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!