Assignments are

here.

Walk-through of term paper plan and use of criticism

This will be my presentation for 10/22.
Theme or motif for my study: uniqueness, resemblance, and replication in Lolita

Structure:

1. Introduction: why write this essay - justification
2. Setting the scene: how can we interpret Lolita? Use of quotes from criticism.
3. Introduction of idea: tracing it through passages from text, quoting with discussion.
4. Conclusions

Introduction: justification

• Most criticism of Lolita focuses on its typically Nabokovian qualities: penchant for games, undermining of fictive reality, concern with aestheticism. Otherwise, authors treat it as a "realistic" novel, searching for themes or finding fault with its cavalier treatment of hebephilia. New criticism should go beyond this, to a deeper understanding of the book.
• Lolita is one of the most admired and imitated novels of the postwar era: by understanding its design, we can understand the genre of literature it spawned.

Setting the scene: how can we interpret Lolita?

Critics have always distinguished between Lolita and a realistic novel, which means that Nabokov's masterwork does not attempt to reproduce or represent reality. As Nabokov has said (quote from interviews?) it is a self-contained reality unto itself. Furthermore, Nabokov's contempt for reductive interpretation is well known - he despises Freudian, Marxian, and other "formulaic" approaches to literature. At the same time, he has built a psychological explanation for Humbert's deviance into the novel, and, while constantly mocking those who would reduce literature to an interpretation, he presents a character in many ways ripe for exegesis. He has placed the reader in a double-bind. 

Phyllis A. Roth comments on this dilemma:

[quote (28) "Nabokov's relationship to his art... reverses the aim of much fiction... a change of consciousness."]

While it is frequently said that satire attempts to hold a mirror up to the reader, forcing him or her into an uncomfortable position, I believe this is overstated with Lolita. The reader, however, finds him/herself in the position of having to uncover patterns rather than mining for "deep meanings." [Alfred Appel commented on Nabokov's use of surfaces, viewing this "flatness" as an American quality that appealed to Nabokov - but I am saving this for the part of the plot that involves America.] Roth goes on:

[(29) Simply speaking, what Nabokov gives the reader is not reality, but a way of perceiving reality.."]

This way of perceiving reality is structured, I would argue by patterns and games. [Here I quote Nabokov's comment on chess puzzles - I can refer back to my own post. It is a contest between reader and writer.]

In chess, one must imagine the other player's point of view. Similarly, when reading Lolita, the point of view of the character echoes that of the writer. Roth comments:

[(29) "VN presents characters who are engaged in the working out of the same problem: how most successfully...]

The intricacies of the character/writer's attempt to create a fictional world, an attempt which fails in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, and Lolita - among others, structures the reader's experience as well. If H.H. is an artist, Lolita is the story of his failure:

[Roth (30) "Most of the central characters are artists, or artists in disguise."]

But Humbert, unlike V. in Sebastian Knight, is not an artist, but an artist manqué  a failed artist [describes himself this way on p. 15] whose frustrations lead him to attempt to mold his life into a work of art. Lolita is therefore both the creation of a failed world, the more elaborate for its failure, and the story of this world's creation, as Roth concludes: "readers of Nabokov will attest, to know the world of his novels is no slight accomplishment" (33).

When we attempt to understand Humbert, we are actually describing his artistic method; and his goals as an artist are to - not reproduce, but - rediscover a unique original. This goal is a key to Humbert's method of self-justification, his claim that he is an artist rather than a killer (Lolita 88); his conceit that he is, unlike the average child-molester, extremely discerning (16-17); and his psychological explanation that he has spent his life attempting to recover a lost or interrupted experience.

[possible quote: Winston 424: quotes from Lolita: we expect people to be as stable as fictional characters..." This assumption of a fixed, if not necessarily unique, identity is part of the process of writing fiction.]

Tracing the idea through the text[

[use opening passage with name to argue that Lolita is unique only to Humbert when she is called "Lolita" rather than other versions of her name?]

p. 16-18: uniqueness of nymphet-seekers and nymphets - but irreducible uniqueness of Annabelle ("no nymphet but my equal") italics mine

[note images of isolation: deserted beach 12-13 (unity of H. and A.), 14, 16, garden of Eden 20]

Uniqueness of Humber/Annabelle opposed to the trite, vulgar (i.e. common) Valeria (25-26) and the conventional Charlotte (37) [brief quotes only, with commentary highlighting the nature of their "vulgarity"]

p. 39 "it was the same child" - H.H. refuses to distinguish between individuals, later acknowledged when he says he had "safely solipsized" (60) Lolita.

This is a math problem. The isolation of two which leads to them being one is opposed to the plurality and repetitiveness of the real world. Nabokov's interest in mathematician/pedophile Lewis Carroll inspired the book; and we should also remember his description of himself as an "indivisible monist" (SO 85).

But Humbert is a copy: not only because he is a "type" as much as Charlotte as shown by her letter (67), but, even to Lolita, he resembles "some actor or crooner chap" (Quilty) (43).

Other relevant passages: Nabokov's use of lists (51-52) and interest in names: both emphasize the uniqueness of the important person in the list (Lolita); names, of course, indicate the individuality of any person, although the morphic names (for instance, Lolita's Spoonerisms 120) in Lolita demonstrate how unreliable this uniqueness is.

Other relevant scenes: masturbation scene (57) shows Humbert's belief that he and Lolita remain "solipsized" together - i.e. in his world - as long as they don't touch.

[bring in more Lewis Carroll]

"Rabbit hole" scene (122-124): by making contact with Lolita and therefore between the adult world and world of children, Humbert makes a terrible mistake - he enters reality.

"the Enchanted Hunter is blind by definition - is hunting an illusion or a delusion: when, after they leave the hotel, Lolita becomes a real person, her distinctness from the Annabelle image becomes more obvious..."

Lolita's adventures: 136-137 - separates her from the pristine image he had for her and connects her to "girls of her time" ruined by "modern co-education" (133): she is therefore one of many, not another of one

The Charlie to whom she lost her virginity is also one of many - Charlie-types appear everywhere as they drive around America. Once Lolita moves into the real world, she must be protected from - the real world so that Humbert can maintain his sense of her as singular.

Quilty appears in hotel (127) and as anyone who looks like Humbert or his lecherous uncle Gustave (123, 139, 202, 218, 237, 246, 359, 380, 406, 423). All these Gustaves are not only Quilty, but they resemble Humbert through kinship, which separates him from oneness with Lolita or uniqueness in himself. His real self is pursuing his "ideal" or Platonic self, which is pursuing its lost other half.

His "kingdom by the sea" is now mass-produced and mobile in the form of the "motor courts" (146) in which Humbert stays with Lolita - he continues to stay in them after he has lost Lolita.

210: "We consider our guests to be the finest people in the world" - emphasizes the anonymity of the guest.

218-219 pursued by Quilty, whom he generally sees in the car mirror

In general, they are in a world of industrial reproduction in which every roadside attraction is a copy of something else. This, for Appel, is part of the "Americanization" not only of Humbert, but of Nabokov. The world of surfaces in the experimental fiction of the day (Robbe-Grillet), films like "Last Year at Marienbad," celebrated by Nabokov, and the "flatness"  of the American landscape, enacts a rejection of "the old myths of depth" (23) and a flatness epitomized by Dick Tracy cartoon strips: a surface that cannot be interpreted.

269-276: Humbert's encounter with Lolita destroys any illusion of her uniqueness or oneness with Annabelle: she is a mother, a reproduction of Charlotte, and a mother - the cycle of biological reproduction goes on. It is Quilty who, at camp, held a "coronation ceremony" (276), theatrically dramatizing Lolita as a princess, whereas Humbert merely tried to view her as a rebirth of his original princess.

When Humbert confronts Quilty - (295-305): he does not to preserve his own uniqueness by killing his double [295: "une femme est une femme, mais un Caporal est une cigarette"], but to preserve the idea of Lolita's oneness with Annabelle long after the reality is extinct (cf. last passage 309).

Conclusion

The patterns in Humbert's failed artistic endeavor show the conflict between his desire to preserve the stillness of time. Only in this stillness can the sense of oneness between two people, similar to the unchanging figures in Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," be preserved.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave	15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

However, this stillness is opposed by the nature of language: we know characters and figures through comparisons with other characters; and, in fiction, we know them as types to some extent. Characters situated in the modern world are subject to a universe of copies and comparisons. More importantly, the Humbert who writes Lolita from prison is distinct from the Humbert who is a character in Lolita - the distinction between the "real" person and his fictional version of himself results in the confrontation between Humbert and Quilty.

Ultimately, Lolita is about the failure of art to reproduce memory. The "depth model" of traditional art creates a surface that conceals meanings, but these meanings are generally ideas, not lost experiences. The surfaces of Lolita evoke the failed enterprise of the artist who wishes to recreate (according to the Romantic model in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) life. Rather than representing such a recreation, it evokes the comic tension between the artist's goals and the unreliable medium of language.

Assignments 10/22 to 10/31 - these apply to everyone

due before class on 10/22:
Read "Aesthetic Bliss" and "The Dangers of Fiction."
Write about any of the three articles as a prelude to your research. In other words, when you write your term paper on Lolita and Speak, Memory, you will use criticism to set up your argument. In still more words, you will define how the book can be interpreted using these critics - who comment on the problems of interpretation. You will have to explain and justify your own approach. Try to write a first draft of this part of your essay - the part in which, using critics, you define your approach. In class on Tuesday I will demonstrate how to do this.

due before class on 10/24:
Nabokov's Anglophone poems are in the packet. Lolita - due to its self-conscious style and formal construction - may be interpreted in the manner of a poem rather than a novel. Nabokov also said that his poetry was a better link to Lolita than works of fiction like Bend Sinister. Read all the poems, but I have assigned one poem to each class member. The goal here is to interpret the poem as well as you can, but also to find Nabokovian themes and tendencies (and connections to Lolita) in the poems. Here are your poem assignments:
"A Literary Dinner" - Tene' and Nic
"The Refrigerator Awakes" - Tess and Eileen
"A Discovery" - Madeline
"The Poem" - Alex and Griffin
"An Evening of Russian Poetry" - Amy
"The Room" - Mary Linh
"Voluptates Tacionum" - Stella
"Restoration" - Juno and Josh
"The Poplar" - Emma
"Lines Written in Oregon" - Trey
"Ode to a Model" - Kayla
"The Ballad of Longwood Glen" - Andrea and Danielle
"Rain" - Shea

before class on 10/29
Option #1: If you are experienced with chess: Try to solve and comment on three of Nabokov's chess problems. Remember: chess problems are not meant to represent plausible situations that may arise in the playing of chess; they are absolutely "made up" situations. Also, remember: Nabokov was interested in the aesthetics of the problem - that is, the beauty of elegance of the situation and its solution. He considered chess problem composition an art. Your comments should attempt to connect Nabokov's approach to (and interest in) chess problems with his approach to fiction. If you study the chess problems, the create writing assignment is optional for you.

Option #2: The creative writing assignment: One of the problems of Lolita is that it is told completely through the voice of a madman. In spite of this subjective style which limits the reality of the events in the book, many readers respond to it as if it were a realistic novel. Writers such as A.M. Holmes have rewritten the notorious story from different points of view and in different styles. Take a key scene in Lolita and rewrite it - either altering the style (choose an omniscient, realistic voice) or the point of view (choose that of a female character such as Charlotte, Valeria, or Lolita - or even Mona Dahl - or a character such as Quilty or Maximovich). Post this revision on your blog - I will print out copies for the class, and we will discuss the composition as a whole group. The goal, ideally, is that your rewrite will shed light on the book itself - but we'll see how it goes.

"Farm Implements and Rutebega in a Landscape"

By John Ashbery.

Mid-term

You should use your blog to work towards this term paper proposal, due just before Thanksgiving (11/21). It will contain the following elements:

• brief summary of your theme and your possible theory about Lolita and Speak, Memory. If you don't have a theory yet - fine.

• a thorough collection of passages from both books you intend to use in your term paper: you should type out the passages, include the page numbers using MLA style (in-text citation), and include notes with each one relating it to your theme

• at least three critical articles with notes on how the views in each one may relate to your own study of Nabokov; in other words, you may be building on the ideas of others; or you may be balancing your ideas against others who see the books differently; you may use articles we've read for class, but I suggest you search the library database for critics who explore issues similar to the ones you are exploring in Lolita andSpeak, Memory.

Week of 10/14: Key Passages - the conclusion

In class, in groups, we will discuss the most important parts of the book's ending in light of the tensions we've established. Your post should touch on all three parts as well:

1. Losing Lo. Part Two: Chapters 18-20.
2. Finding Lo. Part Two: Chapters 27-29.
3. Killing Quilty. Part Two: Chapters 33-end.

Also read (for discussion Thursday), two articles on Lolita (print out and bring to class): "The Road to Lolita" and "In Search of Aesthetic Bliss." Your post for Thursday (due Wednesday) should touch on these articles, relating them to your theme (if you have one). Both are posted on Blackboard under "Resources."

More Lolita puzzles:
1. What is the color most frequently associated with Lolita?
2. If Lolita were a game, what is Humbert's fatal move?
3. There are many passages in which Lolita's appearance is compared to that of a boy? How would you interpret this?
4. Humbert cries out in a strange passage that he fears water above all else. A reference here appears to be to a section from Eliot's The Waste Land - "Death by Water." And the confrontation with Quilty contains a reference to "Gerontion." What do Lolita and The Waste Land have in common thematically, if anything?
5. A "swoon" is a way of becoming insensible to reality; and a "haze," mentioned throughout the book, is another state of unawareness. What are other ways of escaping from reality that are important in Lolita?
6. The essentially melancholy story has rhapsodic elements to the very end; Appel commented on Humbert's mix of pleasure and sorrow. How are his pleasure and sorrow connected?
7. We have noted Humbert's frequent references to fate or McFate. But, other than his judges, who is it that determines Humbert's fate? To whom could he be referring?

More about games in LOLITA

• When Lolita asks H.H. about the name of the hotel where he raped her and which she undoubtedly remembers, they are acknowledging two realities: the fictional nature of this story with its outrageous coincidences; and the fact that he raped her rather than her having "seduced" him. Humbert's uncomfortable awareness of his own physicality after their encounter at The Enchanted Hunters hotel is a sign of physical reality breaking through his screen of poetic language.
• A game has borders: during the one-year drive around America (the first one), Humbert cannot leave the borders of the US. 
• Humbert's apparent amorality is appropriate for a game player - no one feels remorse when taking a series of pieces in checkers.
• A game, like a work of art, is a symbolic system. But while traditional art is understood to refer to reality, the pieces in a game are meaningful only within the borders of the game.
• Why does Humbert know that he will leave clues if he tries to poison or drown Charlotte? Well, no action is hidden in a game. Humbert cannot kill because his role does not allow it. He cannot do things that are outside of his stated powers - like a bishop on a chess board. Jean Farlow is the referee of the "lake game." She sees everything and says she might put Charlotte and Humbert "in the lake" (of her painting). She also shows her moral watchfulness and curiosity by alluding to Quilty's crimes - which she heard about through Ivor Quilty, the dentist.
• Theater, as opposed to writing, makes the distinction between reality and fiction explicit, since th audience can clearly see that the stage is not real. In fiction, the audience imagines the story is real, which makes immoral content less acceptable. (However, Nabokov's style emphasizes that the actions of the story are only symbolic since they occur in language, not in reality. He uses extreme situations to emphasize this distinction between the symbolic and the real.) Drama tends to be self-conscious. One of the writer figures is Quilty the playwright; another is Vivian Darkbloom, associated with Nabokov. She not only writes plays, but a retrospective book about her lover, My Cue. And Lolita is a retrospective book about Humbert's lover.
• Speech is associated with power in Lolita (not power in the Foucauldian or broad sociological sense, but in the practical and interpersonal sense). Humbert's well-bred speech gives him power over Charlotte and the reader, but is useless agains Lolita and Quilty. He loses his ability to speak at times (notably when kissing Lolita for the first time). Maximovich and Charlotte both speak poorly (French, correct and incorrect, is a sign of status here, one that does not impress Lolita). She speaks less to Humbert as the story goes on.
• Part of the "game" of a novel, is the withholding and revelation of knowledge. Nabokov misleads us about whom Humbert has killed. He lies to Charlotte. Valeria lies about her past, as does Humbert (he exaggerates his polar exploits). But Humbert fails to understand Lolita's relationship with Quilty, and Lolita deliberately controls this knowledge. We see her taking on the role of the playful novelist late in Part Two, as if she has learned from both Humbert and Quilty.

LOLITA puzzles - use for both posts

Read chapters 4 & 5 of The Art of Play (in the packet).

1. Do you know where your children are? Lolita is up to something and Humbert doesn't know what she's up to. Make a catalog of the signs that she is doing something behind her stepfather's back. To win, you must find at least seven.
2. Where the bodies are buried. Are there more dead people than living in this story? It appears to be haunted by ghosts. We know from the Foreword that "no ghosts walk" (what does this mean in relation to the story)? Name at least ten dead persons who play a role in the story and indicate how we know they are dead. 
3. Déjà vu all over again. Sure, Humbert has a double. And Lolita had a precursor. But, wait, she had a precursor in two senses. And Humbert, in the Haze family, had a precursor. Humbert and Lolita, as a nontraditional couple, had a precursor couple. And Charlotte, as Humbert's wife, had a precursor. Charlotte's precursor's lover had a lover and their adventures resemble those of Humbert and Lolita. Humbert has two precursors and two successors as Lolita's lover. Quilty has a companion. Even Charlotte's maid has a counterpart. Humbert and Annabelle were "coevals" when they had their precocious affair, but similar child-lovers reappear throughout the book: find some. Gaston Godin is an opposite of Humbert Humbert: how? Describe the opposition between the similarly-named Charlie and Charlotte - both rivals of Humbert for ownership of Lolita. And so on. Find ten examples of how everyone is a different version of everyone else in Lolita.
4. "This is royal fun." Nabokov thought the name Humbert had a royal sound, and Humbert often refers to himself with a kingly cognomen. He and Annabelle spent their brief time together in a "kingdom by the sea." And monarchical language is everywhere. Lolita is often called a "princess" in a positive and negative sense. Find seven distinct ways that Nabokov refers to kings, courts, monarchy - and descendancy.
5. Enchanted hunting dogs. Nabokov once gave a lecture on the "equine theme" in Madame Bovary. Who or what is doglike in Lolita. Between dog and butterfly the dogs actually win (although butterflies and moths abound). Not only are there a lot of dogs or people that act like dogs - canine coincidence occurs at key crossroads in the book. Find seven examples to win.
6. Gaming the fiction: this can only be answered after the discussion of games on Tuesday 10/8 - i.e. for Thursday: While the novel itself may be seen as a game, various events in the novel are games in themselves: Lolita's "kissing game"; Humbert and Charlotte's marital game ("every game has its rules"); the "game" of avoiding the law and maintaining Lolita's compliance during their year-long drive through America; the proposed game of Russian Roulette with a revolver (later in the story)... In each case, how does the event have the characteristics of a game discussed in class?
7. Bonus questions: Who wrote The Enchanted Hunters? What was the indecent story about Ivor Quilty's nephew Jean Farlow wanted to recount? Why is it necessary for Jean to interrupt John when complains about the Italians and adds "at least we are spared the..."? After Jean's death from cancer, John outdoes Humbert in a sense - how? Humbert says you cannot design the perfect murder because you will leave signs. This seems surprising, given his belief in his own cleverness. But Humbert's murder of Charlotte by drowning was bound to fail - why? Originally Lolita is interested in boys her own age - the "Charlies" - that seem to be everywhere; however, Humbert learns from two sources that she lacks a normal interest in her coevals. Why does she change? As Humbert and Lolita travel around, Humbert sometimes addresses not "the jury" but specific people, living or dead. One of these is Clarence, his lawyer. Who are some others? Humbert's account of America refers to many recognizable aspects of the US - such as roadside attractions - but few real people? To what group do the real people belong? Are there any exceptions to this?

The Enchanted Hunters (revisited, or revivified; reevaluated)

• Let's not forget, H.H. has a bizarre conversation with a drunk person on the porch, perhaps C.Q. He imagines this person knows what he is about to do. We cannot be sure whether Humbert mishears the strangers' remarks, or whether he actually does know.. So reality is unstable here.
• Just incidentally, Humbert and Lolita having sex at the hotel Charlotte suggested for a romantic getaway underlines H.H. and Lo as having a quasi-marital relationship. Or: Lolita has replaced Charlotte. This is ironic because Charlotte's hatred of Lolita appears to be based on her resentment at being "replaced" by the younger generation.
• The purple pills don't work - or do they? Could it be that both drunken Humbert and drugged Dolores Haze are in some kind of narcotic haze - or a temporary state of enchantment?
• An "enchanted hunter" pursues something that may not be real, and the expression suggests that he is trapped in an eternal pursuit. Lolita, at the same time, is a "hunted enchanter" and H.H. is an enchanting hunter. After leaving the hotel, the humanness of both is emphasized: through Humbert's unwashed state and Lolita's post-coital discomfort. From this point onward, they are "disenchanted" in two senses: with one another and because the spell is broken.
• The Enchanted Hunters is not only the title of a play in which Lolita later performs but is in Briceland, a play on Broceliande, the forest where Merlin lived. (Vivian Darkbloom is Quilty's companion, as we know, but Vivian is also the name of the woman who is able to entrap Merlin with his own spell - and VD is an anagram of 'Vladimir Nabokov.')

Time and Our Glass (Hourglass) Lake

One other detail that relates to the question of Charlotte pulling Humbert "into" time in spite of his wish that time stops. The flirtations Jean Farlow warns Humbert that he is swimming with his wristwatch, which in the '50s would have been destroyed by water (and stopped). But Charlotte has given him a newfangled "waterproof" watch, so the hourglass of time goes on. This is a case of technology foiling H.H.'s "magical" world.

Nabokov, Lolita, and prejudice

This gives me a chance to return to the issue of prejudice - giving my opinion, not any final opinion - which came up early in the semester in regard to Nabokov or his characters being anti-woman. While, as someone with a traditional, though liberal (which meant anti-monarchist, the 18th century sense of liberal) background, Nabokov can never be expected to be in concord with contemporary values held in academia, cultural institutions, etc. However, his views and his characters' apparent views should not be confused.

Essentially, Nabokov might be put off by the American tendency to think in groups, whether we are prejudiced or decrying prejudice. We have already spoken about "categorical thinking" - Charlotte's and the Farlows' tendency to have a fixed and formulaic definition of "masculine" and "feminine." Charlotte's simple-mindedness in this regard is seen by Humbert as a contrast to the relatively fluid European attitude towards such matters: in other words, Europeans of his day were not so obsessed with groups and were less likely to generalize about them. Note that John Farlow complains about "too many Italians" in Lolita's school, and is about to go on when he is interrupted: "at least we are spared the..." Presumably, his going to refer to Irish or blacks. His prejudices show an American tendency to generalize. However, Nabokov would no doubt view discussion of "oppressed groups" as a horrendous example of Soviet-style generalization - and all but meaningless.

Philosophically, Nabokov described himself as an "indivisible monist." Philosophers like Leibniz, Hegel, and Schopenhauer were monists: they believed that everything in the world is essentially "one" (but not in a "we are the world" sense). It is all made of the same "substance," to use the language of Hegel. To put it more simply, everything about Nabokov's beliefs indicated that he hated reductiveness, the tendency to reduce complex phenomena into simple explanations. So, while he sees Charlotte's mistreatment of the maid, Louise, as a sign of her bourgeois ignorance, he probably would not have much patience with those who advocate for the rights of any group either.

Assignment for 10/02

Somewhat different from what I said in class - please post on your "topic," but with a special focus on the end of part one, Humbert's meeting with Lolita at the camp, their subsequent drive, their experience at the Enchanted Hunter, and their continued journey after. Look for specific examples of the theme on which you're focusing. I'll comment on every theme, as posted in your blog, by some time tomorrow...

for 9/29: responding to posts (Charlotte's death and after)

You should have finished the novel by Thursday of next week. We will go on discussing the ending while reading the critical articles noted on the syllabus. While your post does not have to relate directly to your "theme" - you should indicate your choice of theme in your post.

1. The uses of imagery: Humbert's obsession with the concretization of memory shows in his imagery. And, of course, the whole novel is retrospective - it is a memory. Using Juno's examples of concrete imagery for intangible things, look through the text for signs of the ways Humbert uses imagery to make a point, convince himself or the reader of something, or represent an event as something it is not.
2. Justifications: Tene' wrote about a TV show in which the pedophile character goes to bizarre lengths to deny his own nature. Respond to Tene' by finding another pop culture use or reference to Lolita - other than the one Tene' mentions in her first post. What is a "Lolita" in the popular imagination?
3. Kayla points out various ways that Humbert uses language to define, describe, and excuse his abnormality. In the "lap" scene, discussed in my previous post, we see that Humbert uses language to deceive himself about what he is actually doing. However, as the story goes on, before and after Charlotte's death, Humbert's beliefs about himself start to break down. Looking, as Kayla did, at the narrator's language, trace this increasing tension - it is one of the most important aspects of the story. Also, notice the split between body and mind and the pose of the scientist - justifications highlighted in Shea's post.
4. Stella points out another of Humbert's delusions or masks: he considers people "vulgar" who may be simply normal (and sexually mature) adults (after all, Valeria is unhappy with him due to his inability to provide the marital relations she expects - and she chooses a "vulgarian" instead of him). As the story goes on, Humbert's "sophistication" and Carlotte's, the Farlow's, and Lolita's "vulgarity" clash continually. Through this clash, Humbert struggles to maintain his sense of himself as a poet or a singular, gifted man. Discuss this key conflict.
5. Mary Linh describes the encounter with Lolita as a "return" of Annabelle. Her description brings up everything associated with Annabelle: the kingdom by the sea, the sunglasses discussed by Aaron, the name Annabelle, Hourglass or Our Glass Lake, Poe's poem, the theme of bells, etc. Discuss these and other mementos in the passages about Humbert's marriage, his and Charlotte's social life, and his eventual life as a widower.
6. Amy points out how Humbert, in spite of his disdain for psychoanalysis, presents himself in a way that justifies his tastes through the use of oppositions: virility and impotence; normal sex and his more poignant kind, animal pleasure and dazzling otherworldly beauty - and so on. His argument is aesthetic: he is a seeker of beauty, not a normal (vulgar) person or a normal pervert. As the story goes on, Humbert's oppositions break down... look for instances of this happening and Humbert's responses.
7. Bonus question! Appel usefully provides the magazine ad VN may have had in mind - "the conquering hero" - which leads Humbert to contemplate married life. And throughout his second brief marriage, Humbert compares himself to a movie star; Lolita also has a lively interest in the movies and associates him with a glamorous leading male, as does Charlotte. How does the celluloid world relate to Humbert's world of bad intents and self-deception?

Annotated "lap" scene with comments

p. 57 and on

I want my learned readers[half-insulting reference to the reader who may or may not be learned] to participate [the reader must take part in the scene, thereby replicating HH's action] in the scene I am about to

replay; I want them to examine its every detail and see for themselves how

careful, how chaste, the whole wine-sweet event is if viewed with what my

lawyer has called, in a private talk we have had, "impartial sympathy."[contradicts itself] So

let us get started. I have a difficult job before me.

 Main character: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June.

Place: sunlit living room. Props: old, candy-striped davenport, magazines,

phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze--God bless the

good man--had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue-washed

room, on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and mementoes, among these Dolores,

were all over the place). She wore that day a pretty print dress that I had

seen on her once before, ample in the skirt, tight in the bodice,

short-sleeved, pink, checkered with darker pink, and, to complete the color

scheme, she had painted her lips and was holding in her hollowed hands a

beautiful, banal, Eden-red apple. She was not shod, however, for church. And

her white Sunday purse lay discarded near the phonograph. Interesting contrast betwene the normal, martital sex that produced Lolita - and the kind he's about to have. By referring to Lolita as a memento, he underscores that to him she is language. He had seen her in the dress once before - for him, also, she is an echo of previous events or experiences.

 My heart beat like a drum [Nabokov's deliberate use of a trite experession from racy literature] as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning,

subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit. [this may be Humbert's imagination, expressed as a double entendre: he imagines her masturbating] She

tossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it--it made a cupped

polished plop. [a cupped plot because the sound is contained by her hands; she holds the sound. The apple is polished but not the sound - Humbert mixes kinesthetic experience (how something feels) with aural experience (the plop).]

 Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple. why third person here?

"Give it back," - she pleaded, showing the marbled flush of her palms.

I produced Delicious. [The odd naming of the apple by its type... a red delicious apple, shows that for him it symbolizes "sweet" experiences. Also, of course, an Edenic reference.] She grasped it and bit into it, and my heart was like

snow under thin crimson skin, and with the monkeyish [the sophisticated Humbert frequently refers to himself in animal terms, or as a monster when speaking of his sexuality. This underscores his division into two people: man and monster.] nimbleness that was so

typical of that American nymphet, she snatched out of my abstract grip the

magazine I had opened (pity no film had recorded the curious pattern, the

monogrammic linkage of our simultaneous or overlapping moves [their movements are linked as the letters in a mongrammed towel - the kind Charlotte Haze possesses - are linked.]). Rapidly,

hardly hampered by the disfigured apple she held, Lo flipped violently

through the pages in search of something she wished Humbert to see. Found it

at last. I faked interest by bringing my head so close that her hair touched

my temple and her arm brushed my cheek as she wiped her lips with her wrist.

Because of the burnished mist through which I peered at the picture [this description represents that mist; "burnished" is a repetition of "polished"], I was

slow in reacting to it, and her bare knees rubbed and knocked impatiently

against each other. Dimly there came into view: a surrealist painter

relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster

replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand. Picture of the Week, said

the legend. [The magazine item, like Charlotte's book club, shows the cheapening and mass-marketing of art. Nabokov also disapproved of most "modern" art.] I whisked the whole obscene thing away. Next moment, in a sham

effort to retrieve it, she was all over me. Caught her by her thin knobby

wrist. The magazine escaped to the floor like a flustered fowl. [The chicken-magazine is itself a surrealistic image. H.H.'s encounter with Lolita at this point seems like a fight.] She twisted

herself free, recoiled, and lay back in the right-hand corner of the

davenport. Then, with perfect simplicity, [Lolita's simplicity is the quality Humbert likes - she is ingenuous and guileless - mainly due to her ignorance of sex.] the impudent child extended her

legs across my lap. [He reverts here to the fatherly tone.]

 By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity [Humbert's "madness" is referenced here, but it separates him from his sexual leanings]; but

I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed

to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her

guileless limbs [her limbs have no cunning design or plan; H.H. attunes his movements - another musical reference - to hers]. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden's

attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the

success of the trick. [Humbert describes his sexual maneuvering as a technical operation - like tuning an instrument.] Talking fast, lagging behind my own breath [he is panting, a clue to how extreme the situation really is], catching

up with it, mimicking a sudden toothache [H.H. suffers from toothache throughout the novel, as Nabokov (and Joyce) also did.] to explain the breaks in my

patter--and all the while keeping a maniac's inner eye on my distant golden

goal, [the "golden goal" has a religious ring: like a search for the holy chalice.] I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an

illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but

psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and

robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and

the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion. [The "material divide" suggests the spiritual or interpersonal distance of which Humbert is not aware. The many phallic references in the passage are usually somewhat negative, although Humbert is proud of his "exceptional virility": tumor, monster, beast, etc.] Having, in the course of my

patter, hit upon something nicely mechanical, I recited, garbling them

slightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular [Humbert needs to escape from the intricacy of his own thoughts and into her world, represented by a popular song he would probably despise.] --O my Carmen, my

little Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars,

and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen; I kept repeating this automatic

[the automatism of the song is indicative of the "bestial" state Humbert has entered as a result of his "insanity" or arousal.] stuff and holding her under its special spell (spell because of the

garbling), and all the while I was mortally afraid that some act of God

[the interruption of God or, more likely, Charlotte, shows that Humbert thinks of his goals in terms of fate... and returns to the Edenic theme: illicit apple-eating is discovered and punished by Yahweh.] might interrupt me, might remove the golden load in the sensation of which

all my being seemed concentrated, and this anxiety forced me to work, for

the first minute or so, more hastily than was consensual with deliberately

modulated enjoyment [Humbert here does not refer to the issue of consent: rather, the sensation of haste is not consensual or "of the same sense" with his restrained enjoyment (or, to put it more simply: he is going too fast to enjoy himself.]. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and

the bars, and the barmen, were presently taken over by her; her voice stole

and corrected the tune I had been mutilating. She was musical and

apple-sweet. [Not only is Lolita musically talented, but, to Humbert, she is like music: he refers repeatedly to her sweetness or the sweetness of the act here.] Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I

stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl,

Lola the bobby-soxer, [she listens to swing or jazz, not the "classic pop" of the early '50s (e.g. Sinatra etc.) devouring her immemorial fruit, [as a type of Annabelle, she originates in the past; also, as an Edenic symbol, the apple does - being present and past at the same time is her fundamental quality for him.] singing through its

juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless [the lost slipper has cinderella overtones] foot in its

sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the

sofa--and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, [these are dance movements - and remember the dance-step description of her name that opens the book] helped me to

conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence [his "method" of molestation is a language based on touch - perhaps like some languages for the deaf] between

beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her

dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock. [phallic references - the frock is innocent, although he defiles the frock without her knowing it]

The scene is a parody of "racy" scenes in contemporary literature, with its euphemistic language underlining the way art can transform even the crudest content. It is also, and more importantly, a document of Humbert's own blindness to his own identity and actions. He uses language and poetic references to convince himself that he is different than a common deviant. He literally does not know what he is doing.

Post due Wed. 9/25: meeting Lolita and Ramsdale

NOTE: although we are going more slowly, you should keep reading according to the syllabus schedule. After the book, critical articles are assigned. You should soon settle on a theme or motif to explore in your posts. Answer some, all... or use one or more as a jumping-off place for your post.

1. Humbert's arctic expedition seems surprising and off-key. What does it indicate about his character? It is followed by a "bout with insanity." How are we to understand this - what do you suppose really happens?
2. Comment on both Humbert's choice of Ramsdale - what are his reasons for wanting a sleepy New England town? - and Nabokov's choice of this location for Charlotte Haze and her daughter?
3. The portrait of Charlotte is connected to a portrait of middle class America in the '50s. What are key elements and passages that comprise this portrait?
4. On a connected note, we know that both Nabokov and Humbert despise "vulgarity." (Vulgar literally means "common" - e.g. the Vulgate was the version of the Bible translated into spoken language from the ancient language.) We have already seen that Humbert describes Valeria as a "baba" - a vulgar, common woman. What does he consider vulgar? And how does his distaste for vulgarity relate to his essential identity and purposes?
5. Comment on Humbert's first sight of Lolita, particularly in relation to the the theme of the recovery of lost time?
5. Chapter 11 begins a journal entry from a small pocket diary: how does the use of this diary - which H.H. does not possess in jail - change the speed, texture, character of the story? Examine descriptions of Humbert's near-sex-encounters with Lolita. How does the style affect our experience of these illicit goings-on?

FOR CLASS On 9/23

 On Tuesday and Thursday we will go from the idea of the nymphet to H.H.'s early struggles, to his failed marriage, essentially up to the point where he meets Dolores Haze daughter of the widow Charlotte Haze. This post lists the issues or motifs (you can start pursuing one) and the passages we will discuss in class. The assignment: 
1. after reading the issues and passages, pick an issue
2. comment on two passages that relate to that issue
3. find a third passage from anywhere in the book that relates to the same issue


Got it? Okay. These are the issues. Pick one and find two passages that seem to illustrate it, then find a third.

• the paradox of memory as lost yet irrecoverable
• conflict between the classes
• conflict between the cultured and uncultured
• Humbert as a "wise fool" or trickster
• Humbert's rationality and belief in the supernatural
• satire of psychoanalysis
• use of scientific, technical, or specialized language to describe emotional or interpersonal events
• how puns and wordplay affect the tone of the narration
• the physicalization of intangible things (such as feelings, memories)
• Humbert's methods of self-justification
• transformation
• deliberate use of trite or banal language
• the two types of memory: ordinary (unreliable) and objective re-creation (p. 11)
• the use of indirect language to describe "crude" physical events
• animal language
• evidences of synesthesia: the confusion of one sense (like sight) for another (like smell) 
• "obvious" fiction vs. the assumption that this is all true
• metaphors of travel

And these are the passages:

pp. 12-13:
I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the
rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the
first evidence of an inherent singularity? When I try to analyze my own
cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of
retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless
alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork
without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel.

pp. 14-15:
I have reserved for the conclusion of my "Annabel" phase the account of
our unsuccessful first tryst. One night, she managed to deceive the vicious
vigilance of her family. In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the
back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall.
Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see the arabesques of
lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory,
appear to me now like playing cards--presumably because a bridge game was
keeping the enemy busy. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of
her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely
glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant
sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the
sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her
legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand
located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure,
half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than
I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head
would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful,
and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and
her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion,
with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to
relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine;
then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then
again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a
generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my
entrails, I have her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.

p. 15:
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me
in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used
tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the
observation car. In my sanitary relations with women I was practical,
ironical and brisk. While a college student, in London and Paris, paid
ladies sufficed me. My studies were meticulous and intense, although not
particularly fruitful. At first, I planned to take a degree in psychiatry
and many manquè talents do; but I was even more manquè than
that; a peculiar exhaustion, I am so oppressed, doctor, set in; and I
switched to English literature, where so many frustrated poets end as
pipe-smoking teachers in tweeds. Paris suited me. I discussed Soviet movies
with expatriates. I sat with uranists in the Deux Magots. I published
tortuous essays in obscure journals.

pp. 16-17:
 Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of
nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers,
twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not
human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose
to designate as "nymphets."

It will be marked that I substitute time terms for spatial ones. In
fact, I would have the reader see "nine" and "fourteen" as the
boundaries--the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks--of an enchanted island
haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea.
Between those age limits, are all girl-children nymphets? Of course not.
Otherwise, we who are in the know, we lone voyagers, we nympholepts, would
have long gone insane. Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity,
or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair
certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty,
soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such
coevals of hers as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of
synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where
Lolita plays with her likes.

pp. 17-18:
Furthermore, since the idea of time plays such a magic part in the
matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a
gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or
forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to
enable the latter to come under a nymphet's spell. It is a question of focal
adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount,
and a certain contrast that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse
delight. When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no
nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same
enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine
years have elapsed, I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf
in my life.

p. 18
I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were
much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their
normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble
was that those gentlemen had not, and I had, caught glimpses of an
incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a
thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of
genius or the most talented impotent might imagine. My world was split. I
was aware of not one but two sexes, neither of which was mine; both would be
termed female by the anatomist. But to me, through the prism of my senses,
"they were as different as mist and mast."

pp. 19-20
But let us be prim and civilized. Humbert Humbert tried hard to be
good. Really and truly, he did. He had the utmost respect for ordinary
children, with their purity and vulnerability, and under no circumstances
would he have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the
least risk of a row. But how his heart beat when, among the innocent throng,
he espied a demon child, "enfant charmante et fourbe," dim eyes,
bright lips, ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her.
So life went. Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it
was Lilith he longed for. The bud-stage of breast development appears early
(10.7 years) in the sequence of somatic changes accompanying pubescence. And
the next maturational item available is the first appearance of pigmented
pubic hair (11.2 years). My little cup brims with tiddles.

pp. 25-26
Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a
glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me to
Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl. She gave it not because
she had divined something about me; it was just her style--and I fell for
it. Actually, she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her
exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under
circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods. I, on my part, was as
naive as only a pervert can be. She looked fluffy and frolicsome, dressed
a la gamine, showed a generous amount of smooth leg, knew how to
stress the white of a bare instep by the black of a velvet slipper, and
pouted, and dimpled, and romped, and dirndled, and shook her short curly
blond hair in the cutest and tritest fashion imaginable.

After a brief ceremony at the mairie, I took her to the new
apartment I had rented and, somewhat to her surprise, had her wear, before I
touched her, a girl's plain nightshirt that I had managed to filch from the
linen closet of an orphanage. I derived some fun from that nuptial night and
had the idiot in hysterics by sunrise. But reality soon asserted itself. The
bleached curl revealed its melanic root; the down turned to prickles on a
shaved shin; the mobile moist mouth, no matter how I stuffed it with love,
disclosed ignominiously its resemblance to the corresponding part in a
treasured portrait of her toadlike dead mama; and presently, instead of a
pale little gutter girl, Humbert Humbert had on his hands a large, puffy,
short-legged, big-breasted and practically brainless baba.

p. 27
When I informed her we were shortly to sail for New York, she looked
distressed and bewildered. There were some tedious difficulties with her papers.
She had a Nansen, or better say Nonsense, passport which for some reason a
share in her husband's solid Swiss citizenship could not easily transcend;
and I decided it was the necessity of queuing in the prèfecture, and other formalities, that
had made her so listless, despite my patiently describing to her America,
the country of rosy children and great trees, where life would be such an
improvement on dull dingy Paris.

p. 28
"There is another man in my life."
 Now, these are ugly words for a husband to hear. They dazed me, I
confess. To beat her up in the street, there and then, as an honest
vulgarian might have done, was not feasible. Years of secret sufferings had
taught me superhuman self-control. So I ushered her into a taxi which had
been invitingly creeping along the curb for some time, and in this
comparative privacy I quietly suggested she comment her wild talk. A
mounting fury was suffocating me--not because I had any particular fondness
for that figure of fun, Mme Humbert, but because matters of legal and
illegal conjunction were for me alone to decide, and here she was, Valeria,
the comedy wife, brazenly preparing to dispose in her own way of my comfort
and fate. I demanded her lover's name. I repeated my question; but she kept
up a burlesque babble, discoursing on her unhappiness with me and announcing
plans for an immediate divorce. "Mais qui est-ce?" I shouted at last,
striking her on the knee with my fist; and she, without even wincing, stared
at me as if the answer were too simple for words, then gave a quick shrug
and pointed at the thick neck of the taxi driver. He pulled up at a small
cafè and introduced himself. I do not remember his ridiculous name but after
all those years I still see him quite clearly--a stocky White Russian
ex-colonel with a bushy mustache and a crew cut; there were thousands of
them plying that fool's trade in Paris. We sat down at a table; the Tsarist
ordered wine, and Valeria, after applying a wet napkin to her knee, went on
talking--into me rather than to me; she poured words into this
dignified receptacle with a volubility I had never suspected she had in her.
And every now and then she would volley a burst of Slavic at her stolid
lover. The situation was preposterous and became even more so when the
taxi-colonel, stopping Valeria with a possessive smile, began to unfold
his views and plans. With an atrocious accent to his careful French,
he delineated the world of love and work into which he proposed to enter
hand in hand with his child-wife Valeria. She by now was preening herself,
between him and me, rouging her pursed lips, tripling her chin to pick at
her blouse-bosom and so forth, and he spoke of her as if she were absent,
and also as if she were a kind of little ward that was in the act of being
transferred, for her own good, from one wise guardian to another even wiser
one; and although my helpless wrath may have exaggerated and disfigured
certain impressions, I can swear that he actually consulted me on such
things as her diet, her periods, her wardrobe and the books she had read or
should read. "I think," - he said, "She will like Jean Christophe?"
Oh, he was quite a scholar, Mr. Taxovich.

Suave John Ray Jr. and opening chapter: post due 9/15

1. Who is John Ray Jr. (from the Foreword)?
2. John Ray Jr. seeks to set up and explain Lolita and its contents in some way. Humbert, in the first chapter, continues these explanations and justifications. How does this preamble affect the way we understand the book (and the book to come)?
3. Take note of Ray's rundown of the fate of various characters whom the reader has not yet encountered ("For the benefit of old-fashioned readers..."). What's the apparent purpose of this American Graffiti-style postscript, included in the beginning of the book? How, again, does it affect the "reality" of the book?
4. VN's advice to the literary critic is (SO 66) "learn to distinguish banality." And yet Nabokov seems to include aspects of the trite or the banal in his work. Comment on this uneasy balance between originality and banality in the first chapter.
5. While both The Enchanter and Lolita (including the Foreword) have their psychological clues, we know that VN despised Freud, even saying, "The Freudian faith leads to dangerous ethical consequences, such as when a filthy murderer with the brain of a tapeworm is given a lighter sentence because his mother spanked him..." (SO 116). Since he feels this way, how shall we interpret the "precursors" of Lolita and Cordelia?
6. Again from Strong Opinions: "I loathe popular pulp, I loathe go-go gangs, i loathe jungle music, I loathe science fiction with its gals and goons, suspense and suspensories. I especially loathe vulgar movies--cripples raping nuns under tables, or naked-girl breasts squeezing against the tanned torsos of repulsive young males" (SO 117). And yet, his works have unmistakable erotic overtones and even sensational elements; they even make frequent reference to the vulgar world of movies. Why the contradiction?

The full text of Poe's "Annabel Lee"

It was many and many a year ago, 
      In a kingdom by the sea, 
That a maiden there lived whom you may know 
      By the name of Annabel Lee; 
And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
      Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child and I was a child,
      In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
      I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
      Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
      In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
      chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
      And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
      In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
      Went envying her and me:
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
      In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
      And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
      Of those who were older than we--
      Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above
      Nor the demons down under the sea, 
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
      Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

     For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
      Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes 
      Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
      In her sepulchre there by the sea--
      In her tomb by the side of the sea.

Nabokov on chess problems

"It should be understood that competition in chess problems is not really between white and black, but between the composer and the hypothetical solver. Just as in a first-rate work of fiction, the real clash is not between the characters, but between the author and the world. So that a great part of the problem's value is due to the number of tries, delusive opening moves, false scents, specious lines of play, astutely and lovingly prepared to lead the would-be solver astray. But whatever I can say about this matter of problem composing, I do not seem to convey sufficiently the ecstatic core of the process and its points of connection with various other, more overt and fruitful, operations of the creative mind: from the charting of dangerous seas, to the writing of one of those incredible novels where the author, in a fit of lucid madness, has set himself certain unique rules that he observes, certain nightmare obstacles that he surmounts, with the zest of a deity building a live world from the most unlikely ingredients--rocks and carbon, and blind throbbings."

Notes on analyzing literature: THE ENCHANTER

1. Finding patterns - repeating thematic concerns - particularly anything which seems counter-intuitive

2. Find motifs: repeating "things" or ideas

3. Comb through the text, looking at the context of each appearance of the pattern - examine the writing for clues as to the meaning - and the role of writing/style.

4. In a well-wrought novel or poem, every element works together, so by examining one element you shed light on the work as a whole. It's systematic - or like a game.

Thematic concerns for today: 9/12/2013

• the body: appears to be at odds with reason
• reason: character's attempts at rationality seem doomed to failure
• luck and fate: relies on fate to fulfill himself, contrary to strategies and reason; has his share of luck
• the "intrusion of the compulsion": the character loses control of his impulses at times
• memory: there is a suggestion that the 12-year-old girl is a "return of time" - his obsession with her is based on the loss of a sister

Other important motifs and themes:

• enchantment: both the girl and the author are referred to as enchanters
• social roles: the main character takes refuge in a variety of social roles
• colors
• animals
• performance vs. authenticity
• life as verbal or textual
• time (tied up with memory)
• butterflies / entomology

Notes for in-class THE ENCHANTER discussion: posts due 10 p.m. 9/9 and 9/11

We will read Nabokov's 1939 novella very closely - covering these passages (indicated by a page number, quote which begins the passage, a topic, or a summary). For your two posts, you can comment on these passages - writing whatever strikes you. In many cases the quote is only a way of marking a longer passage.

p. 21: analogies for lechery

p. 22: island, criminality

p. 23: degrees, transitions

p. 24: narrator's presence

p. 25: intermediaries; moments

p. 26: present moment: "the curtain rises"

p. 27: description of girl: distance between narrator and character

"among the rest of us"

p. 29: "the subordinate clause of his fearsome life"

p. 31: "concupiscence or anguish

p. 32: point of view: a conversation began

p. 33: "you lost the hands of your watch"

anatomical descriptions: "as if this girl were growing out of him" - physical connection

p. 34: garrulous person: exposition

p. 35: the ruse of buying furniture

p. 36: "stern woman's kindness was not like milk chocolate" - point of view

p. 38: "that's life" - widow's resigned attitude

"like a chess player"

39: marrons glaces - "not like one of your putrid oldsters"

40: "referring to the variants..."

41: objectively: passionless widow

p. 42: "true hiding place of genuine, blinding opportunity"

p. 43: "in search of something that might even now entitle her to masculine attention"

"sorry and repelled"

44: "yearnings of a bachelor.." plausible? his proposal

45: "discuss things rationally" - rational world of contrivances and pragmatic needs vs. enchantment vs. delusion

46: the unattractive proposition: comic situation

48: "drag this cumbersome behemoth"

the cafe

"he would have fondled her"

49: "a misprint of desire distorted the meaning of love"

"Yes - the forgery, the furtiveness..."

ambiguity about his feelings

p. 50: "the foretaste of finding the girl alone"

sounds: emphasis on sensory experience de-emphasizes his thoughts and intentions

p. 51 "closer and closer..."

"the red one" - Nabokovian colors

52: "aching, frustrated, gnawing, weakness in his calves" --?

mooing to simulate tenderness

52-53: argument about sending her off to school (scene from Lolita); "choose between me and her"

54: "The first infraction of that habit"

55: "multiple caverns" - geological description

"at moments of elation he was subject to sundry, angular aches"

56: "roaming amid the shivery indulgence"

"instability and spectrality of his calculations"

56-57: indecision

"sober line of reasoning"

reason / emotion / guilt

criminal thoughts: "a prisoner leaves his cigarette ash"

58: "impeccably packaged vials" (more anatomical language)

59: her organ like a grouchy dog

he was attentive - more mooing

60: marriage a trap: "she would let him out of her sight no farther than to the corner room"

61: "regularity of the fluctuations" - cycles?

"ripple of unsatisfied desire"

"he would walk past pretty girls..."

63: illness worse in spring - cycles

swears that he will treat the girl as a father - comic juxtaposition

64: operation a success: his rage

his uglier side shows at select moments

65: thinks of her body (again)...

"normal paternal zeal" - comic juxtaposition between normal and deviant

66: "the person was no more"

67: preliminary, grayly human content"

"clever Fate" - strong relationship to fate

68: "feigning total shock" - always feigning

69: "And what a pretty girl she is!"

70 counterfeit coin

71: "day-after-tomorrow's address..."

"he found it unnecessary to predetermine subsequent habitations"

72: marital - Edenic scenario

premeditation & chance: the elements of fictional plots?

72-73: counting on her prepubescence and lack of knowledge: "He was convinced that..."

73: "the flowering chasm"

74: "he would find sufficient delights in her so as to not disenchant her prematurely"

"not attempt on her virginity"

76: "Just then she came out..." - aging already?

77: "Oh no!..." This is nearly the first time she speaks.

78: "If it hadn't been for our encounter" - theme of luck & design

80: "And now all this is mine..." (geographical)

"the deserted nightmare street..." (geography=fate)

81: double bed (scene from Lolita)

"obedient pose of the tender victim"

82: "My sweetheart, my poor girl..." - what is his point of view here?

83: the precursor: "a fleeting memory..."

84: bizarre encounter with the police (reminiscent of Bend Sinister)

85: "he felt a horrid pang..."

86: "somebody in here trying to train a young person" - reality? a double?

87: "She was lying supine..." first approach

88: "The hour had finally come..." Theme of frozen time:

"A priceless original..." (cf. Lolita as restored childhood lover)

89: "Finally making up his mind..." - molestation scene

90: "flashes of consciousness" in bed with her

92: Sex scene - shrieking

94-95: the end

Notes on VN - Andrew Field - chapters 18 & 19

pp. 242-

• the art and/or artifice of the biographer
• 1940s wartime and after / modernism primarily between the wars / moral uncertainty in the British and American wartime novel
• other postwar satirists: Orwell, Lowry, Burgess, Spark, Waugh - in Britain
• Burroughs, Bellow, and Salinger in the US
• literary seriousness of modernism and postwar bourgeois-consumerist culture come together in the literary "performer" - e.g. Book of the Month Club, lost elitism
• tradition of the visiting European writer giving tours - e.g. Dickens

pp. 250-

• VN's literary influences / allies: Sterne, Joyce, Flaubert, Proust, Kafka
• VN is the "stranger" living a second life like the characters of his novels
• 252: when "gamesmanship" goes wrong
• persistent theme of totalitarianism and control
• 256-257: style of Speak, Memory and the elusiveness of Nabokov

pp. 258-

• importance of periodicals
• critics/writers mentioned: John Crowe Ransom; Mary McCarthy; Ramon Jakobson, Edmund Wilson, Diana Trilling
• New Critics and formalism
• New York Intellectuals - Trotskyists: art vs. politics
• New York Intellectuals (Trilling, McCarthy etc.) vs. popular front (liberalism vs. revolutionary left)
• McCarthyism + '60s student rebellion
• Edmund Wilson - frienship and relationship with critics, political differences p. 263
• 260: movement away from New Directions toward New Yorker (264-265) literary establishment

pp. 267-

• Nabokov and translation, philosophy, Pushkin
• 269: driving Mr. Nabokov
• the performative - theatrical professor
• 274: "affable severity" - suspected students of cheating
• VN in class (275)
• Kafka's "Metamorphosis"; butterflies 282-283
• 278: mysterious dislike of Dostoevsky (but like Rabelais)
• tennis
• trips to Colorado and Utah
• 286-287 - two linguistic dreams

some questions for first post due before 8/28

excerpt from biography VN.
excerpt from Strong Opinions
short article about "Good Readers..." from Literary Essays
these are all in the packet

Record your impressions, which may be quite indirect, of Nabokov the personality - his values about literature, his way of presenting himself as a public figure, and also his public persona: how he was received in the 1940s and '50s; the state of literary culture at that time; his status as a Russian, European (or Soviet) writer as it may have affected his reception.

From the interview: does his personality as a writer seem distinct from his character as a person? (We should remember that Nabokov customarily demanded questions in advance and wrote out his answers - so, he was probably not a spontaneous person.) Take note of his philosophy towards literature as represented in the interview.

Regarding the two chapters from the biography: I am always suspicious of biographers, who make it their business to construct the events of a life into a narrative - in this case, with commentary. Following the Nabokovian theme of the uncertainty of reality, how much can we trust the biographer? What are his probably sources? How does the narrative change the probable reality of VN's life as a literary lecturer, a writer of novels in English, a teacher, etc.?