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.