A Summation of Class

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

Paper Topic-Transparent Things

I know we have not read it yet, but I love Transparent Things. It is one of my favorite works by Nabokov, and one of my favorite books of all time. I therefore have decided to write my final paper on it.

Transparent Things revolves around Hugh Person, a very interesting name and you have to keep track as a reader when Nabokov capitalizes Person and when it is lower case person, and his four trips to a town in Switzerland. These trips take place over a couple decades, and each experience is different. In his last trip he is trying to understand his past and all that went on, he is recapturing his memories through his recollections. This is what I want to focus my paper on, MEMORY.

This theme, besides time, seems to be a major topic for Nabokov in many of his works. I want to focus mainly on Transparent Things though, and perhaps a couple references to Speak, Memory. In Transparent Things he explains what constitutes a memory, and how we fall into the past of objects and into our memory of them. It is all right there explained wonderfully in the first chapter.

If you read my early blog, Nabokov's Memorable Tales, I write more about the topic and quote Transparent Things. That blog also covers what I want to cover in my paper. I want to focus on the themes of time and memory in Nabokov's works, Transparent Things and Speak, Memory. In particular Nabokov's passion for memory, and the striving of human beings to always try to remember and understand the past, especially our own.

p.s. There's no connection to the image in my paper. I just like it. It is the cover of Time from January 1969. Still enjoying the success of Lolita I see Mr. Nabokov.

The Vane Sisters

I Know that this topic does not apply to Pale Fire much, except with Sybil, the connection to the otherworldly and perhaps acrostics I have not seen, but I couldn't end the short story with my basic summary. THERE IS SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT IN THIS SHORT 20 SOME ODD PAGE TALE! I had never read any ghost stories by Nabokov and while researching last night on all his clues was kind of creepy. Every time I googled something, a creepy picture dealing with seances came up. Not the kind of research you want to be doing at 10:30 at night, and right before Halloween.

So what follows are all the clues and references I found in The Vane Sisters, and I am sure there are even more that I have missed, but I think my list is a good start. I just had to do this to satisfy my need to discuss all the information placed throughout this short ghost story.

Right off the bat the narrator writes, "the girl's college where I taught French Literature."
-So I instantly thought of Nabokov himself. Nabokov had taught at Wellseley which had begun as an all girls college, although I don't think it was when he taught there. But he also had his degree from Cambridge in Russian and FRENCH literature. Then I thought of Humbert Humbert at Beardsley. Both rather obvious connections, but I like thinking that the narrator is actually Nabokov himself and not a created character.

Next he writes about walking and writes, "...seemed to transform the whole of my being into one big eyeball rolling in the world's socket."
-At this moment I thought of Emerson's work Nature where he writes, "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all...."

At the first mention of Sybil's suicide in chapter 2 it finally hits me. Sybil Vane was the name of the actress in Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray who kills herself when Gray refuses her. Which works for this tale as well, because "D" stopped his affair with Sybil, and Nabokov's "D" could be seen as Dorian himself.

"...a kind of passport to a casual Elysium."
-Nabokov references Greek mythology subtly throughout. Obviously with Elysium here and through Sybil's name and connection with the otherworldly. In her names connection with Erythraean Sibyl.

Nabokov also as I mentioned in class references seances/supernatural events quit a bit. The list of most of the references I caught are as follows:
-tilting table
-"...her existence was influenced by all sorts of dead friends..,"
-spiritualism. During seances visited by OSCAR WILDE, LEO TOLSTOY, ect.
-reading books by Robert Dale Owen and William James. Leaders in early American Spiritualism.
-Epworth and Tedworth (google if interested. deals with seances/poltergeists.)
-Ecto Plasm (google for sure! Extremely creepy and actually happened, rent The Haunting in Connecticut)
-Fox Sisters and anatomical castanets (google. Similar to Vane Sisters but was mostly a hoax)

HOW DOES HE KNOW ALL THIS STUFF TO REFERENCE!

Jamesian Meanderings.
-So the only thing that I could find on this dealt with an early American psychologist, William James, who was very interested in early spiritualism. Judging from the phrase I am going to guess sleep walking! If anyone finds anything else let me know please!

Then there is the paragraph I read that reveals all the clues to solving the story. Nabokov in this one paragraph references Coleridge's Kubla Khan with Mr. Porlock and Joyce's Finnegan's Wake with Anna Livia Plurabelle. Nabokov evens references himself and this particular work, giving the reader the answer to the mystery in the last line about the last paragraph in The Vane Sisters.

Lastly he names William Wilson Carcoran as an art dealer at one of Cynthia's parties. Who happened to be a private art collector that after his death left all his art to a gallery named after him in D.C.

Then of course there is the last paragraph of the work that tells the reader all.
"Icicles by Cynthia. Meter from me, Sybil."
We learn that while the narrator is writing all this, it is the sisters communicating from the other side through him! SO GOOD!

So now that you know most of the secrets I suggest you read it and actually understand the final acrostics meaning. Also please let me know if you find any other references, because I am almost positive that I missed several.

Also read Visit to a Museum if you can and Symbols and Signs. Two other very creepy tales by the master himself, Nabokov.

Lolita: Nabokov's Lady of Sorrows

I keep forgetting to post my paper, even though Dr. Sexson has told us to about a hundred times! So here it is finally, and now I can stop worrying about it!


“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita” (Nabokov 9). Lo, Lola, Dolly, Dolores and finally Lolita, from her official given name to the loving tenderness of Lolita, these are the names that Humbert gives his adored nymphet in Nabokov’s Lolita. In truth though Lolita’s name means one thing and this is personified throughout the tale. Dolores translates as “sorrows”, and this sorrow does not only apply to Lolita herself, but also consumes those around her, especially those people who love her, namely Humbert.

Dolores, or Mater Dolorosa in Latin, often translates into Our Lady of Sorrows, but she has several names that have emerged through the years. The Mater Dolorosa also refers to the Virgin Mary and all the “sorrows” she has suffered throughout her life. All translations of Dolores make it the perfect choice of name by Nabokov for his doomed nymphet. While the name throughout religious history has referred to the sorrows that the Mater Dolorosa suffers herself. Nabokov takes it one step farther to engulf those that love Lolita in their own sorrows as well.

The reader is taken on a journey through Nabokov’s Lolita that follows Lolita and Humbert as they travel and share their sorrows. Right away the reader begins to realize that Lolita will experience some kind of sorrow. Her childhood is stolen from her by a man she barely knows, and she is forever changed. Even Humbert realizes the change that has taken place after he has “possessed” her for the first time, “More and more uncomfortable did Humbert feel. It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed” (Nabokov 140).

Lolita herself exemplifies the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows. She is innocent and unharmed in the beginning, but through her life with Humbert the reader gets to see her evolution from the Virgin to the Lady of Sorrows. The reader experiences and reacts to this change as Humbert does, so that we share in her pain and his epiphanies about all he has done. Humbert even writes that Lolita, “…sobs in the night-every night, every night-the moment I feigned sleep” (Nabokov 176). He realizes what he has done, but cannot control his obsession or change what has happened.

This is where Humbert’s sorrow begin. After he “possesses” her, he realizes that she no longer is the nymphet he first loved. She has changed, and his sorrow emerges out of his longing for what she was. Through his search for her, his lust and obsession becomes insatiable love for her no matter her appearance, “I…knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else” (Nabokov 277). Lolita refuses to return with him and all his hopes are consumed in her dreadful word of “no.” From that meeting on Humbert is no longer alive and aimlessly travels to meet his doom.

Nabokov creates a nymphet named Dolores that is in herself the Lady of Sorrows. Lolita does not suffer alone, but ensnares all those around her, especially Humbert.

Pale Fire vs. Sartor Resartus

So the exam has passed, thank goodness, and now we move on to another masterful work by Nabokov. That is Pale Fire. I have read Pale Fire before and while I find the "commentary" confusing at times, it is the poem that I love to read over and over again. I read most of it over the weekend, but I am still slowly making my way through the last part. I was not sure what my first blog on the work was going to be and then I had classes today.

For Brit. Lit. II today we read Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, which once again while dense, is thoroughly enjoyable. While discussing it in class though the topic was brought up about what kind of writing style this work is. Is it fiction, an autobiography or an essay? In a sense it is all three and that is when I instantly thought of Pale Fire.

Like Carlyle, Nabokov makes up all the characters in his work Pale Fire, from the author to the commentator. Both works hold some truth in their reflection of the man who wrote them. They are obscure and dense, and are there to teach and inform the reader.

I was intrigued by the idea that this kind of writing came rather early in the Victorian period, only about 66 years before Nabokov was born. I knew Nabokov was creative and intelligent, and that he knew and studied many forms of writing. I just never expected to find one in my Brit. Lit. class! Both these works are fiction in that all characters and places are made up. They are both autobiographies in that they reflect the men who wrote them. This is seen through the similarities of the tales with their authors lives, and they are essays in that they inform the reader and have a "commentary" on the bulk of the writing.

Both Nabokov and Carlyle wrote works that were make believe but reflected the world around them, and they chose to do this through an author/philosopher and his commentator. I always knew Nabokov was intelligent, and this masterful work just proves that once again.

Like Dr. Sexson said nothing is ever new, it is always returning to us in many other forms. We can never be original and even Nabokov knew this. It is the myth of the eternal return!

A Doppelganger By Any Other Name

So since I am on here I thought I would write about a couple of the numerous paper topics that have been floating around in my head. This first has to do with the idea of Humbert and Quilty and their roles of being doppelgangers to each other. Each is the extreme of the other and I have always thought this as I read. But really only gave it a lot of thought when Dr. Sexson brought it up in class. I am not sure where I want to go with it, but I am still marinating the idea around while I work on other things.

The other idea I had, and the one I am leaning towards, is much more specific in a way. It has to do with the meaning of Lolita's name, Dolores=Sorrows. This is one of my favorite aspects of the novel, that this is the name Nabokov picked for his nymphet. Because while the sorrows often applies to the person with the name in particular, in this work it seems to effect all those she encounters.

So those are the ideas for now and they are continually changing, but I am really interested in Lolita's name and all that it encompasses.

Humbert and Reader Share Some Revelations

Since I am home sick and I completely forgot that we were to present our discoveries in Lolita today I thought I would at least post them. I have two discoveries, more like things that intrigued me as I read though, because they come from two of my favorite quotes in Lolita. The first is on page 140 and comes from the following quote:

"More and more uncomfortable did Humbert feel. It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed."

I love this quote for the fact that it is an early realization by Humbert about what has occurred between him and Lolita. This is the scene in the car right after the morning that he was "seduced" by Lolita. He realizes that he finally obtained the thing/person he always wanted but now she is no longer that person. From this moment on their relationship is completely different. The nymphet he longed for is no longer there and she will never been the innocent, fragile creature he so craved before. This is both the readers and Humbert's realization/discovery in this quote.

The other discovery is from the quote that begins on page 277 with "She closed..." and ends on page 279 with "Tell me only this."

This long and detailed quote is not so much a realization for Humbert in the book, but one especially for the reader. Throughout this work the reader encounters this man that they view as a monster and pedophile. This is where we get to see that he is a human too, and that he does love her in all her forms. As he says he loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted. Nabokov creates a villain that we can all sympathize with in the end, and that is what makes him someone we can all identify with. As human beings we fall in love and we try not to cross that line from it being love and passion, to an obsession that consumes us. We all want that kind of love that consumes us, but Humbert is a man that takes it too far. This is what Nabokov writes about in his works, the extremes of human emotion and life.

This is why even though we love to hate Humbert he is still one of my favorite literary characters!

A Film Not Wanting to Be Like Lolita!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYkLgaQ27L8

The above link is to the trailer to the new Peter Sarsgaard film, An Education. Although he is quoted as saying that he did not want the film to be like Lolita, and I must say the preview looks nothing like it. I was just intrigued by the mention of Lolita and film while reading the London Observer a couple days ago.

The last time a film was made about Lolita it wasn't even released in theaters in the US. I must say though that I am really excited for this film, even if it doesn't come to Bozeman. Another connection with Lolita and our present surrounding of everyday!

Lolita vs. The Enchanter

Every time I read Nabokov's Lolita I always must first read his novella, The Enchanter. Although this work was published after Lolita Nabokov had written it long before he ever imagined Lolita. It was only with his sons discovery of the manuscript that the public was able to read this masterpiece.

What intrigues me is that this work is so similar to Lolita is so many ways. we are never given any names of the characters involved but if you read Lolita we know them all already. This tale takes place in a bigger city, and the protagonist becomes infatuated with a particular girl in the park and weasels his way into her mother's and her life. But the scenes in the park with the nymphets playing around him are just like Humbert. The mother dies just like Charlotte and he takes the girl away to the Enchanted Hunters Hotel. Nabokov must have had these ideas drifting through his head for many years.

The main difference though is what makes this work so memorable. He is caught and dies in the end before anything really happens. She is asleep and as he looms above her she wakes up and begins to scream. The people in the room next to them hear and they chase him out into the streets where he is hit by a car. I must say that it is one of the most beautifully written death scenes ever, and here it is!

"He rushed past them. Farther down came a specter in tan shoes, farther still the old man climbed bow-legged, followed by the avid gendarme. Past them. Leaving behind a multitude of synchronized arms extended over the banister in a splashlike gesture of invitation, he pirouetted into the street, for all was over, and it was imperative, by any stratagem, by any spasm, to get rid of the no-longer needed, already-looked-at, idiotic world, on whose final page stood a lonely streetlamp with a shaded out cat at its base. already interpreting his sensation of barefootedness as a plunge into another element, he rushed off along the ashen sidewalk, pursued by the pounding footfalls of his already outdistanced heart. His desperate need for a torrent, a precipice, a railroad track-no matter what, but instantly-made him appeal for the very last time to the topography of his past. And when, in front of him, a grinding whine came from behind the hump of the side street, swelling to full growth when it had overcome the grade, distending the night, already illuminating the descent with two ovals of yellowish light, about to hurtle downward-then, as if it were a dance, as if the ripple of that dance had carried him to stage center, under this growing, grinning, megathundering mass, his partner in a crashing cracovienne, this thundering iron thing, this instantaneous cinema of dismemberment-that's it, drag me under, tear at my frailty-I'm traveling flattened, on my smacked-down face-hey, you're spinning me, don't rip me to pieces-you're shredding me, I've had enough...Zigzag gymnastics of lightning, spectrogram of a thunderbolt's split seconds-and the film of life had burst."

It is a wonderful short work by Nabokov and if I have interested you in the least be sure to read this masterpiece.

Favorite Quote from Lolita

So since we are now reading the masterpiece that is Lolita I thought I would post my favorite quote. There is another blog I did about other quotes but this is wonderful. It has that wonderful ability that Nabokov has of combining sound and sight in many of his scenes. It is best if read out loud but I have discovered that about many of Nabokov's works. To bring them to life through the human voice makes them so much better. Try it you will be amazed at the clarity that comes through the joining of his words and your voice.

"After coughing myself inside out, I rested a while on a boulder, and then, thinking the sweet air might do me good, walked a little way toward a low stone parapet on the precipice side of the highway. Small grasshoppers spurted out of the withered roadside weeds. A very light cloud was opening its arms and moving toward a slightly more substantial one belonging to another, more sluggish, heavenlogged system. As I approached the friendly abyss, I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town that lay at my feet, in a fold of the valley. One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and gray roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream, and the rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump, and beyond the town, roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. But even brighter then those quietly rejoicing colors-for there are colors and shades that seem to enjoy themselves in good company-both brighter and dreamier to the ear than they were to the eye, was that vapory vibration of accumulated sounds that never ceased for a moment, as it rose to the lip of granite where I stood wiping my foul mouth. And soon I realized that all these sounds were of one nature, that no other sounds but these came from the streets of the transparent town, with the women at home and the men away. Reader! What I heard was but the melody o children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote an magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic-one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord."

MAGNIFICENT! This is the moment when I feel in love with literature and Nabokov!

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

So this photo of me is when I was about six and my Mother had taken me to Leavenworth, Washington for my birthday. I grew up in Seattle so this was just a short, scenic trip into the mountains of Washington. Leavenworth is a strange town because it is mostly made up of German immigrants or descendants. As you drive into town you feel as if you have entered another world. Most of the store names, restaurant menus and hotels are all in German. I remember feeling as if I had left the country with out even leaving my state.

The building behind me in the picture is our bed and breakfast. One of those horrifying buildings trying to look like a German ski chalet. With the bright white siding and brown trim that in places on the eaves looks like a kind of demented lace. All around the building were these gardens lined with hard, brown dirt and an overwhelming amount of rose bushes. Roses of every color, shape and size. As I lay in bed that night I fell asleep to the wafting smell of roses meandering through our windows.

Encompassing the roses were stone walls. Looking as if they were unstable and about to topple at any moment. which meant of course I had to sit on them and have my picture taken. When I was little I enjoyed having my picture taken for anything, but then that has all changed. In the picture I have my favorite outfit on. It was a tank and shorts covered in red polka dots and my fashionable, Spanish sandals that my Mother got me on a business trip to Paris. Looking as if I belonged in this sunny, hamlet in Germany and not in a small town in the mountains of Washington.

A Mother's Influence

I am well into Speak, Memory and I am loving every line. Each sentence brings me closer to understanding the man who writes these magnificent prose. In Chapter Two though in which Nabokov writes about his Mother and their relationship. I was struck by how he talks about her influence on his senses and personality. Which heavily influences his writing style in that he writes about every minute detail of his characters and their surroundings. That is what ultimately makes his writing so verbose and wonderful. As the reader, each paragraph that you encounter is like a little scene all its own. All this attention to detail in every moment in life is what his Mother gave him in their time spent together.

Nabokov writes, "My mother did everything to encourage the general sensitiveness I had to visual stimulation. How many were the aquarelles she painted for me; what a revelation it was when she showed me the lilac tree that grows out of mixed blue and red!" He goes on to write about how he entertained himself with her jewels she left for him and the many colored facets they provided for his enjoyment.

This stimulation and her tendency to focus on the little things shine through his writing. Both having the predilection to see the details that make every moment important and special. In his writing he goes into great detail describing sounds and the details of a scene as if it were a photograph set before you he was talking about. My favorite though is his writing about sounds as if they are colors that he is seeing and describing. One such example of this is in the closing chapter of Lolita when he writes, as I horribly misquote, that there are sounds and colors that do enjoy each others company. It is one of the more beautiful page and a half in Lolita that I will quote much later. Another example is in his work Transparent Things, which we will not read, that is as follows, "Hugh, a sentimental simpleton, and somehow not a very good Person (good ones are above that, he was merely a rather dear one), was sorry that no music accompanied the scene, no Rumanian fiddler dipped heartward for two monogram-entangled sakes. There was not even a mechanical rendition of 'Fascination' (a waltz) by the cafe's loudplayer. Still there did exist a kind of supporting rhythm formed by the voices of foot passengers, the clink of crockery, the mountain wind in the venerable mass of the corner chestnut."

Nabokov is a master of prose and this is shown through is attention to every detail of a scene. This gift that he shares with the world can be traced back to his Mother and their way of living in the moment and not seeing what is ahead. She was the formative figure that made him the way he is and made his writing what it is. This is the power that parents have on their children. No wonder Nabokov writes of her throughout his work Speak, Memory. His Mother was the one who helped him to become the writer we have come to know and love to this day!

A Memory From Another Time

The memory that keep returning to me as I try to think of one that happened earlier is of the trip my Mother and I took for my 7th birthday. You should know to begin though that I love traveling by train. It is the only way to travel and perhaps that is what makes this memory so memorable.

At this point in the story you should know that my Mother and I were stilling living in Seattle, and so we actually had a train station. For my 7th birthday my Mother planned a two week trip by train from Seattle to Los Angeles to visit my grandparents and go to Disneyland. What is interesting about this memory is that I remember very little of our adventures in Disneyland, which you would think would be a major event in a child's life. All I remember is being freaked out by how big Mickey was and crying and then riding Pirates of the Caribbean until the day was over. What does return to me every so often is that train ride and one night in particular.

If you have ever traveled by train you know that the quarters are very small. They try to jam a bunk bed and a small bathroom into a space the size of our full bathroom at home. When I was little though I loved being in cramped areas. That snug feeling as you read a book or colour, which is pretty much what I spent the trip doing. I loved making the trips to the dining car each evening for dinner and going to get more treats from the overflowing and enigmatic cart that was always there between meals, but was gone when we went to eat. I loved every aspect of the train. The slow pace, the sounds at night as you slept, the voices that would pass the cabin door and whispered conversations between the bunks as my Mother and I spoke in the middle of the night. To this day it is my favorite mode of transportation.

But the memory that is most prevalent is from one particular night. I of course was on the top bunk and on one side of me was the railing and on the other was a small, circular window. One night after awaking from a sound sleep I noticed that the train had stopped, and so I decided to check out the window. I pushed back the thin, soft curtains there and there seemed to be a kind of fog settling around the warm train from the chilled air that surrounded us. As the fog began to clear I saw several men standing there chatting, but something was strange. There clothes were like nothing I had ever seen in day to day life. They were dressed as if it were the early 20th century and perhaps in England. I was intrigued and all I could do was stare at the scene before me. The train began to move then and we passed them in the silence of the early morning, and I watched as they faded into the fag that had once surrounded the train. I lay back and slowing began to fall back into the haze of the sleep that I had left just moments ago, and dreamt about the scene that had been before me.

Every time I see a train this memory returns to me, and it is a pleasant thought about my travels. Whether it was a dream or not it is a memory all the same. While others may forget their dreams I hold onto them and they become memories that I can dwell on. I hope with all my heart it was not a dream, but either way I will remember it for all time. A memory from another time and perhaps in a separate realm I am continually trying to return to.

Nabokov's Memorable Tales

It's hard to think of, when asked, what my first memory was. When do we really begin to retain such information, and what makes something memorable? Making it stay in the corners of our minds or not for all our time in this realm. Nabokov seems to have a fascination with the idea of memories and their importance to what we consider out future. In Lolita he writes of a man that lost a childhood love, and the memories of that love are what drive him to his obsession. Transparent Things is the writing of a man that tries to connect to his past and memories by returning to the places that are familiar to him. And of course there is Nabokov's own autobiography, Speak, Memory, where he is remembering his own past to some how understand his present.

As Brian Boyd writes in the introduction, Speak, Memory is unlike any other autobiography we readers have encountered from great writers, "...more than these and any other biographies it fuses truth to detail with perfection of form, the exact with the evocative, and acute awareness of time with intimations of timelessness (ix)." But in the end that is what makes his autobiography so timeless, his ability to connect that present with the past through his writing. Connecting those memories to the world in which he lives at that moment!

As Nabokov writes in the first chapter of Transparent Things, each encounter we have with some object connects to a memory we have of that object and that objects own history. "When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object (1)." He goes onto write in Chapter 3 about a pencil Hugh encounters and the "memories" attached to that object.

These are the details that make Nabokov's work timeless and memorable. His writing is about connecting our present place to a memory long forgotten. In Dr. Sexson's Classical Lit. class we discussed the idea and importance of cyclical time especially in classical works of literature. Boyd again writes that Nabokov tries to break free of the linear time. Time is more than just cause and effect to Nabokov. As discussed in Classical Lit. anything that was believed to be important if missed would return again. That is what he tries to capture in his writing, that memories are events that are returning to us because of their importance. There is something critical that we need to understand in deja vu. We are being reminded of what is critical in this moment that we experienced in the past and must remember.

So that is what I am waiting for before I can write about by first memory. I must first encounter an object that connects my present to the memories in the corners of my mind. Then I will write about what I remember! And then my past will be with me at that moment and then I will be able to write about the memory that has returned.

The Beauty of Pale Fire

Once again I could go on and on about the masterpiece that is Pale Fire, but these few quotes will suffice for now. I wish I could just copy the whole poem into this blog, but parts of it live on in my mind forever and that is where it will stay for now!

"I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator before which he stood with bent head like an official mourner among the wind-borne black butterflies of that backyard auto-da-fe."

"Windows, as well known, have been the solace of first-person literature throughout the ages."

"Solitude is the playfield of Satan."

"The evening is the time to praise the day"

"True art is above false honor."

"All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust and Sloth, poetry might never have been born."

"...until the red of the sunset had turned to the ashes of dusk..."

"...sometimes when the poet paced back and forth across his lawn, or sat down for a moment on the bench at the end of it, or paused under his favorite hickory tree, I could distinguish the expression of passionate interest, rapture and reverence, with which he followed the images wording themselves in his mind, and I knew that whatever my agnostic friend might say in denial, at that moment Our Lord was with him."

An Update Before the Fire Consumes

So I am just finishing the masterpiece that is Pale Fire. The 999-line poem that is the work of a masters of prose. I am now realizing that I will not be able to finish all the works for class before class begins, but that is okay. I will reread them as we go along.
I probably started this blog much to early, but I am thrilled that I get to take a class focused on my favorite author of all time. He is so lyrical and while verbose I love that about him. I love that he covers every detail of a scene, from the fly crossing someones skin in the stifling heat of a hotel room to the detials of the sounds surrounding a character. He writes with such feeling that you wonder what kind of man could write like this, what his life was like, but that will all be revealed in Speak, Memory.
The good thing about starting the blog so early is that now I have easy access to all these wonderful quotes when I begin to write. Writing about my love of his writing and the details that I missed the first time I read the work. Each time a read one of his works I discover something new!
That is the magic of Vladimir's works. Each and every time you open then up it is like visiting an old friend. Perhaps that is why I feel such a connection to his works. Or it is like Updike says, "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically."

Transparent Things of the Past

Finally the Internet is working at home. It seems to be a hit or miss most of the time. A while back though I finished Nabokov's Transparent Things. One word, MAGNIFICENT! Again I have so many quotes I just don't know where to begin! His writing is lyrical and as I have discovered much better when read aloud. His words seem to come alive when heard out in the open. I am sure people on the ferry to Bainbridge thought I was quite insane! So here they are more of Vladimir's magnificent prose!

"We recognize its presence in the log as we recognize the log in the tree and the tree in the forest and the forest in the world that Jack built. We recognize that presence by something that is perfectly clear to us but nameless, and as impossible to describe as a smile to somebody who has never seen smiling eyes."

"Of the two thrills young Hugh experienced, one was general, the other specific. The general sense of liberation came first, as a great breeze, ecstatic and clean, blowing away a lot of life's rot."

"On contact with paper it acquired a shapeliness, a richness, an ostensible dash, that caused some of the less demanding reviewers in his adopted country to call him a master stylist."

"'Made in Turkey,' whispered its label."

"Hugh, a sentimental simpleton, and somehow not a very good Person (good ones are above that, he was merely a rather dear one), was sorry that no music accompanied the scene, no Rumanian fiddler dipped heartward for two monogram-entangled sakes. There was not even a mechanical rendition of 'Fascination' (a waltz) by the cafe's loudplayer. Still there did exist a kind of supporting rhythm formed by the voices of foot passengers, the clink of crockery, the mountain wind in the venerable mass of the corner chestnut." (I love the way he writes about sounds. A quote in Lolita that is my favorite is later to come that perfectly exemplifies this!)

"...if they had not been especially close fitting she would have wiggled her toes inside as a woman does when her footwear happens to be discussed in flattering terms (smiling toes taking over the making of mouths)."

"He loved her in spite of her unlovableness."

"Actually the favors of death knowledge are infinitely more precious than those of love."

"...not merely because a dying man cannot write books but because that particular one would never express in one flash what can only be understood immediately."

"Days like this give sight a rest and allow other senses to function more freely. Earth and sky were drained of all color. It was either raining or pretending to rain or not raining at all, yet still appearing to rain in a sense that only certain Northern dialects can either express verbally or not express, but versionize, as it were, through the ghost of a sound produced by a drizzle in a haze of grateful rose shrubs."

There are many more where these came from, but I must save a few for later in the year. And perhaps that is the perfect place to stop after our several days of rain!

Dolores, Dolly, Lola, Lo and Lolita

So here it is some of my favorite lines from Nabokov's Lolita. You should know that I had a very hard time narrowing it down. If I hadn't quotes from this masterpiece would have filled this blog!

"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."

"It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed."

"While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster."

"...I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past....I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another's child, but still grey-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond....No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn-even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita."

"And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita."

There is another really long quote that I love, but that will come later on in the evolution of this blog!

My Vladimir

This blog used to be for my classical literature class, but now it is dedicated to my favorite author, Vladimir Nabokov. A genius among Russian writers and a true artist of prose. From here on out I will be re-reading all the novels assigened for class and posting qoutes this summer before class starts in September. Now all can begin to understand my love affair with Vladimir and his writing that began at the age of 12. As Updike says, "Nabokov writes prose the only way it shoule be written, that is, ecstatically." Oh you are so right Mr. Updike!