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!