Sunday, December 13, 2009

Final Thoughts

This will be my last posting to this blog. I know that this last entry has fallen behind the deadline, but as this is simply a parting farewell to this class and the semester, I see no harm in it being a few days past the finish line.

I want to thank you all for making this class, yet again, such an exciting class to be a part of. Your interest in the works, your madness, your obsessions, drove everyone forward, and I greatly enjoyed sinking further into that madness. It was a joy to come to class every day, regardless of several comatose days of prolongued sleep-deprivation throughout the semester. =)

I want to thank Dr. Sexson for opening my eyes to the full scope of these masterpieces. Before joining the class, I had read Lolita on my own several years ago. I remembered loving the way it was written. And in the days before this class started, I would flip through the books, looking for that poetry. A line or a phrase would stand out. The entirety of the work stands out. It's poetry..... It is beautiful. Yet I believe these works are all the more beautiful now, because we know the framework. It is easy to look at a beautiful human being and see that beauty on the outside, but to find the foundation for that beauty within--to see the blood and bones of the making of that beauty is something else entirely. This is what Vladimir Nabokov offers to us--the ability to see a masterpiece as well as its making.

We keep searching in his works for an ultimate truth, for some final theory that will package Nabokov and his masterpieces into a nice, neat little box safely tucked away in our minds. This is the process we adopt with any major work. We pry and we lift up every floorboard until we can say, "this is the theme" or "this is what this means" or "this is what this work says about its creator". It's easier that way. It is harder to leave things complicated. But life itself is not simple. In life, we find no easy answers, only more and more questions. We stumble down false trails and into webs of our own making, becoming hopelessly entangled, but truth....the entirety of truth, we never attain. The search itself has meaning. Discovery, of even the smallest part of that truth, has value. We say that Nabokov's works have more "pleasure per square inch" than any other because he replicates this human condition. This is something of beauty and of pain. This is something divine and mundane. This is infinity in a moment, forever in a heartbeat. Nabokov is one master who will never be happy inside of a box. His works, like liquid light, will permeate every aspect of ourselves whether we want them to or not, and we, like his characters, will never be at rest. These are the eternities for which we live our lives. This is immortality.

I believe I will never be done with the works of Vladimir Nabokov. I will come back to his novels, time and again, like a great lemniscate, gaining no greater truths, perhaps, but swimming in the light of that immortality.

Thank you all, once again, for an amazing semester. I can't wait to see some familiar faces in Emergent Lit.

--Christina

Friday, December 11, 2009

Individual Presentations (Day 3)

Well, here are the notes on the last presentations. (Again, if I mispell anyone's name I'm sorry)

Caitlin: (Game of Worlds) Caitlin focused on Shades poem as a reflection of his reality and its own separate world. Kinbote also creates his own reality. Over all these, Nabokov creates his own worlds that then interact upon each other. Her paper is really a study on the many realities in Nabokov's works, specifically in Pale Fire.

Chris: (whether or not Lolita is a love story) After exploring this topic from some time, Chris came to the conclusion, "does it really matter?" He talks about Humbert's affect on society. He is incredibly human and we empathize with him, yet he thinks of himself, and in many ways is a monster. Perhaps it is not a love story but an analysis or telling of Humbert himself. (Prof. Sexson talked about how this is a love story, but in different terms. He mentioned the aspect of the divine)

Abbey: (solipsism in Nabokov's texts) Solipsism is the idea that everything outside of the brain is the brain's creation. We can only trust that the brain exists. Abbey cites the passage in Lolita where Humbert Humbert states "imagine me. I will not exist if you do not imagine me" as proof of this concept. The characters in the story are the constructs of the narrator's mind. It is then impossible to decipher reality from the imagined.

Keri: (screenplay of Pale Fire) Keri read to the class from her screenplay. I will say that her imagery was really fantastic. Her descriptions went a long way to the viewer picturing the scene as if in a movie. In one scene a butterfly flutters on the breeze of a quiet neighborhood, finally alighting on the blood spattered hand of John Shade, though we do not know it is him yet. Then the scene changes to the royal palace in Zembla and Charles Xavier surrounded by frolicking pageboys. What a great opening scene!

Aron: (poem) Aron wrote a poem incorporating so many aspects of Nabokov and his novels. It was a rare experience to have such a layered poem read to the class in any individual presentation. Reference upon reference flooded my vision, all within the restrictions of a rhyme scheme. I was truly impressed by his weaving of imagery as if on a loom, incorporating references, tastes, and tactile imagery. Nice job!

Jon: ("Master of Puppets") Jon began and continued his presentation with an impression of Dr. Sexson, white beard and all. Wow. What an enjoyable presentation! (and Dr. Sexson got a plug for his capstone class in there as well). Jon talks about his paper in which he writes about Nabokov as a puppeteer over his fictitious authors or narrators. Discussion of authorial voice. He mentions the "beauty and deicacy of the gauze" and cites the quote on Nabokov--that his novels have "more pleasure per square inch" than any other. Jon also mentioned that Nabokov's relation to Humbert Humbert may echo the relationship between Shakespeare and his Prospero.

Chelsea: (creative project) Chelsea talked about her creative project; i believe it was remaking several bookcovers. Then she talks about her analysis of a photograph in which the person she is with has passed away. She talks about the theme of immmortality (our connection to this theme and Nabokov's). Through art we can live forever, either in a photograph, a book, etc.)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Individual Presentations (Day 1 and 2)

Over the past few class periods, I have been taking lots of notes on individual presentations. I just know, Dr. Sexson will sneak some Nabokovian questions relating to some of this on the next exam. The following is a copy of what notes I have. (I apologize if I get anyone's names wrong or mispell them).

Day One:

Jared: (Et in Witt Ego) R acts as a guide through Transparent Things. Jared equates this character with Mercury or Hermes. He is also a personification of death. R is a narrator outside of time; death incarnate.

Jessica: (beauty and pity) focus on characters in Lolita and Pale Fire. Beauty and Pity give to one another and helps us understand or interpret the work. Humbert is trapped in a web of his own fantasy. Tangible sincerity.

Kris: (unreliable narrator) Unconventional novels. We have to look between the lines to see that is actually happening-->more like life than a mere novel. Annabelle then 25 years later comes Lolita (the new Annabelle) who breaks the curse (or perpetuates it??) of the former. The narration challenges the reader through deception, self-awareness, and the overall journey.

Rebecca: (unconsciousness, consciousness, and reality in Transparent Things) Rebecca made an entire slide show to accompany her presentation. Some key concepts: Unconscious taking over the conscious mind. Unconscious state blurring lines of reality. Extending ownership to the readers with phrases like "our person". (reality and fiction mixing). Nabokov--Punctuation provides hints. "To read and understand Nabokov is to have a spine"-->audacity.

Riley: (The Original of Laura) He read the novel 4 times to write this trail-blazing paper. There are 2 dominant narrators (Philip Wilde and Flora--Laura). Parts are written as a first-person manuscript. Other narrator=Eric. Basically, I felt Riley raised questions of the narrative voice in this novel, going into the fluidity and elusive quality of multiple narrators existing at the same moment in time that is many moments.

Jennie Lynn: (Edgar Allen Poe and Nabokov) Both have an "obsession with amorphous nuances of being and reality". Both have a certain fixation on death. Both blur the lines between life and death. Being, death, and dreams are important as the 3 states both are interested in.

Amanda: (short story on Gradus) Gradus reads Pale Fire after it was published and finds out he made a mistake. He comes back to finish the job.

Zach Smith: (Speak, Memory and the two eternities of darkness) Zach talks about Nabokov's infatuation with life after death and that spark of electricity that is souls departed.

Brittany: (Kinbote-esque commentary on Canto 1 of Pale Fire) Much like Kinbote, Brittany used the poem as a basis to relate stories of her own life. One was about a bird that flew into the window of her car and was killed while she was on her way to the beach. The other excerpt was about falling off her bike and being assisted by a kindly old man (who she now knows was John Shade watching her and gaining information for his poem which is ACTUALLY based on her life) =)

Zach Morris: (Lolita and Frankenstein) Humbert is paralleled by Frankenstein's monster. Their obsessions are affecting others. Both show a slow development of guilt that comes with further realization.-->forms basis for personal accountability. Both are isolated from society and destroy themselves with their obsessions.

Emily: (Kinbote and Shade talking about God??) Emily did her presentation before writing the paper, so we got to see all the aspects of the novels she was investigating and weaving together. Here are a few: Wes Anderson movies (Royal Tannenbaums) they are obsessed with ridiculous things and we love them for it. Obsession and admiration (compassion and pity) going hand in hand. She referenced the quote "things are beautiful if you love them". We make them beautiful by loving them, but we are influenced as well.

Janna: (One perspective) The only way that we know the characters in any of the novels is through the voice of Humbert or Kinbote, etc., all unreliable narrators. In Speak, Memory, how do we know any of it is "true"?? We are forced to sympathize with unlovable characters; otherwise, we cannot read the book, because the only voice is their voice.

Alicia: (3-7-7-3) Further analysis of Pale Fire. She cited TONS of information relating to this concept, and if you will remember, the book she was using was simply filled with notes and highlighted sections, etc. An interesting detail or discovery was the fact that there are 4 species of Atalanta butterfly-->4 cantos of the poem. She talked in detail of the Vanessa Anabella (Anabelle, anyone?!)

Day Two:

Lee: (mirrors and reflections) She primarily focused on Pale Fire. These mirrors and reflections form layers upon layers building the texture of the work.

Aaron: (characters) Nabokov used pieces of his own life to create his characters and worlds. Aaron cited Vivian Darkbloom, John Shade and the fact that he too writes on notecards, and the numerous immigrant characters in the novels. Interesting fact--in Zembla, there is a river named after a member of Nabokov's family.

Robert: ("Nabokov the Necromancer") Nabokov communicates with the dead but also brings them to life. His characters are dead before the story even begins (Shade, Hazel, Humbert Humbert, Lolita, etc.). Memory, divinity, and illusion "influence people from beyond the looking glass"

Lisa: ("Nabokov and the Vale of Soulmaking") Development of the soul is a major theme in her presentation. She brings in the works of Keats and Thomas More to illustrate this in regards to Nabokov's works, speaking primarily of Lolita and Pale Fire. The butterfly represents Psyche (the soul); its metamorphoses echoes the metamorphoses of the soul. The Vale of Soulmaking is a work by Keats and talks about the activity of living which is the very making of the soul.

Helena: ("coincidences, connections, and clues in Lolita") The five major coincidence she outlines in the paper are: Annabel Lee, the Ramsdale Class List, 342, Quilty's clues, and Fate. In reference to the class list, she talked about Viola, part of a set of fraternal twins, (who echoes Viola and Sebastian of Twelfth Night). She referenced Adam's discovery about Kenneth Knight as well (see his blog).

James: (Index on Transparent Things) James gave the class teasers from his full index, which, if I may be permitted to say, is a huge undertaking. Off the top of my head, here were a few of the concepts he referenced (though he didn't give much away...for that you will have to read the index). Anastasia, Kronig, The Denton Butterfly Collection (and Wellesley college), the number 3 and its relation to the novel (3 stories, 3 tenses, 3 meanings), pg. 505 and the novel Armande is reading.

Kyle: (metamorphoses of John Shade by way of fountains and mountains) He relates the act of epiphane not to knowing, but to unknowing. Initially, he wanted to focus on the religious influence in Nabokov and that iconology in his work, but then focused on how Shade becomes content with the unknown and with that state of unknowing. This is achieved through his art-->understanding existence at least a little-->"beauty and pity" of art. somehow the "unknowable is tolerable".

Rachel: (Nabokov's obsession with memory) Rachel spoke of the quote of how the novelist is more at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past. (tension film so bugs can walk on it). Lolita--time and love alter memories (Annabelle-->Lolita Love causes a distortion). Time adds "new flavor to recollections". Rachel says that in Speak, Memory Nabokov seems to overcome the pitfalls of his main characters by not sinking into the past and into memories in order that he may create timeless works. "Into the Abyss of Memory" is the title of her essay.

Victoria (?): (Similarities between Humbert and Nabokov) The act of writing and Lolita. Treatment of memory.

Joan Goss: (Gradus made from imagination of Kinbote) Gradus is born from the poem. Words of imagination form Gradus. Kinbote waits for a more competent Gradus; Joan Goss says you only have to ask....JG.

Doug: (Zodiacal themes in Transparent Things) What a compelling presentation! I'm sure the entirety of the class enjoyed falling into the deep fathoms of Douglas' madness. Doug talked about the changing seasons and their relation to Hugh Person's visits to Switzerland and to his life. Hugh comes up lacking in every "amorous adventure" he undertakes making him Virgo (the virgin). On the opposite side of the spectrum is Armande Charmar (?) "a man charmer" who Doug equates with Pisces. Pisces symbol is two fish intertwined representing the eternal progression of life and death. He cites a myriad of fish references in relation to Armande, one of them being the Herringbone pattern on her skis. Above these two is Julia to whom Doug assigns the sign of Cancer. (between june and july is julia-->this is the time where cancer reigns). This is also the time when the sun loses its power symbolizing death. Doug cites arson references in relation to Julia. Below her is R representing the winter equinox, a time of death and rebirth. He is the ghost narrator (life after death). Also: Armande is part of the old Russian aristocracy (does Julia have it in for her?); Julia travels a lot (communist ties related to arsonist tendencies?); Shoebox reference in relation to Hugh and R (possible spies??)

Sam: (Hermetic trickery of Vladimir Nabokov) Trickster. (Quilty is to Humbert as Nabokov is to reader). As a trickster god, Nabokov moves between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. Nabokov presents no moral figures. She talks of the epiphane of experience rather than meaning.

Adam: ("Based on a Misprint") Adam read a foreword to his paper written by a suspicious character, a certain "DAME NASBON" (now....rearrange the letters.....) that had both humor and substance. The paper is very Kinbote-esque. Dame Nasbon calls Adam a "shining example of academic leprosy" =) Adam said he utilized a lot of experimental writing techniques in the paper, at one point even stepping out of the paper to confront the reader. He cited a quote by James Joyce in Ulysses which reads, " A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery". Adam says that awareness and attention in the good reader leads him not to be trapped in the web but rather leads him to somewhere new.

Parker: (Screenplays of Pale Fire) Parker wrote screen adaptations or interpretations of Pale Fire and read a few excerpts for the class. He says he realized that Pale Fire would not make a good movie as it would be primarily composed of voice-overs from Kinbote. He also mentioned how after reading through his writings he realized that "nothing has happened". He read to us from a few scenes of his interpretation of how Gradus would act. In one scene, he is pictured as a "sick bastardization of a Humphrey Bogart charater". Parker says while Kinbote was inventing Zembla and Gradus, he must have been watching some pretty cliché spy movies. His interpretation of Gradus was extremely humorous and enjoyable to conjur from his written descriptions.



>Only one more day of individual presentations to go, and I'm sure that those presentations will be just as compelling as the ones we've seen so far. More notes to come.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Texture, Not Text: Immortality and Art in the Writings of Vladimir Nabokov

Artists and philosophers alike have strived for centuries to define in concrete terms the true nature or purpose of art as well as the role of the artist in society. Even primitive man, through cryptic cave paintings, sought to redefine his existence in terms of artistic representation. Why? Perhaps it is because any power we attain over ourselves and our world stems from an attempt to define the nature of our existence, both in this and in other planes of existence. A creator of art, by seeking this insight, gains some form of transformative power over his accepted “reality”. This power then redefines the artist as a god of sorts to the world he defines, and he becomes a great enchanter or psychopompos, working for the transition of souls between worlds. Nabokov, the creator, uses words in this manner, not as simple tools but as an artistic medium by which to guide us through an endless cycle of finite and infinite existence. Through his written works, Vladimir Nabokov illustrates the synthesis of the microcosmic and macrocosmic realms of thought on a single plane of artistic expression while simultaneously depicting the true nature of art—that is to effect immortality.


Almost in the last stanza of Canto Three of Pale Fire are the words, “this/ Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme; / Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream/ But topsy-turvical coincidence, / Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense” (Pale 62-63). Here we see a vital key to the understanding of Nabokov, the artist. First one must ask, what is the difference between “text” and “texture”? By text, one can infer the strict delineation of concepts or ideas. Text is mere lines, the simple conveyance of information. Text itself is the dry, clinical means of defining intellectual fire put into words. Now, texture, on the other hand, refers to a quality, a feeling. Texture conjures tastes and emotions, beauty and malevolence. Texture refers to the rich tapestry of human existence, and in order to experience texture, we have to feel it. We read texture through the senses; therefore, if we are meant to read Nabokov’s writings as texture, and not as text, we are meant to experience them in a very moving, tactile, almost physical way. With this approach, Nabokov moves from the constraint of merely capable writing to a realm of true artistry rarely known.


An artist’s primary medium is his canvas or the physical work itself. In the case of Vladimir Nabokov, these are his novels, his characters, his settings. However, this initial work acts only as an intermediary between the creator and his ultimate medium which is the reader. The final goal of any artist is to inspire some reaction, some feeling in the viewer, that is, to move a living being in some significant way in order that he may “cope with the blessed shiver” (Speak 212). This “blessed shiver” is the tingle of texture that grips a good reader’s spine when experiencing true art. What then is the reader’s relation to this enchanter? By being irresistibly influenced by his words, readers become the true subject matter of the creator’s art. Nabokov’s power over words, his ability to manipulate them as he wishes, becomes a power over his readers. One could argue that the reader is the end product of any artistic venture, the final substance one wishes to transform or manipulate. However, the art itself, as a means to effect some reaction or tingling of the spine, for instance, transcends its own intermediary nature. It too gains vital significance.


We may ask ourselves, how are we moved? How does Nabokov influence us into empathizing with supremely unsympathetic main characters, again and again? A pedophile and self-proclaimed beast holds our rapt attention in Lolita, just as we dare not set down the mad ramblings of a deluded and pedantic commentator in Pale Fire. Unlike ordinary writers, however, who may use words to illustrate concepts in a linear fashion (from word to idea), Nabokov manipulates words in a very different way, making them come alive through their varied interactions with one another. Everything Nabokov wishes to impart is contained in single constructs that branch out like lemniscates looping back upon themselves, just as in Transparent Things the three tenses of past, present, and future interact with one another simultaneously.


Simple alliteration strikes subconscious nerves as it runs through significant paragraphs or indeed the entire work. In Pale Fire we see the repetition of the initial consonants in two-word groupings throughout the commentary. This speaks, perhaps, to the duplicity of Kinbote himself. On page 295 of Lolita, when Humbert Humbert holds Quilty in his trap, the overwhelming repetition of the letter “s” throughout a single paragraph creates a hissing of sorts. This snake-like resonance could reference the snake in the Garden of Eden, tying in the concept of forbidden fruit and paradise lost and Lolita’s loss of innocence. Or perhaps this repetitive sound could imply, in far simpler terms, a sense of malevolence or craftiness in Humbert Humbert. The alliteration moves the reader as a whisper through the subconscious. Yet not all of Nabokov’s tricks are so tame.


By using word games, palindromes, anagrams, and internal rhymes, Nabokov dream-weaves a spiraling web of illogical sense by which we are hopelessly trapped. The reader is meant to pick up on these “false scents” and “specious lines of play,” to be trapped in a continual search for hidden meaning and one unifying truth that then never reveals itself (Speak 291). In Pale Fire, we are given Gerald Emerald who without the “eralds” would simply be “gem”. In Transparent Things, we meet Hugh Person, really “You Person”. Similarly, New Wye, where Shade and Kinbote live, upon closer inspection becomes New York. Just as in Lolita Hourglass Lake becomes Our Glass Lake in Humbert’s mind. Now we see “d’Argus” becoming the infamous Gradus. The reader may be blindsided continually by anagrams such as Vivian Darkbloom in Lolita, who is really Vladimir Nabokov. This same reader is perhaps shocked and delighted to learn of all the hidden references on page 250 of Lolita in the names scribbled in numerous hotel registers. “A. Person, Porlock, England” traces back to the revered poem, Kubla Khan, by Samuel Coleridge, for instance. Also, simple license plates such as “WS 1564” refer to William Shakespeare’s birth date. With Nabokov, this is only the beginning. An entire semester of study leaves even the most astute reader begging for more time and more elusive discoveries. Any one finite reference can send us rocketing from the basis of a simple concept into realization upon realization until we find ourselves irreparably moved. This is how we transcend worlds.


Nabokov achieves this condensing of information and images into so small a space through a remarkable economy of words. Each seemingly insignificant phrase is chosen with immense dedication to the impact it will inflict upon the reader. Like a series of dynamite blasts, these words send tremor after tremor through the reader, making room for a far greater expanse. In line 495 of Canto Two of Pale Fire, two seemingly insignificant words at the start of the line, “Black spring/ Stood just around the corner, shivering” lend immense significance to the work as a whole. The word black conjures images of melancholy and death, and as it is situated so near to the word spring, together they can only foreshadow the death of Hazel Shade. Just as Spring itself signifies rebirth, so will Hazel be reborn when, by falling into the frozen waters before her, she springs into that black abyss between worlds. In Lolita two words “(picnic, lightning)” serve much the same purpose but to greater impact (Nabokov 10). Humbert Humbert describes his mother’s death simply, yet within these two small words lies all the description one needs to visualize that tragic end as well as the full extent of emotion that accompanies such an event (Nabokov 10). In two words we experience the innocence of a picnic and the destruction of the lightning. Nabokov’s artistry in relation to the words themselves establishes his characters within a very physical state of existence similar to our own.


Yet by reaching through the tactile physicality of this existence, we can experience another world, what some would call a more real form of existence. In Pale Fire, John Shade begins his poem with the lines, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure in the windowpane; / I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I/ Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky” (Pale 33). Here John Shade, and Nabokov, as the artist, question the meaning of our immediate existence. The waxwing dies upon contact with that other world, yet he is reborn, obtaining a truer existence in that “reflected sky”. There seems to be this deeper reality, the stuff of dreams and fluid memories, beneath our paltry existence. This is the texture of our fullest moments, the product of love and pain and art at its greatest potential.


What form of existence should we consider more “real”? The finite physicality of our existence appears real, “For we are most artistically caged,” yet it is through dreams and emotion, in memories and in art that we seek our refuge (Pale 37). “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness” (Speak 19). These are the opening lines of Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiography. The existence of this endless spiral between the microcosm of objective reality and the macrocosmic transcendence of that reality is what Nabokov wants us to perceive. Beneath the finite levels of existence lie eternities of unknowable depth. Using words not merely as tools but as artistic means, the artist can enable his readers to sink through the finite, just as Hugh Person does with a simple pencil, into another world, into the abyss.


This then, is the true nature of art, not only to move and transform the reader, but also to achieve a true and lasting form of existence, to achieve immortality. As living beings we exist in “reality,” but eventually and inevitably we will die. Our only solace, our only form of continued existence, is through art, through the transcendence of the finite in favor of an infinite existence. However, this too is fragile. Humbert Humbert cries, “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me” (Nabokov 129). Even our immortality as achieved through art is finite and fragile, as it depends on the existence of readers and on their ability to uncover the texture inherent in the text.


On page 270 and 271 of Speak, Memory, Nabokov describes a single moment of revelation and bliss when he speaks of a flower petal drifting closer and closer to a still pool of water below it. He speaks of the reflected petal rising to meet its double in one symbiotic moment and the fear that “the reflection might miss and the petal float away alone, but every time the delicate union did take place, with the magic precision of a poet’s word meeting halfway his, or a reader’s, recollection.” This image depicts the knitting together of artist and reader through one artistic vision. It brings together those two worlds, identified as “reality” and “reflected sky” (Pale 33). This is the precision of art, the texture of ability, and the immortality strived for.


The difference between text and texture is the difference between a finite understanding of our world and an immortality beyond words. It is the difference between knowing and feeling. The business of art, therefore, is to redefine the world in terms of this rich texture. What we seek from art is not the safety of concrete definition but rather the transcendence of “the real” for the unending. Only then, in the “refuge of art” can we reflect ourselves perpetually into the future and live in the filaments of light bulbs (Nabokov 309).




Works Cited

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita. Ed. Alfred Appel Jr. New York: Vintage, 1991.
---. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage, 1989.
---. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage, 1989.
---. Transparent Things. New York: Literary Classics, 1996.

Day Two of Group Presentations

Wow! Another great day of presentations!

My group presented first. We showed a film we made about chess and how Nabokov constructs chess problems that the reader must solve by reading through his novels. Adam was the technical genius behind the whole project, and I would like to thank him especially for all the work he put into our movie. He brought together quotes, voice overs, still images, different angles of the scenes we shot, and music into a great finished product. Thanks Adam! Joan was great as Kinbote and added some....twitchiness to the role which made me laugh at least. The more we looked in Nabokov's novels, the more chess references we saw. We could have spent an entire semester simply talking about that! Still, I'm happy with how our project turned out, and I hope everyone else enjoyed it too.

Group Five went after us. Each of the group members composed a different written piece in the style of their characters. Humbert Humbert journaled, Lolita wrote a poem from the road, John Shade did a dramatic reading of a recent poem =) , and of course, Kinbote commented on that poem. I was particularly impressed by how well everyone in the group captured the personalities of each major character in their individual writing styles. The unifying theme to their presentation was our own class list. I liked that interplay between "reality" and fiction along with the extra layer of the fictional characters as well. Also very impressive was the amount of blogs this group referenced. They must have read them all! Great job! And what an amazing poem by John Shade. It was beautiful, just as Pale Fire is, and the performance was excellent.

Finally, Group Six did a skit showing the fairy tale connections in Lolita. What a great final presentation! You guys had me laughing the whole time, and I was amazed at just how many references you were able to get in in such a short time. Using the projector to set the scene was a great idea too; it really helped to have a backdrop, music, something multifaceted like that. Here are some of the fairy tales referenced: Little Red Riding Hood, Venus and Actaeon, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Beauty and the Beast, and Frankenstein. Wow I just don't know what to say...you guys did an amazing job, and your performances were really enjoyable.

Now its on to individual presentations. Good luck to everyone presenting tomorrow! I wasn't sure if I had to go tomorrow, but if I do, I may be entirely too sleep deprived as I was up all night putting the finishing touches on the paper. Try not to hold it too much against me if I'm barely conscious. =)

Sunday, November 29, 2009

First Day of Presentations

Well I'm sure we all had high expectations of the group presentations on Tuesday, however, like all the group presentations I have seen in Sexson's classes, these met those expectations and surpassed them.

Group 1 performed a dramatic skit involving Nabokov, his characters, and the blurred lines between "reality" and a dream state. James played Nabokov, at work on creating his iconic characters. Lolita, Kinbote, Shade, Humbert Humbert, etc. all hovered around him, acting out scenes from the novels and even interacting with one another at times. The group used several desk lights to set the stage between scenes, and as one scene came to a close, the audience would be plunged into darkness only to be lit up again by the light of Nabokov's genius. Parker did an excellent job playing John Shade, even incorporating his love of drink into the role. As he read lines from his poem, this Parker Shade would slur a word or two or drink surreptitiously from a flask in his coat pocket.It was exciting to see Janna playing two characters, one being Kinbote, in this play stealing the words from Nabokov himself, and "Dickers", a play off Emily Dickerson whose work was also stolen and modified.

The most exciting part of this group's presentation for me was not only watching the characters come to life and interact with one another, but also what they were saying about the creative process. Nabokov interacts with his characters, takes from them, gives to them, lives through them, all of these things encompassed in a single pen stroke. The creative process is shown as something fluid and cyclical, not as a strictly linear progression or sterile act. It was nice to see that idea adressed so well in so short a play.

The genius of Group 2 was their dedication to portraying Nabokov's characters in the flesh. The context for this was a tv talk show, the "Vivian Darkbloom Show". Lee, books in hand, played Vivian Darkbloom interviewing some of Nabokov's major characters. Quilty was there, seemingly unfocused but his famous playwright whit could be seen in several lines, delivered laughingly almost to himself. "Yes, I have many pets at home." Lolita was there, bored with the proceedings and would poke fun at Humbert Humbert saying she wanted to go see a movie instead. H.H. was, as always, self-contained and well-dressed and would periodically lean over to Lolita saying things like "Darling, don't talk to strangers". Of course we can't forget Kinbote in all of this. Stroking "his" beard the entire time, he would interrupt Vivian and ramble on about himself in the most hilarious manner. And who could forget Hazel Shade, hair dripping in front of her face, ghostly palor about her cheeks. She was truly brought to life, almost as an anime character in a three-dimensional world. Periodically she would scream something at the others or shrink back into herself.

All in all, Group 2 simply blew me away with their performances. Some details to remember: Each character was compared to a figure from Greek mythology. Lolita was Venus or Persephone. Quilty was Pan. Hazel Shade was Mania. (The associations for Kinbote and Humbert Humbert escape me at the moment...). Group 2 also talked about how Quilty is called the "Proteus of the Road". Proteus was a Greek god, a shapeshifter. Also important to remember for the test are several palindromes Hazel Shade wrote on the board. Here are the one's I wrote down: CAIN: A MANIAC. A MAN A PLAN A CANAL: PANAMA. LIVED ON DECAF: FACED NO DEVIL. SENILE FELINES. CIGAR? TOSS IT IN A CAN IT IS SO TRAGIC.

Group 3 played a game with the class, splitting us up into two teams to guess at charades and other games. James really got into things, yelling out answers over the class. But their side was not prepared for our secret weapon. We had Sexson. =) Here are some of the answers to the game: Icharus, The three tenses, Enchanted Hunters, Ramsdale class list, Ornithology, Lemniscate, Princedom by the sea, (Picnic, Lightning), Doppelgangers, Emerald and Gradus, You person (Hugh Person), Lepidoptery, and Waterproof.

All in all, it was fun to see everyone put so much effort into presentations that were certainly informative and definitely entertaining. My group goes on Tuesday; I can't wait to see what you all think of our efforts. (I won't give anything away; you will just have to come see it). ;) Good luck to everyone with the last presentations! I'm sure they will surprise us yet again.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Transparent Things


From the first page of Transparent Things, I was addicted. By the end I was, as I typically find myself in relation to Nabokov, astounded by the weight of all the many references. How could there be so many connections in so short a novel! Even this tiniest of masterpieces is complete and alive. Yet I know I have only scratched the surface. With Nabokov, I am always just beneath the surface, no matter how deep I go.

What struck me about Transparent Things was this major thread running through it, a thread that is present even in the title. The first page alone is so beautifully representative of the whole. Each object is transparent, revealing entire histories and connotations that build upon themselves until we find ourselves holding, not just a mere wooden pencil, but a part of every link in the chain of progression, a part of a living tree. There is this limited "reality" superimposed over everything we see and touch, even people. The narrator of this first page seems to say that if we want to remain in this "reality" or tied to the "real" world, we must learn not to focus too much on any object, lest we lose ourselves in these eternities. Our whole lives are spent searching for meaning. Simple objects trigger memories; a teacup or a cookie finds its way into our hands and suddenly entire worlds open up before us.


Is there any such thing as ultimate "reality" in the end? The narrator states "One should bear in mind, however, that there is no mirage without a vanishing point" (553). This seems to imply that absolute truth is attainable, beneath the transluscent layers of time, memory, perception, connotation, definiton. Or perhaps we only loop back upon ourselves, like a great Mobius strip, ending where we began and starting already complete.


With every book we've read this semester, upon reading the final lines, I always, quite involuntarily, find myself cycling back to the first words for greater connection. To be a good reader, we have to reread. That is the only thing I want to do when I reach the supposed end of a novel by Nabokov. I have been trapped in this web....of illusion and immortality, sense and coincidence.


As a quick side note, I did a little research into the line in French on page 507 and found some interesting connections. The line reads, "Ouvre ta robe, Déjanire that I may mount sur mon bûcher."


The words "Ouvre ta robe" means roughly open your dress (garment), and the word "bûcher," according to a translated French Wikipedia article, refers to bonfires as were used to burn criminals at the stake.





A little research into the name Déjanire revealed that this name is a reference to the wife of Hercules who, as the legend goes, offered him a cloak soaked in the mystical blood of a centaur whom the hero had defeated in order to keep her husband from leaving her. Little did she know that the cloak was poisoned. The cloak burned Hercules so badly that he then threw himself into a funeral pyre.





So, with these references in mind, the line that Hugh Person pens in his journal to Armande reads "Open your robe, wife of Hercules, that I may mount my funeral pyre". Person's love of Armande will lead to his demise. Remember that he dies by fire in the end. Deianira, of Greek mythology killed herself by hanging herself. Armande dies by strangulation.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Verlaine Discovery


On page 170 of Pale Fire, there is a tiny, seemingly offhand reference to "an old bearded bum, . . . who stood like a statue of Verlaine". I was interested in that single word, Verlaine, and took to the internet hoping to find some statue or impressive sculpture to feed my artistic appetite. What I did find surprised me.


Verlaine refers to the French poet, Paul Verlaine of the late 1800s. His short biography (linked above) states that his first wife was named Mathilde Mauté. A little research revealed that over time, the name Mathilda which means powerful in battle, was shortened to form the name Maude. Here we see the specter of Aunt Maude coming back to us once again from her literary grave. After Verlaine's love affair with Mathilde burned out, he eventually fell in love with his student, Lucien. Lucien means, in Latin and in Greek, "light".


Verlaine was a "Symbolist leader" through his many poetic works. After sifting through some of his many beautiful pieces, I stumbled upon La Bonne Chanson. La Bonne Chanson is a collection of poems Verlaine originally dedicated to Mathilde. In several of these poems I found COUNTLESS references to pale and to fire, even to shade. I have copied one I found to contain the most references; it is titled "Since Shade Relents". I have italicized the words that, to my eyes, harken back to Shade, Hazel, and Pale Fire.


Since shade relents, since ‘tis indeed the day,
Since hope I long had deemed forever flown,
Wings back to me that call on her and pray,
Since so much joy consents to be my own, —

The dark designs all I relinquish here,
And all the evil dreams. Ah, done am I
Above all with the narrowed lips, the sneer,
The heartless wit that laughed where one should sigh.

Away, clenched fist and bosom’s angry swell,
That knave and fool at every turn abound.
Away, hard unforgivingness! Farewell,
Oblivion in a hated brewage found!

For I mean, now a Being of the Morn
Has shed across my night excelling rays

Of love at once immortal and newborn, —
By favor of her smile, her glance, her grace,

I mean by you upheld, O gentle hand,
Wherein mine trembles,--led, sweet eyes, by you
To walk straight, lie the path o’er mossy land
Or barren waste that rocks and pebbles strew.

Yes, calm I mean to walk through life, and straight,
Patient of all, unanxious of the goal,
Void of all envy, violence, or hate
It shall be duty done with cheerful soul.

And as I may to lighten the long way,
Go singing airs ingenuous and brave,
She’ll listen to me graciously, I say, —
And, verily, no other heaven I crave.


The piece is filled with references to light and dark, to immortality, even to imagined enemies rising up "knave and fool at every turn". I encourage my reader to consult the hyperlink to La Bonne Chanson to find more poems, many of which reference shade. In "Before Your Light Quite Fail", Verlaine speaks of a "paling star." One stanza starts " Turn on the poet’s eyes/
That love makes overrun—" Shade is our poet, crying over his departed Hazel. In this same poem, further lines read, "Your glance, that presently / Must drown in the blue morn;". Not only does Hazel drown, but also remember, the sea drowns the moon and her ghostly fire.


Another famous French artist, this time a singer called Charles Trénet, formed a tribute to Verlaine's "Chanson d'Automne" (song of autumn) in his song entitled Verlaine or Le Chanson d'Automne.




After looking up the lyrics for this song and putting them into a free translation website, I found this crude, but accurate, translation of the French lyrics:


"Les sanglots longs Des violons De l’automne Blessent mon coeur D’une langueur monotone Tout suffocant Et blême, quand Sonne l’heure Je me souviens Des jours anciens et je pleure Et je m’en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m’emporte Deçà, delà Pareil à la feuille morte "


"The long sobs Of The violins Of the fall Injure my heart OF a monotonous languor All suffocating And pale one,when Rings the hour I remember old days and I cry And I leave For The bad wind That takes me on this side,beyond Similar to the dead leaf"


In this piece as well, we find references to a "pale one" and also to death.


After following this thread, I was shocked to find that so brief a reference lost in the midst of so many grander and perhaps more "important" references, could contain so much meaning. ... Or perhaps I have been led down yet another false trail and have now become thoroughly deceived, deceiving my reader in the process. I leave any verdict on the matter... up to you.

Odon


I wanted to see if there was any historical reference to the name Odon. My reader will remember Odon was the actor in Zembla who helped Charles Kinbote to escape. A quick google search directed me to this person, Odon von Horváth. Horváth was an extremely influential playwright of the early 20th century. His name, Odon, as the article states, is the Hungarian form of the word Edmund (perhaps a reference here to Shakespeare, yet again?).

One interesting bit of information about Odon is that he lived in constant fear of being struck by lightning. Ironically enough, he died from a falling branch in a thunderstorm.

One of his plays, Faith, Hope, and Charity, tells the story of a young girl in dire financial straits who the cruelty and harshness of this world breaks down. The play opens with her attempting to sell her cadaver for the money to pay off fines. In the end, she jumps into a river to kill herself, but is unsuccessful. She dies just after her rescue when her heart gives out. The story seems to parallel Hazel's story in several ways. However, the most interesting part of the review hyperlinked above, was the playwright's explanation of this tragedy he calls a comedy.

"All my comedies are tragedies --- they become funny only because they are sinister. The eeriness has to be there."

Comedy and tragedy, stand ,paradoxically, united. Hazel's tragic suicide and the beauty of Shade's poetry, unites with a pompous, conceited, purposely misguided commentator and we laugh! As we saw in class on Thursday, the only difference between the cosmic and the comic is a single letter.

Santos Dumont's Demoiselle


Just a quick, perhaps random side note, one of the MANY planes that "King Alfin" crashes is the Santos Dumont Demoiselle, pictured here. It was a plane perhaps similar to this one in which Alfin crashes to his death against the castle walls.

John Shade...

This is my representation of John Shade from Pale Fire. He is standing nonchalantly, as if out for a stroll, hand in pocket, his writing implements at the ready. Note the Atalanta Butterfly in the corner and the red hankerchief in his pocket. The drawing was completed rather quickly, so it could be better, and the pictures don't do it justice, but I gave it a shot. =)
John Shade

Detail of Drawing














Monday, October 26, 2009

Duplicity, Disguise, Disa!



(Orsino And Viola by Frederick Pickersgill)






In class we've spoken on several occasions about duplicity in Nabokov's work. We talked about doppelgangers in realation to Humbert Humbert and Quilty in Lolita. In Pale Fire, we've lightly touched on the subject in reference to the recurrence of mirrors throughout the book, this concept of reflections. Water plays a key role in this. However, it wasn't until Gretchen Minton's visit on Thursday, and her explanation of the influence of Shakespeare on this novel, that I made my discovery.







On page 173 of Pale Fire, this passage caught my eye; Kinbote recalls his first encounter with his soon-to-be-wife Disa: "She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy, a little knock-kneed but brave and lovely".






For those of you (like myself) who had no idea what a "Tirolese boy" looked like, here's a video of Tirolese dancers. ( Tirol is a small state in Austria.)






This one line from Pale Fire, seemingly serving only to show Kinbote's homosexual attractions, brought to mind the similar disguise of Viola from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Disguise and duplicity play a major role in this play as well. Viola is doubled by her brother Sebastian. Olivia is doubled by Orsino. The list continues for almost every character in the play. Resemblance and this disguising of self manifests itself most aptly in the person of Viola. Here is a woman dressed as a man who then loves a man, Orsino. Homoerotic tendencies can be found in this relationship as well. Orsino says "I'll sacrifice the lamb that I do love" (here speaking of Viola who he thinks is a man) "to spite a raven's heart within a dove" (here speaking of Olivia who he supposedly loves) (5.1.127-128).




Disa disguises herself as a man and loves a man, Kinbote, just as Viola does. However, Kinbote, unlike Orsino, does not end up loving Disa once this disguise is abandoned.




The disguise theme does not stray far from the character of Kinbote himself. He lives in exile, disguised as a professor and all-too-interested neighbor. He escapes Zembla in disguise, wearing a red cap and red outfit. This red echoes the Red Admiral butterfly seen in the last passage just before John Shade's death.




When I researched the meaning of the name Disa, I found that in Greek, it means double. Disa also refers to a genus of orchids. Though they come in several colors, the majority of the pictures I found were red.



(Disa Uniflora)
















Thursday, October 22, 2009

Mumblings on 188


This Tuesday in class, Dr. Sexson put the following words (transcribed by Hazel from a supposed ghost) on the board:

pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told

He asked us to decipher the message, if indeed there was a message before class today. Throughout the period, I continued to stare at the words, trying in vain to divine some pattern. I was, as Kinbote, mystified as to the meaning. Of course, like him, I could make out the words "war" "talant" "her" and "arrant" (the last of which could refer to one line from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, "The moon's an arrant thief"). We all know this play, Timon of Athens, recurs quite frequently both in Zembla and in the exiled Charles "Kinbote"s new homeland. Could there possibly be a hint here to the thievery inherent in Kinbote's actions? After all, he is now in hiding after having stolen Shade's final masterpiece. The circumstances of John's death alone seem open to question and interpretation.

After following these and similar threads for some time, I hit a wall. Finally, I resorted to googling the words, in effect, I begged to be told how the trick worked. I found it confirmed an offhand notation I had written in my book.

This site highlights the pattern, just as in my book I had found the first part of it by circling, in a row:

pada ata lane

As the site shows, this is but the beginning of the pattern:

pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told

Atalanta....over and over. The name alone refers to the Atalanta of Greek myth and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Atalanta also, as I found in this article on Brian Boyd's interpretation of Pale Fire, refers to the Atalanta butterfly, this Red Admirable as it is often called, who hovers before John Shade and Kinbote, just before Shade's imminent death. The reference, so early in the notes in connection to Hazel, leads one to believe that this is the foreshadowing of her death, her immortality the soul (psyche) of the butterfly.


Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Alphina


To go off on a tangent of sorts, I found this picture of the Clematis Alphina. To me, it echoes the mysterious sphere of light flitting about in the dark, elusive and intangible.

Waxwing



After surfing the internet for a while, researching some topics related to Pale Fire, I happened upon this music video and it made me smile. It's titled Waxwing: A Music Video with Commentary. The title alone, hopefully, sets the reader on guard for some Kinbote...esque behavior. Enjoy!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Paper Commentary---Kyle's Blog

I haven't finished reading through all the wonderful papers on the blogs, so I can't say if my choice is necessarily "the best". What does that really mean, anyway? However, Kyle's paper, entitled The Barber's Son, really caught my eye.

As Dr. Sexson pointed out, the scene with the Kasbeam barber was one of Nabokov's personal favorites; he said it gave him a great deal of difficulty. However, I never fully realized the significance of that short passage. Kyle's paper was like a puzzle piece finally fitting in place. One passage that particularly struck me was when Kyle talked about the difference between, in his words, potentially existing and existing immortally. To be imagined, to live on in memory or in art, this is the truest lasting form of existence. Photos, paintings, great novels, these places offer us a "refuge", a last hiding place from ultimate oblivion. This is why photos are so significant! True, there lies in them a certain element of death or decay, the fleeting moment barely captured. But there is also, as Kyle's blog helped me to realize, a sense of immortality. Why else would we, the human race, be so fully obsessed with recording, in this manner, ever moment of our short and meaningful lives?

Monday, October 12, 2009

Fragments of Immortality

After reading several of Vladimir Nabokov’s greatest works, one can only hope to become increasingly familiar with the enchanter and his grand illusions. From the macrocosm of overarching themes, one begins to see the finite world of imagined connections as well as those suspiciously insignificant details. The reverse is also true. Within the microcosms of simple words, mere fragments, lie the whispers of eternity. One line, on page 125 of Nabokov’s Lolita, encapsulates, in the simplest way, the nature of Humbert Humbert’s affliction.


Humbert, having safely secured his Lolita from the eyes of the world, remarks, “I wandered through various public rooms, glory below, gloom above: for the look of lust always is gloomy” (125). Beneath the darkness of Humbert’s obsession, burns something small and tentative, a deep and abiding love, albeit crippled by a web of lust and lies. Limitless heaven and torturous hell combined, this is the nature of Humbert’s lust. The word glory in this seemingly offhand statement foreshadows the emergence of a value far greater than the beastly Humbert thinks himself capable of.


This man, this monster, lives a wretched existence. He struggles in vain to gratify his desires while preserving not only the innocence of Lolita’s childhood but also the innocence of his earliest encounters with love. In Lolita, his beloved Annabel lives on, as does a love that was guiltless and full. Beneath the violence of Humbert’s desire, lies a sea of calm, beneath the beast, a timid soul. As he struggles to unite himself with that earliest vision, through the person of Lolita, in order that he too may be guiltless and radiant, he generates the antithesis of that love.


On some level, Humbert Humbert knows this self-deception exists. In one poignant scene, he describes, painfully, an episode of remorse in which “at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again” (285). Redemption lies forever out of Humbert’s reach as he continually condemns himself to an animalistic state of continual gratification rather than heeding the tortured spasms of a soul yearning to be human. Instead, he exiles himself from this humanity, becoming the beast he proclaims himself to be, like a disgusting worm crawling over the petals of a delicate rose, marring its perfection.


Humbert Humbert achieves a broken sort of redemption in the discovery that he truly loved Lolita, that there was “glory” beneath the “gloom”, but the moment he realizes this truth, Humbert is forced to realize that he has destroyed the very innocence he sought to capture in her. Lust destroys his broken love in the end. As he stands on the precipice of this realization, listening to the melodic cries of untarnished children at play, he recognizes, finally, that the true tragedy “was not Lolita’s absence from [his] side, but the absence of her voice from that concord” (308). This, the totality of that destruction is all Humbert Humbert can see.


In the artful depiction of this “glory” beneath the “gloom,” perhaps Humbert Humbert has earned his immortal legacy, as one of the most sublimely eloquent yet despicably monstrous creatures to have fallen short of paradise.

One Page Annotation

Dr. Sexson asked us to annotate a single page from Lolita. I have procrastinated, sadly, this project for some time now, but in the spirit of putting Lolita to rest, if only for a moment, here are my discoveries from page 45 of Part One.

(Some of my annotations may echo Alfred Appel's. Rather than glancing to the back for every line, I simply researched whatever caught my attention as I scanned the page, line by line for all those hidden gems and details).

"Look, make Mother take you and me to Our Glass Lake tomorrow".
>Humbert misspells Hourglass Lake as Our Glass Lake. The hourglass symbol implied in the first lines of the Foreword with these words, "the Confession of a White Widowed Male" (3). The White Widowed Male references the Black Widow Spider, whose markings greatly resemble an hourglass.

"The leafage of a voluminous elm played its mellow shadows upon the clapboard wall of the house. Two poplars shivered and shook."

>The elm tree is said to signify "strength of will and intuition," however, the poplar reference, a recurrent symbol in the novel, holds much more significance.
>Poplars are sacred to Hercules, as he wore a crown of poplar leaves around his head when performing one of his labors in the underworld. The legend says the leaves are darker on the top due to the flames of Hades and lighter on the bottom because they were drenched with Hercules' sweat. Another legend tells of how the nymph Leuce was turned into a white poplar either by Persephone or by her abductor, Hades himself. The reference here to the abduction of a young girl by an older man parallels Lolita's abduction by Humbert Humbert.

"'Little Carmen' record"
> Carmen (in Italian or Spanish "carmel" or "carmelo"). The Hebrew form, Karmel means "garden", perhaps a reference to the garden of Eden. There are numerous references to Eden and temptation throughout the novel (see apples, the color red, garden references, and the line "when I stood Adam-naked" on pg 299). In Latin, the name means "song". In several cases the name is used for both men and women, making it ambiguous. We see here a reference to Quilty's own ambiguous name, as Clare can be used for women as well. On page 61, the Carmen song itself foreshadows Quilty's death in the lines, "And the gun I killed you with, O my Carmen".
> Carmen here also refers to the violent opera by Georges Bizet.

"finished relating in great detail the plot of a movie she andL. had seen"
> Though I could not find a reference to the exact movie Humbert describes, this article goes into the various movie references in the entirety of Lolita.

"when I had ocmpletely enmeshed my glowing darling in this weave of ethereal caresses"
>The reference here is, again, to the spider symbol. Humbert traps unknowing Lolita in his devious web.

"I dared stroke her bare leg along the gooseberry fuzz of her shin"
> Here is a picture of a gooseberry. Though I could find no definite symbolic significance, the fruit itself greatly resembles that of the pomegranate. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Persephone eats pomegranate seeds in Hades, forcing her to return and stay there one month for every seed eaten, explaining the seasons. The reference to Hades and Persephone has particular significance in this novel (see above).

Monday, September 28, 2009

The Birth






Throughout Lolita, there are numerous references to the image of Venus, the Greek goddess of love (married to the god of war). The first reference I found was on page 58, "Dimly there came into view: a surrealist painter relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster replica of the Venus de Milo, half-buried in sand."




Only a few pages later, on page 64, to be exact, Humbert Humbert, always the well-read poetic genius, recites, "I regretted keenly her mistake about my private aesthetics, for I simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink, that raw rose about the lips, those wet, matted eyelashes". Here Humbert references Botticelli's captivating painting, the Birth of Venus.
The recurrence of the references to Venus, only serves to conjur images of love, lust, beauty and idyllic womanhood. But we cannot forget that the goddess remains inextricably wed to the lord of war. Love and war writhe over one another in an attempt to gain dominion over our souls, over Humbert's...soul. While, the affair between Humbert and Lolita starts, at least for Humbert, with lust, he only achieves true love when he has lost her, when he stands on the brink of war with his double and rival, Clare Quilty. "As I approached the friendly abyss, I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds [. . .] And soon I realized that all these sounds were of one nature [. . .] 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" (308).

Kreutzer Sonata


On page 38 Humbert Humbert mentions René Prinet's Kreutzer Sonata, a painting hanging over the bed in his prospective room at the Haze residence. Appel tells us this is also a reference to Beethoven's Sonata of the same name.

L'Arlésienne


When Humbert Humbert first sets foot in the Haze household, he mentions, "that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh's "Arlésienne" (36). I was curious to know what painting this was exactly. There are several paintings with the same title painted of Madame Ginoux who ran the Yellow House at which Van Gogh spent some time; she also posed for Gauguin as well.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Nabokov speaks

Taking a break from Speak, Memory, I'd like to introduce you all to this video of Nabokov that I found on Youtube. The film starts in french then breaks down into several videos of Nabokov speaking on different topics. Four minutes into the piece, Nabokov talks about his picks for the greatest books of all time and reads from a notebook in which he writes about "things that [he] detests", which include "portable music", "concised dictionaries", and "journalistic clichés". =) The last few moments show Nabokov and his wife, Véra, playing chess, a rare glimpse of their interactions together.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Colette to Véra--Influence of the Sea



As I reached the end of Speak, Memory, I noticed three major....motifs, or images that thread their way throughout the piece. These three were the image of the beach or seaside, of wheels or spirals, and of gardens or the forest. In the women he describes, and especially in particular details and events or places that he associates with them, we see these concepts. My next few blogs will focus on these women and how they are related to these recurring motifs.

Colette, his first childish love, is inextricably associated with the beach. This ocean (of emotion?) is evident in the lines, "I lay awake, listening to the recurrent thud of the ocean and planning our flight. The ocean seemed to rise and grope in the darkness and then heavily fall on its face" (151). The tragedy is in the failure of some great attempt to reach the as yet unattainable....something. Many times in the rhythm of a passage, there is the rhythm of the sea, tumbling with tension, crashing alive on some forgotten shore, then receding softly and slowly. Like the wings of a butterfly, the sea rises then falls away. Listen to the words in these next lines.....if only one could close ones eyes and hear them, then the image would be obvious, and in fact Nabokov makes this image clear with the phrase in parentheses. Still, the rhythm weaves the dream, this image:

"There our child kneeled motionless to be photographed in a quivering haze of sun against the scintillation of the sea, which is a milky blur in the snapshots we have preserved but was, in life, silvery blue, with great patches of purple-blue farther out, caused by warm currents in collaboration with and corroboration of (hear the pebbles rolled by the withdrawing wave?) eloquent old poets and their smiling similes" (308).

The alliteration of the "s" sound conjurs the hiss of rolling waves, waves that crash upon the shores of our minds eye with the alliteration of the crashing "p" sound. This is followed by the rolling of pebbles in words like "collaboration" or "corroboration". Once it is heard, it cannot be unheard. "The finder cannot unsee once it has been seen" (310).

Perhaps the sea represents love, emotion, or perhaps a type of rebirth. I would argue that it represents a sense of timelessness....of moments stretching on and on without end, the image of a single wave repeated over and over remains both singularly individual in its momentary existence yet timeless in its ongoing repetition.

After describing Louise and Tamara, Nabokov ends the work with Véra and his son, at the sea. At the very least, in the romantic interests he describes in detail, we come full circle, ending up, once again, at the seaside.

Now it's Nabokovian...

Most of my childhood pictures not being digital, and as I am one of the primary photographers in my rather large family, there were not many photographs to choose from. This singular snapshot from the recent past currently resides on the memory card of my sister's newly acquired camera which can most likely be detected in the glare of both our glasses. Mine are prescription, hers purely decorative. She is pictured on the left, her right arm stretching out and almost obscuring my person in an attempt to capture us both in the frame. The gray seat cover in the upper left belongs to my little red car, a red similar to the red of my sister's tanktop. It was quite hot on this day as can be seen in the sun beating down on my sister and myself, seconds before we fled the car to enjoy the playful breezes. In the far distance, through the dust encrusted window behind us, one can see pine trees so indicative of the northwest. We are, at this point, in Idaho, after a lengthy drive on our way to the west coast. We have stopped momentarily to take in the ambiance of this campground adjacent rest stop. The red beads around my sister's neck are actually small beans, naturally red, and were a gift from our family in Portugal. I have an identical chain, though I am not wearing mine. The black feather earrings that are attempting to hide in the voluminous mass that is my recently straightened hair flutter in the slightest breeze like the movement of so many tiny sparrows, making me think of flight every time I wear them. These are perhaps most fitting for this occasion, as we fled the rampant restrictions of sedentary life in favor of discoveries yet unknown.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Endless Discoveries

I will be honest with the reader of this post and state frankly that I had a great deal of trouble engaging with Speak, Memory throughout much of the book. Beyond the first few brilliant words, that remain burned in my sight like the flare of a candle all too quickly put out, my eyes flitted about the page like the varied butterflies Nabokov spent his life chasing. I became lost in the myriad of details, and by allowing my fullest attention to encompass only the smallest details, I lost sight of greater themes. I failed to discover that "marvelously disguised insect or bird" in "a tangle of twigs and leaves" (298).


Something changed, however, when my eyes reached chapter nine or so. Somehow, a brilliant metamorphosis took place by which I was transformed into an avid believer in the greater meaning of each seemingly unimportant detail. Like tumblers in a lock, motifs followed one after another until the very last lines when the key was complete. Suddenly.....an !explosion! of knowledge, discovery, consciousness. The last page of my book is littered with hastily scrawled notes, as I strove to hold on to each of the many frenzied thoughts all vying for my immediate attention. I wanted to read the book again, this time with all the care of a scientist, in order to.....divine... how the trick was achieved.


There is so much to speak of that I hardly know where to begin as it all wants to flow tumbling out of me with no order, no limitations, only connections. I hope, in the next few blog entries to delve into each train of thought, though they fall one into the other without end....


One recurring theme or imagery that struck me from the beginning was evident in the opening lines of the work itself:


"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (19).


From the very first line, Nabokov presents our lives as this vision of pure light suspended in impenetrable darkness. I was determined to track this light throughout every image, every snapshot in the album. Countless times, he describes a particular light striking an object, or a face, a tree.....a butterfly. This light then pervades every memory as some sort of divine thread connecting each piece of a fragmented whole. In his fascination with chess, again, there lies this eternal conflict between these two opposing forces of light and dark, white and black, life and death.



On Page 22, Nabokov speaks of his "birth of sentient life" in his first realization (or DISCOVERY) that he had a consciousness, an identity, independent from that of his parents. This realization gives him an intense form of joy similar to the solving of a puzzle, the winning of a chess game, the capture of an elusive species of butterfly. He speaks of childhood games and of the "fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel" into the light (23). This scene, this remembrance, seems wholly metaphorical and echoes, again, that feeling of rebirth, of waking consciousness, and of discovery. Nabokov wishes to retain this waking, knowledgable state at all times, lamenting in later chapters the need for sleep. He says, "the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me" (109). He regrets the inevitable joining of oneself with the darkness. Every discovery along the way becomes a repetition of the act of awakening. And so we climb, ever higher, gaining increasing insight with every revelation.


So, the butterflies, those beings of riotous color and limited time become symbols of this act, and perhaps, of ourselves. We undergo immense metamorphoses throughout the course of our lives. These lives are limited by the boundaries of time, by those two great abysses that lie on either side of this existence, as Nabokov describes. We can only hope to live that brief life in glorious color. Perhaps the endless quest to capture these butterflies is but a quest to capture self, a quest to capture the sublime in every moment. So, like the intrepid butterfly hunter Nabokov himself represents, we set off, net in hand in search of "the blissful shock, the enchantment and glee" that can only be found in such discovery.


Tuesday, September 1, 2009

First Memory...

Most, if not all, of my memories from childhood strike me, not as a logical series of events, nor are they informative as to the kind of life I was living. They come to me as impressions, images. Most of you probably don't know yet that I am an art major. Knowing that, it's no surprise that I tend to think in visual terms. I can easily remember images, stories, songs, yet struggle to recall exact names, dates, or hard facts.

So, my childhood does not proceed in my mind as a running history. People or places often fade away. But how vivid are the images I am left! How spectacular to remember only the moments that moved me, only the visions that lived in my eyes. These are sometimes simple things, seemingly mundane moments that to any passerby may appear ordinary. Perhaps they were to me at the time, yet something of value existed, otherwise why archive certain memories over others? Undoubtedly, the value is there. We have only to find it.

My first recollection, the first image that can reasonably be called a memory is this:

I am sitting on a wooden table near a sliding glass door. Light is flooding in through the massive glass pane and sometimes catches in my eyes. I look away.

I remember touching my hand to the finish on the tabletop, perhaps to feel the waxy varnish, perhaps to keep myself from falling. I remember tracing the grain with one or two clumsy fingers as the light swam in the now golden valleys. I remember my mother and her hands in my hair, a flurry of activity. Perhaps I would squirm or pull away, and I remember words. The most vivid moment was my awareness of a pair of silver metal scissors on the tabletop. The light exploded off the surface, blinding and captivating. I reached out to touch them. I remember being told not to, but refusing to listen. As if powerless to do otherwise, I put my hand, again, on the blades, as if I could somehow touch the light itself. And then they were gone.

I remember the absence.

Years later as I was going through a very old photo album, I found a picture of myself sitting on a table, my mother cutting what little hair I had, my first haircut; I was still very small, no more than a few years old. Yet... this image struck me so profoundly that it has never left.