"My earliest memory is dreamlike: in a small orchard or garden I am carried on the arm, I believe, of my father; there was a group of grown-ups, my mother among them, and the group was slowly walking in the orchard, it seems toward the house"
About this Quote
The orchard is doing quiet symbolic labor. It is a cultivated nature, not wilderness: a managed landscape that suggests order, lineage, and the old-world family unit. The adults move as a group, "slowly walking" toward the house, and the child is literally borne along at the edge of their conversation and authority. Subtext: history begins as something you are carried into. The house is destination and containment, a place where stories get told, records get kept, identities get fixed.
Context sharpens the intent. Velikovsky was a Jewish intellectual born in the Russian Empire, shaped by dislocation and later by the 20th century's violent rearrangements. An orchard-memory reads like an attempted anchor: a pre-catastrophe tableau of belonging. The restrained, almost clinical phrasing keeps sentiment at arm's length, as if he distrusts nostalgia the way he distrusts conventional archives. He offers not a charming anecdote but an origin myth under cross-examination, letting uncertainty become the point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Father |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Velikovsky, Immanuel. (2026, January 15). My earliest memory is dreamlike: in a small orchard or garden I am carried on the arm, I believe, of my father; there was a group of grown-ups, my mother among them, and the group was slowly walking in the orchard, it seems toward the house. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-earliest-memory-is-dreamlike-in-a-small-167596/
Chicago Style
Velikovsky, Immanuel. "My earliest memory is dreamlike: in a small orchard or garden I am carried on the arm, I believe, of my father; there was a group of grown-ups, my mother among them, and the group was slowly walking in the orchard, it seems toward the house." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-earliest-memory-is-dreamlike-in-a-small-167596/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My earliest memory is dreamlike: in a small orchard or garden I am carried on the arm, I believe, of my father; there was a group of grown-ups, my mother among them, and the group was slowly walking in the orchard, it seems toward the house." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-earliest-memory-is-dreamlike-in-a-small-167596/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
