rely on the second, serene and steady kind of inspiration, vdokhnovenie, the trusted mate who helps to recapture and reconstruct the world."

- Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

Note. This image was captured in the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve in the heart of New Zealand's South Island. While I have seen a few "dark skies" before - most notably in Hawaii and Iceland - nothing, repeat nothing, prepared me for what met my eyes after shutting off the engine and lights of our car. No words (and certainly not the photo you see above, which I took with hands trembling with excitement) can do justice to the cosmic awe I felt as I was seamlessly and ineffably enfolded into the Milky Way and the universe beyond. Inner and outer worlds dissolved and the "self" reborn (albeit oh-so-fleetingly) as a non-dual experiential unity. My wife, our youngest son, and I all agree that the 30 or so minutes we spent gawking, slack-jawed, at one of Nature's wonders can only be described and remembered as a life-transforming mystical experience.