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...