Since the semester is near its end I feel as if the only thing to do is wrap things up. As usual I am amazed at how much I get from Dr. Sexson’s classes. Like Nabokov he jam packs so much into one short semester you wonder how he knows all this stuff. But I guess I should not be amazed after all this time, because every class seems like this. There is so much to learn and so little time in one semester.
I loved this class partly due to the fact that I had read and love Nabokov as a writer. He has always been one of my favorites, but I had never looked below the surface of his works. I was one of those people that read Nabokov for fun, and now I know that as a reader you miss so much unless you get all the clues that he leaves for you along the way.
He is a writer you can return to again and again and you always find something new! That is the joy of Nabokov, that he is a master enchanter. I like to think that he enjoyed placing all these clues within his works and was just waiting to have a class that learned to enjoy the journey as much as he did.
I love Nabokov and I was thrilled last semester when I found out that Dr. Sexson was teaching an entire class on him. I have learned so much from Dr. Sexson, as usual, as well as from all the other students. I have enjoyed reading all the blogs, especially for our presentation as a group. I am always amazed by the insight and intelligence I find in others writings they are left to blog about their ideas and findings all on their own.
I like to think that we are all smarter then we give ourselves credit for, and this seemed to emerge in the blogs and amazing papers in this class. Only a class of our caliber could have taken on an author like Nabokov and made it through and with such success!
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Transparent Things -Armande
As I have written before, and my entire paper focuses on, my love for Transparent Things. For some reason I love the connections and the story itself, not that because it is shorter it is any easier, if anything it is not. It just means that Nabokov tries to smash as much into a short novella rather than the epic length he usually likes, or at least they feel that way when you sit down to read them!
As I reread Transparent Things for class awhile back I was struck how each time I really start to dislike Armande more and more. I mean Hugh is not my favorite person either, and all of the characters are really not the role models or kind of characters you look up to as a reader, but Armande each time I read it seems to get worse.
I guess I am just so struck by her attitude about Hugh and just life in general. I think Doug was right in his presentation she is the whore of the novel, but at the same time she is so cold. Each time Hugh remembers having sex with her just lays there and either forces him to have a conversation with him, or she is on the phone chatting with a friend and at that she is fully dressed.
I just kept thinking to myself if he is really that bad why did you marry him? It seemed as if a bad match from the beginning but at the same time a perfect one. Like Doug talked about in his dense presentation on Tuesday, I am sure I did not get all of it, they are their counterparts.
Hugh is the virgin, inexperienced, kind of drab and boring guy and Armande is the over sexed, cold and interesting but at the same time you are unsure if you want to get to close to her person.
Hugh and Armande complete each other in a sense in Transparent Things. In each reading though I seem to despise Armande more and more, even though I dislike Hugh at the same time. They deserve each other and their relationship is dysfunctional but adds another element to the novel. I have to say I would have strangled her as well, and perhaps not even in my sleep!
As I reread Transparent Things for class awhile back I was struck how each time I really start to dislike Armande more and more. I mean Hugh is not my favorite person either, and all of the characters are really not the role models or kind of characters you look up to as a reader, but Armande each time I read it seems to get worse.
I guess I am just so struck by her attitude about Hugh and just life in general. I think Doug was right in his presentation she is the whore of the novel, but at the same time she is so cold. Each time Hugh remembers having sex with her just lays there and either forces him to have a conversation with him, or she is on the phone chatting with a friend and at that she is fully dressed.
I just kept thinking to myself if he is really that bad why did you marry him? It seemed as if a bad match from the beginning but at the same time a perfect one. Like Doug talked about in his dense presentation on Tuesday, I am sure I did not get all of it, they are their counterparts.
Hugh is the virgin, inexperienced, kind of drab and boring guy and Armande is the over sexed, cold and interesting but at the same time you are unsure if you want to get to close to her person.
Hugh and Armande complete each other in a sense in Transparent Things. In each reading though I seem to despise Armande more and more, even though I dislike Hugh at the same time. They deserve each other and their relationship is dysfunctional but adds another element to the novel. I have to say I would have strangled her as well, and perhaps not even in my sleep!
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Into the Abyss of Memory
Below is my paper. I apologize for the format but it will not let me do what I want to with it! I also have a works cited page, but did not feel that was necessary to include here.
“A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past” (Nabokov). This quote from Vladimir Nabokov, printed in an unpublished interview on his work Transparent Things, seems to embody the authors’ sentiment of memories and how we as human beings try to understand and come to terms with our past. If this view of memories, and how we recognize and make sense of our past is really what Nabokov believed, why then do so many of his characters in his works obsess over things from their past, and many of them try to recapture what was lost? Nabokov writes about those that long for the past to exemplify his thoughts about the dangers of doing so. Many of the characters he creates long for their past, and this sense of loss is what drives their obsessions and leads to their ultimate demise.
“Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive…” (Nabokov 489). This quote from Nabokov’s Transparent Things, a work steeped in the realm of memories and their connection to all three tenses of past, present and future, exemplifies the idea that people continually have the habit of falling into the past. Not only their own past, but the history and past of each object they encounter, it is “the act of attention” that draws us in according to Nabokov’s character Hugh Person (Nabokov 492).
Transparent Things, is a work that focuses on a man, Hugh Person, and his four trips to the small town of Witt in Switzerland, these trips take place over several decades. Each trip is a new experience and through the work the reader is presented with Hugh’s memories of each of these trips. Nabokov creates a work in which the reader shares in Hugh’s discoveries as he recollects his past and tries to make sense of all that went on. Each trip Hugh makes is filled with encounters that he has with objects, places and people that bring back many of the events and things he had long since forgotten. Once again showing that it is through living and interacting with the world around us that we begin to remember and fall into our past.
Nabokov recognizes in his works though that several things can alter memories and change how we perceive or remember the world around us, one such thing is time. Nabokov writes of time in Transparent Things in the following quote, “Time, however, sets to work on those ephemeral affairs, and a new flavor is added to the recollection” (Nabokov 512). Time has the power to change and alter what we think we know, and Hugh experiences a change in his surroundings with each visit to the “familiar” town of Witt.
Memory and its power to connect us to past, present and future all within an instant is seen in Nabokov’s works. When we encounter something we remember the connection we had to it, and we fall into the past of that object, but then it is happening at a certain moment and perhaps it is telling us of something important to come. Memory and time are wrapped up in one another in Nabokov’s works. Brian Boyd, in his introduction to Nabokov’s Speak, Memory writes that, “…he (Nabokov) finds ways to resist the relentless linearity of time” (Nabokov xv). Nabokov recognized that memory and time are connected in a critical way. He does not write in the linear time of the everyday, but the cyclical time of mythology and classical writings. This is what he tried to capture in his writings, that memories are events that are returning to us because of their importance. There is something critical that we need to understand in déjà vu.
The connection of all three tenses, past, present and future as seen in Transparent Things is exemplified in the murder scene between Hugh and Armande and again in Hugh’s own death at the end. All these tenses are connected in the events that take place in each of these scenes, in so much as Hugh predicts his own death while dreaming and trying to “save” Armande from the “fire.” In the end Hugh dies from the fire he believed he was trying to save Armande from in an earlier memory. Through Hugh’s dream and the murder of his wife Hugh’s future is being presented to him, and yet he does not realize this until the time has arrived when past, present and future are all connected in his own death.
Another work in which Nabokov’s protagonist is doomed through his obsessive longing for the past and what was lost is Lolita. This tale is of a man, Humbert Humbert, and his longing for a lost childhood love, which leads to his obsession for a nymphet by the name Dolores Haze, Lolita. Humbert writes early on in his telling of the tale that if there had not been a lost love there may have never been a Lolita and all that he had to endure could have been avoided. He writes, “Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child” (Nabokov 9). Humbert himself in his writings realizes that through his longing and memories of what was lost, his Annabel Leigh, he was lead to his obsession and demise in his love and lust for Lolita.
Nabokov writes about another element in this work that can alter the world around us. In Lolita he explores the power of love to blind us to the truths and blot out the memories we chose not to remember exactly as they were. Humbert is blinded by his desire for Lolita and while writing in his prison cell cannot recall he face. He writes, “I would like to describe her face, her ways-and I cannot, because my own desire for her blinds me…” (Nabokov 44). Love, lust and desire have the power to change recollections and alter them to what we want them to be, making them more like dreams then memories of the past.
Humbert writes about when the dream of having his nymphet all to himself began to become a nightmare, and the memories of the bad begin to emerge in his writing. It is no longer the fantasy he had hoped for, but the sad writings of a man that has lost his past love once again through his new found girl-child. He writes, “Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark-and plunged into a nightmare” (Nabokov 140). Lolita is not the Annabel Leigh he remembered from his past, and yet he still longs for her, and for her to love him back.
Love and lust have distorted his childhood love, and he creates a monster of his nymphet and himself through his obsession for the past. Humbert realizes too late, after
he has lost his Lolita and killed the man, Quilty, who took her from him, that “the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord” (Nabokov 308). He sees now that he does not love the Lolita he so recently lost, but he loves the idea of her and the remembered love from his distant past in a “kingdom by the sea.”
Nabokov’s Pale Fire is another work in which memories take control and lead to the demise of the principle characters involved. In this work by Nabokov there are two such characters caught in the tangled web of memory, John Shade and Charles Kinbote. Shade through his own poem tries to make sense of his past, and especially tries to understand his daughter and the other worldly. The poem is one man’s long remembrance of his past. A way to write down all that happened and try to make sense of it, but this longing to know and understand the past is his downfall. As Nabokov says in the unpublished interview, “…all mortals, (are) more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past” (Nabokov). Like Hugh Person in Transparent Things John Shade at the end of his poem predicts his own death, a moment in time that in an instant combines all realms, past, present and future. As he tries to make sense of the past he writes, without noticing, what is to come.
Kinbote is the other character in Nabokov’s Pale Fire that falls victim to his memories and obsession for lost places and times. What makes Kinbote’s fall so notable though is that he longs for a place, Zembla, and a life that never truly existed. His memories are of a place and life that never was, perhaps he is longing for something more or he is just insane. His obsession for an imaginary life leads to his own demise
and unlike his counterpart Shade, his demise is not death, but instead his insanity and isolation from the rest of the world through his fascinations and daydreams of “a distant northern land.”
Brian Boyd quotes Nabokov from a letter to Edmund Wilson in his introduction
to Nabokov’s autobiography Speak, Memory, as writing, it is “a scientific attempt to unravel and trace back all the tangled threads of one’s personality…” (Nabokov ix). In his own autobiography Nabokov is a man trying to make sense of his own life, trying to “unravel” all the “tangled threads” of his past. This looking into his own past does not lead to his demise though, because he has mastered the art of connecting the present and past in a way that as Boyd writes fuses “time with intentions of timelessness” (Nabokov ix).
Nabokov has found in his own autobiography a way to stay on top of that thin veneer that is reality. He writes in Transparent Things, “A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film” (Nabokov 489). Nabokov himself, unlike his characters, has mastered all three tenses and can be in the present moment and yet recall the past and make it timeless.
Even though Nabokov believes we, mere mortals, understand the present at any point in time the best. Most of his novels focus on those people that fall into the “ooze of the past”, and are lost within their longing for something long forgotten until then. In Transparent Things it is a man’s four trips to Witt and his longing to understand his past that leads to his death just as he had dreamt it. In Lolita a man obsessed with a lost childhood love places this obsession on a girl in the present and in the end loses her and his mind. Pale Fire includes two such characters immersed in this “ooze”, one and his longing to reconnect and remember his life and daughter, and another longing
for a place and life that never existed.
While most of these creations of Nabokov cannot master and stay atop that “thin veneer of immediate reality” that covers all they encounter, Nabokov can. Memory is a theme that Nabokov continually returns to in his works. Through his writing he shows that we mortals are better in the present then in “the ooze of the past.” While his characters are continually falling into the abyss of their past, and most often to their detriment, Nabokov himself is the one that manages to stay afloat. He has mastered the realms of time and can live and write in all tenses, past, present and future and this is what makes his works timeless.
“A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past” (Nabokov). This quote from Vladimir Nabokov, printed in an unpublished interview on his work Transparent Things, seems to embody the authors’ sentiment of memories and how we as human beings try to understand and come to terms with our past. If this view of memories, and how we recognize and make sense of our past is really what Nabokov believed, why then do so many of his characters in his works obsess over things from their past, and many of them try to recapture what was lost? Nabokov writes about those that long for the past to exemplify his thoughts about the dangers of doing so. Many of the characters he creates long for their past, and this sense of loss is what drives their obsessions and leads to their ultimate demise.
“Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive…” (Nabokov 489). This quote from Nabokov’s Transparent Things, a work steeped in the realm of memories and their connection to all three tenses of past, present and future, exemplifies the idea that people continually have the habit of falling into the past. Not only their own past, but the history and past of each object they encounter, it is “the act of attention” that draws us in according to Nabokov’s character Hugh Person (Nabokov 492).
Transparent Things, is a work that focuses on a man, Hugh Person, and his four trips to the small town of Witt in Switzerland, these trips take place over several decades. Each trip is a new experience and through the work the reader is presented with Hugh’s memories of each of these trips. Nabokov creates a work in which the reader shares in Hugh’s discoveries as he recollects his past and tries to make sense of all that went on. Each trip Hugh makes is filled with encounters that he has with objects, places and people that bring back many of the events and things he had long since forgotten. Once again showing that it is through living and interacting with the world around us that we begin to remember and fall into our past.
Nabokov recognizes in his works though that several things can alter memories and change how we perceive or remember the world around us, one such thing is time. Nabokov writes of time in Transparent Things in the following quote, “Time, however, sets to work on those ephemeral affairs, and a new flavor is added to the recollection” (Nabokov 512). Time has the power to change and alter what we think we know, and Hugh experiences a change in his surroundings with each visit to the “familiar” town of Witt.
Memory and its power to connect us to past, present and future all within an instant is seen in Nabokov’s works. When we encounter something we remember the connection we had to it, and we fall into the past of that object, but then it is happening at a certain moment and perhaps it is telling us of something important to come. Memory and time are wrapped up in one another in Nabokov’s works. Brian Boyd, in his introduction to Nabokov’s Speak, Memory writes that, “…he (Nabokov) finds ways to resist the relentless linearity of time” (Nabokov xv). Nabokov recognized that memory and time are connected in a critical way. He does not write in the linear time of the everyday, but the cyclical time of mythology and classical writings. This is what he tried to capture in his writings, that memories are events that are returning to us because of their importance. There is something critical that we need to understand in déjà vu.
The connection of all three tenses, past, present and future as seen in Transparent Things is exemplified in the murder scene between Hugh and Armande and again in Hugh’s own death at the end. All these tenses are connected in the events that take place in each of these scenes, in so much as Hugh predicts his own death while dreaming and trying to “save” Armande from the “fire.” In the end Hugh dies from the fire he believed he was trying to save Armande from in an earlier memory. Through Hugh’s dream and the murder of his wife Hugh’s future is being presented to him, and yet he does not realize this until the time has arrived when past, present and future are all connected in his own death.
Another work in which Nabokov’s protagonist is doomed through his obsessive longing for the past and what was lost is Lolita. This tale is of a man, Humbert Humbert, and his longing for a lost childhood love, which leads to his obsession for a nymphet by the name Dolores Haze, Lolita. Humbert writes early on in his telling of the tale that if there had not been a lost love there may have never been a Lolita and all that he had to endure could have been avoided. He writes, “Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child” (Nabokov 9). Humbert himself in his writings realizes that through his longing and memories of what was lost, his Annabel Leigh, he was lead to his obsession and demise in his love and lust for Lolita.
Nabokov writes about another element in this work that can alter the world around us. In Lolita he explores the power of love to blind us to the truths and blot out the memories we chose not to remember exactly as they were. Humbert is blinded by his desire for Lolita and while writing in his prison cell cannot recall he face. He writes, “I would like to describe her face, her ways-and I cannot, because my own desire for her blinds me…” (Nabokov 44). Love, lust and desire have the power to change recollections and alter them to what we want them to be, making them more like dreams then memories of the past.
Humbert writes about when the dream of having his nymphet all to himself began to become a nightmare, and the memories of the bad begin to emerge in his writing. It is no longer the fantasy he had hoped for, but the sad writings of a man that has lost his past love once again through his new found girl-child. He writes, “Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark-and plunged into a nightmare” (Nabokov 140). Lolita is not the Annabel Leigh he remembered from his past, and yet he still longs for her, and for her to love him back.
Love and lust have distorted his childhood love, and he creates a monster of his nymphet and himself through his obsession for the past. Humbert realizes too late, after
he has lost his Lolita and killed the man, Quilty, who took her from him, that “the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord” (Nabokov 308). He sees now that he does not love the Lolita he so recently lost, but he loves the idea of her and the remembered love from his distant past in a “kingdom by the sea.”
Nabokov’s Pale Fire is another work in which memories take control and lead to the demise of the principle characters involved. In this work by Nabokov there are two such characters caught in the tangled web of memory, John Shade and Charles Kinbote. Shade through his own poem tries to make sense of his past, and especially tries to understand his daughter and the other worldly. The poem is one man’s long remembrance of his past. A way to write down all that happened and try to make sense of it, but this longing to know and understand the past is his downfall. As Nabokov says in the unpublished interview, “…all mortals, (are) more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past” (Nabokov). Like Hugh Person in Transparent Things John Shade at the end of his poem predicts his own death, a moment in time that in an instant combines all realms, past, present and future. As he tries to make sense of the past he writes, without noticing, what is to come.
Kinbote is the other character in Nabokov’s Pale Fire that falls victim to his memories and obsession for lost places and times. What makes Kinbote’s fall so notable though is that he longs for a place, Zembla, and a life that never truly existed. His memories are of a place and life that never was, perhaps he is longing for something more or he is just insane. His obsession for an imaginary life leads to his own demise
and unlike his counterpart Shade, his demise is not death, but instead his insanity and isolation from the rest of the world through his fascinations and daydreams of “a distant northern land.”
Brian Boyd quotes Nabokov from a letter to Edmund Wilson in his introduction
to Nabokov’s autobiography Speak, Memory, as writing, it is “a scientific attempt to unravel and trace back all the tangled threads of one’s personality…” (Nabokov ix). In his own autobiography Nabokov is a man trying to make sense of his own life, trying to “unravel” all the “tangled threads” of his past. This looking into his own past does not lead to his demise though, because he has mastered the art of connecting the present and past in a way that as Boyd writes fuses “time with intentions of timelessness” (Nabokov ix).
Nabokov has found in his own autobiography a way to stay on top of that thin veneer that is reality. He writes in Transparent Things, “A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film” (Nabokov 489). Nabokov himself, unlike his characters, has mastered all three tenses and can be in the present moment and yet recall the past and make it timeless.
Even though Nabokov believes we, mere mortals, understand the present at any point in time the best. Most of his novels focus on those people that fall into the “ooze of the past”, and are lost within their longing for something long forgotten until then. In Transparent Things it is a man’s four trips to Witt and his longing to understand his past that leads to his death just as he had dreamt it. In Lolita a man obsessed with a lost childhood love places this obsession on a girl in the present and in the end loses her and his mind. Pale Fire includes two such characters immersed in this “ooze”, one and his longing to reconnect and remember his life and daughter, and another longing
for a place and life that never existed.
While most of these creations of Nabokov cannot master and stay atop that “thin veneer of immediate reality” that covers all they encounter, Nabokov can. Memory is a theme that Nabokov continually returns to in his works. Through his writing he shows that we mortals are better in the present then in “the ooze of the past.” While his characters are continually falling into the abyss of their past, and most often to their detriment, Nabokov himself is the one that manages to stay afloat. He has mastered the realms of time and can live and write in all tenses, past, present and future and this is what makes his works timeless.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
The Educational and Entertaining Presentations
Now that the stress of our groups presentation has passed I can now reflect on the others I got to enjoy. All I can begin with is WOW! Dr. Sexson is right when he says they just seem to get better and better, and if nothing else more entertaining each time.
From the first presentation with scenes and characters from every work. I am still unsure if I understood it all. But I enjoyed it. Bringing to life the works and characters as Nabokov thinks about them. But then when you think things into being sometimes they start to take over their own story and guide you, rather than you guiding them as the author. This group seemed to realize that Nabokov lent himself fully to his characters whims.
The second groups talk show was great and I love the connections they made with many of the characters and things we had discussed in class. As well as things they found on through their own discoveries. The last group on the first day was fun, and got me to remember things about each work I had forgot and their significance to the work as a whole.
Group four was great as well and the video was masterfully put together, kudos to Adam. I love that they took the creation and reading of Nabokov's works to coincide with the game of chess. Something we all knew Nabokov loved and understood so well, but they took it to another level through their own interpretation. The scenes of Nabokov writing as we open the book as reader was great, and of course the video of Nabokov at the end was a fantastic find.
Then there was our group which I really enjoyed working on. It went better then I had planned and for all our independent work it turned out well.
The last group made me laugh and their focus on fairy tales in Lolita was great. Another expansion on a theme we all recognized and enjoyed in class. As evident in our blogs.
All our presentations seem to be following the theme of the seemingly unconnected and unimportant becomes connected through our attention. Things we could have never imagined being connected are. I can't wait to see what emerges from the papers to come!
Now just to catch up on blogs this weekend! So be prepared Dr. Sexson there will be several blogs all within a couple days.
From the first presentation with scenes and characters from every work. I am still unsure if I understood it all. But I enjoyed it. Bringing to life the works and characters as Nabokov thinks about them. But then when you think things into being sometimes they start to take over their own story and guide you, rather than you guiding them as the author. This group seemed to realize that Nabokov lent himself fully to his characters whims.
The second groups talk show was great and I love the connections they made with many of the characters and things we had discussed in class. As well as things they found on through their own discoveries. The last group on the first day was fun, and got me to remember things about each work I had forgot and their significance to the work as a whole.
Group four was great as well and the video was masterfully put together, kudos to Adam. I love that they took the creation and reading of Nabokov's works to coincide with the game of chess. Something we all knew Nabokov loved and understood so well, but they took it to another level through their own interpretation. The scenes of Nabokov writing as we open the book as reader was great, and of course the video of Nabokov at the end was a fantastic find.
Then there was our group which I really enjoyed working on. It went better then I had planned and for all our independent work it turned out well.
The last group made me laugh and their focus on fairy tales in Lolita was great. Another expansion on a theme we all recognized and enjoyed in class. As evident in our blogs.
All our presentations seem to be following the theme of the seemingly unconnected and unimportant becomes connected through our attention. Things we could have never imagined being connected are. I can't wait to see what emerges from the papers to come!
Now just to catch up on blogs this weekend! So be prepared Dr. Sexson there will be several blogs all within a couple days.
Humbert's Journal
Below is the journal entry I wrote as Humbert for out group presentation. As a group we decided to take the seemingly unimportant and unconnected and connect them some how. The connections that "logicians loath and poets love." We each decided to write from the perspective of a character for one of Nabokov's works and include our class list into the work. I was Humbert, Jessica was Lolita, Chelsea was Kinbote and Robert was fantastic as Shade! Since none of us had ever read each others work or seen our performances it was a surprise presentation fro us as well. The times we were able to meet we were all surprised that even though we had split up the class list, we all some how wrote with the last half and had to switch things around.
MY section was from the perspective of Humbert while he was in prison waiting for his trial. I wanted to start off writing a poem but it morphed into a kind of journal entry and his reflection on an obscure class list he finds in the prison library. I read all the blogs about Humbert and Lolita that the people was to include write about. It was fun seeing all the different views and the similarities as well. Lolita and Humbert in relation to fairy tales seems to be a popular theme. So in the end there are those mysterious connections in everything if you are just willing to take a closer look. So enjoy this journal of Humbert, the poet and the madman.
P.S. The date on the entry is exactly one year before Humbert dies.
Day 27 16 November 1951
I am writing under observation now, after my “incident.” They try to take away my things, but this is the only solace I have.
Journaling is what keeps me sane, or so I like to believe. But can the insane really recognize their own insanity? This is not important right now though because I don’t have much time, my new discovery is what is important.
While riffling through the so-called “library” today I came across a list, a class list to be exact. It seems so familiar, but alas there is no Lady of Sorrows among these specters of some forgotten time. But even so I find a rhythm and rhyme within this accidental poem as I read it. Who would have thought this list of names and their strange understanding and insight into my past would intrigue me so? But a man will find those seemingly unimportant coincidences in the meaninglessness around him to keep his insanity at bay.
Another list, another time, another class. Perhaps another invention of that enigmatic Russian author, his name seems to escape me at this moment. He is a specter himself in this place I am in. Who else would create such a list of names? It seems to be a class taught by that elusive, Dr. Sexson. Another creature sprung from the mind of a madman, and yet their writings seem to have insights into my past.
The list seems to follow its own path, its own rhythm and rhyme. Flowing like the blue rivers of Joyce’s, Finnegan’s Wake, that were brought to life by the voice of a ghost, a so -called JennieLynn. But who would read Joyce and his endless, cycling tales? Probably more of those Freudians looking for messages not there.
BUT-TER-FLY, another familiar word fluttering through these “students” works. A word familiar to that Russian author and Claire. Remembered to be her first word, but what is memory? Something we are always trying to capture, but will never understand.
But a moment in time, past, present and future.
Many of these specters of the past seem to understand, and have opinions mind you about, me and my Lolita. How could they know such thing, or what I thought. I am only beginning to write now as I try to remain as I was before.
They seem to know my inner most thoughts and feelings for my Lolita. Christina sees that she is my Venus, love and lust all in one perfect being. To Caitlin she the first Eve. All good and pure, but then tempts man to his demise and his fall from grace. And oh yes I did fall. Brittini sees that she is Nefertti. A being I worship as Nefertti herself worshiped the sun god, Aten, she is my light. The light of my life, fire of my loins.
The one that got my Lolita just right though was Helena. Lolita was my Sleeping Beauty and how I longed for those enchanted slumbers when papas purple pills began to work, and I had free range over my nymphet.
Then there are those that think they can fix some role on me. Well let them try! Jared writes that my tale is that of Little Red Riding Hood and I am the Wolf, trying to consume my girl-child. To Lee I am nothing more then a vampire sucking the life from my love. But then again I rather like this connection, vampire’s are rather seductive and they achieve that immortality I long for as long as I have my Lo with me. And lastly I am the same as Victor Frankenstein to Zach, creating a monster through my obsession that will lead to my own demise.
Amanda is openly disgusted by me and calls me a pedophile. I am not, I am a man in love, and you must remember dear Amanda it is she who seduced me, I was not even her first lover! Kris too seems disgusted, or at least confused. He thinks I am perhaps a manipulative pedophile and loving father, a contradictory pairing? I am no pedophile once again, but I am a lover and a father trying to control the whims of an unruly prepubescent girl.
Jon, or so he is called, dares to bring up that doppelganger Quilty. That man that took my love and life away from me, and so I took his. This is no chess game and Quilty is no knight as Jon calls him. He may have been the knight in shinning armor to my Lo, but in my story he was the villain.
Now that I am thinking about evil I think Lisa is right to believe that I see evil as metaphysical evil, something’s are left up to chance. My story is not one of them though.
Rebecca is wrong to think that my story came from another source, some earlier writing from 1916, a short story in German no less. My story is all my own, and not the creation of some phantom Russian author. It is ours, and in the end this may be the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
MY section was from the perspective of Humbert while he was in prison waiting for his trial. I wanted to start off writing a poem but it morphed into a kind of journal entry and his reflection on an obscure class list he finds in the prison library. I read all the blogs about Humbert and Lolita that the people was to include write about. It was fun seeing all the different views and the similarities as well. Lolita and Humbert in relation to fairy tales seems to be a popular theme. So in the end there are those mysterious connections in everything if you are just willing to take a closer look. So enjoy this journal of Humbert, the poet and the madman.
P.S. The date on the entry is exactly one year before Humbert dies.
Day 27 16 November 1951
I am writing under observation now, after my “incident.” They try to take away my things, but this is the only solace I have.
Journaling is what keeps me sane, or so I like to believe. But can the insane really recognize their own insanity? This is not important right now though because I don’t have much time, my new discovery is what is important.
While riffling through the so-called “library” today I came across a list, a class list to be exact. It seems so familiar, but alas there is no Lady of Sorrows among these specters of some forgotten time. But even so I find a rhythm and rhyme within this accidental poem as I read it. Who would have thought this list of names and their strange understanding and insight into my past would intrigue me so? But a man will find those seemingly unimportant coincidences in the meaninglessness around him to keep his insanity at bay.
Another list, another time, another class. Perhaps another invention of that enigmatic Russian author, his name seems to escape me at this moment. He is a specter himself in this place I am in. Who else would create such a list of names? It seems to be a class taught by that elusive, Dr. Sexson. Another creature sprung from the mind of a madman, and yet their writings seem to have insights into my past.
The list seems to follow its own path, its own rhythm and rhyme. Flowing like the blue rivers of Joyce’s, Finnegan’s Wake, that were brought to life by the voice of a ghost, a so -called JennieLynn. But who would read Joyce and his endless, cycling tales? Probably more of those Freudians looking for messages not there.
BUT-TER-FLY, another familiar word fluttering through these “students” works. A word familiar to that Russian author and Claire. Remembered to be her first word, but what is memory? Something we are always trying to capture, but will never understand.
But a moment in time, past, present and future.
Many of these specters of the past seem to understand, and have opinions mind you about, me and my Lolita. How could they know such thing, or what I thought. I am only beginning to write now as I try to remain as I was before.
They seem to know my inner most thoughts and feelings for my Lolita. Christina sees that she is my Venus, love and lust all in one perfect being. To Caitlin she the first Eve. All good and pure, but then tempts man to his demise and his fall from grace. And oh yes I did fall. Brittini sees that she is Nefertti. A being I worship as Nefertti herself worshiped the sun god, Aten, she is my light. The light of my life, fire of my loins.
The one that got my Lolita just right though was Helena. Lolita was my Sleeping Beauty and how I longed for those enchanted slumbers when papas purple pills began to work, and I had free range over my nymphet.
Then there are those that think they can fix some role on me. Well let them try! Jared writes that my tale is that of Little Red Riding Hood and I am the Wolf, trying to consume my girl-child. To Lee I am nothing more then a vampire sucking the life from my love. But then again I rather like this connection, vampire’s are rather seductive and they achieve that immortality I long for as long as I have my Lo with me. And lastly I am the same as Victor Frankenstein to Zach, creating a monster through my obsession that will lead to my own demise.
Amanda is openly disgusted by me and calls me a pedophile. I am not, I am a man in love, and you must remember dear Amanda it is she who seduced me, I was not even her first lover! Kris too seems disgusted, or at least confused. He thinks I am perhaps a manipulative pedophile and loving father, a contradictory pairing? I am no pedophile once again, but I am a lover and a father trying to control the whims of an unruly prepubescent girl.
Jon, or so he is called, dares to bring up that doppelganger Quilty. That man that took my love and life away from me, and so I took his. This is no chess game and Quilty is no knight as Jon calls him. He may have been the knight in shinning armor to my Lo, but in my story he was the villain.
Now that I am thinking about evil I think Lisa is right to believe that I see evil as metaphysical evil, something’s are left up to chance. My story is not one of them though.
Rebecca is wrong to think that my story came from another source, some earlier writing from 1916, a short story in German no less. My story is all my own, and not the creation of some phantom Russian author. It is ours, and in the end this may be the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Mary and Vladimir
So I was just rereading the article on Pale Fire when I got to the last paragraph, and I realized that I have read this before. Then I thought to look at the back of our books edition and there was the quote from Mary McCarthy on her review of Pale Fire.
It's amazing the connections that Nabokov has with the world around us. It is no longer just in his writing but on every part of his works. Perhaps you already saw this but I thought I would point it out just in case, because I was so struck by it. Maybe I am just slow on the uptake. Now that I have taken this class he just seems to be everywhere.
Hope everyone is enjoying studying. I know I am!
It's amazing the connections that Nabokov has with the world around us. It is no longer just in his writing but on every part of his works. Perhaps you already saw this but I thought I would point it out just in case, because I was so struck by it. Maybe I am just slow on the uptake. Now that I have taken this class he just seems to be everywhere.
Hope everyone is enjoying studying. I know I am!
Friday, 6 November 2009
A Bolt From The Blue | The New Republic
The following link is a book review from The New Republic on Pale Fire. From the date it seems to have come out in 1962 following the publication of the work of course. What I was intrigued by was that in this review, of a book perhaps not many have read before this article was published. The writer sure does give a lot away about the novel and how it works. Maybe she was supposed to, but then again if she didn't the book would have been rather dry. Without all the details who would ever read Pale Fire with a review like, John Shade writes a four canto, 999-line poem and Charles Kinbote writes a commentary on it and includes the tale of Zembla. Who cares really? It is all the details and hints and clues the reader much follow that makes it interesting. It is also nice to see that she covered much of what we have discussed in class and other leads I would have never guessed at.
So the link is below. Its a long article but rather interesting to have another person outside our class and their views on Nabokov's Pale Fire.
A Bolt From The Blue | The New Republic
So the link is below. Its a long article but rather interesting to have another person outside our class and their views on Nabokov's Pale Fire.
A Bolt From The Blue | The New Republic
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