And in Conclusion...

I suppose this is the last thing before I begin again ... riverrun (does it son, you know).

I would like to, once more, bring up the quote from Speak, Memory that Dr. Sexson read on our last day.

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal

I would like to pose a question, one which the answer I do not know. What is the motivation for the atoms to move? All matter is built on these infinitesimal building blocks. All matter matters because that is what we are... it is all we know. But what is it that causes our atoms to move, and not just move but relentlessly continue? Even after our hearts stop beating the molecules continue. Why is it that Absolute Zero is only a theory?

The motivation. What of the reading from Frye? What gives language the power to be aesthetic? The language of love. The Bible is written in it, Nabokov certainly wrote in it, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ovid, etc. etc. It is the things that resonate with us. Music can resonate, a speech, a book, a sunset, the complexities of life, each other. Something in them matches something in us. The ultimate solidarity. Love in kinship with love.

I submit that the molecules have no choice but to keep moving. It is the power of love that motivates. And I'm not talking about the cheesy, sappy love of cheap romance flicks. True love. Not the human version, but the ultimate muse, the thule ultima of the spirit. Love.

And with that we look on, and we look back, and we look around us. And we skate on a tension film of thin ice, to revel in our solidarity.


With this perspective I don't hesitate to delve into my past, to search for lost time in the dark reaches of my mind, well because... (riverrun, you know).

Jazz.

Last night I went to the jazz concert put on by the MSU band. I love jazz. Sitting in the dark auditorium I closed my eyes and let the complexities of the music surround me. The bass snaked down around my feet. The quick chord changes from the guitar danced against my chest, the swung eighths on the ride tapped my fingers. The sax blew on my right, and the trumpet! oh the trumpet hit me right in the spine.

I have always liked imagining music spatially. I find the complexities of music amazing, and jazz lends itself very nicely to this type of active listening. Jazz, the progressive type of music. After the head notes rip from the soloists, flying into the rafters and bouncing down around me like ricocheting bullets. I love jazz.

I read somewhere that Nabokov never enjoyed music. He described in some terrible way as a bunch of annoying noises strung together. Last night, in the dark, I was wondering whether Nabokov at least took some delight in the idea of jazz. The complexities, the layers, the beautifully executed solos of the true artists.

I like think that Nabokov respected this music. Well... I love it.

Individual Presentations Day 3

There were just a few individual presentations today along with Dr. Sexson wrapping things up. We were told a couple of things. First, to study blogs, individual presentations, and group presentations for the final. The second, we are going to sacrifice something (maybe goats, maybe Jennie Lynn, who knows?)


Anyway, I would like to mention a couple presentations that stuck out to me. Kari did a great job with her piece, it was very entertaining and along with Parker's brings up an interesting question about how one would tell a story like Pale Fire through the medium of film. I think it would have to get very creative and push the normal boundaries to allow the complexities to arise. This issue kind of made me think of the chronology of the movie Pulp Fiction and how it allows connections to be made from different times (clips) that would normally seem inherent in linear time. I would love to see a project centered around the problem of portraying a story like Pale Fire.


Also, John's Dr. Sexson was great. He really hit some of those nuances well.

I also liked Aaron's poem. I love how it flowed and captured a lot of those themes that we have been exploring. He is an excellent writer as well. (if any of you didn't know)

Iconography

First I must note that my blog must be peeved about something because the blogroll doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Everyone else's seems fine.



I mentioned, during my presentation, that I was initially curious about Nabokov and religious influence. One of the things that tipped me off to this subject was an essay call Vladimir Nabokov and Orthodox Iconography that was written by Samuel Schuman. I found it on jstor while doing some searching. It comes from a journal called Religion & Literature.

The essay is interesting in a lot of different ways and gave me many ideas (no matter how peripheral) for my term paper. As for "orthodox iconography"... well I didn't really find much evidence to support a notion that Nabokov includes such icons in his writing, whether purposefully or not.

Nabokov, being a devout aesthete, would probably argue that his images are concoctions of his imagination and surely devoid of icons that carry a hidden meaning. Another reason for this, other than his love for pure aesthetics, is his strong distaste for psychologists like Freud, who would have seen Humbert Humbert as some dark repression in a deranged mind.

Schuman even points out that icons are not simply images, but symbols. Symbols that hold meaning and tradition. Of course when put this way, Nabokov's work was full of icons. The very act of allusion proves that he delighted in the extra (often esoteric) information that was conjured up by any of his thousands of references to other things.

Nabokov surely used icons in his work, but Orthodox Icons for the purpose of referencing the deeper meaning of characterized Gods? probably not.

The Metamorphosis of John Shade: From Unassuaged to Appeased By Way of Fountains and Mountains

A common thread that exists in many novels by Vladimir Nabokov intertwines the material being with a certain suspicion regarding the afterlife or existence of the otherworld. The imminent reign of mortality over the physical body has caused people to question the continuance of what is typically deemed the 'spirit.' This quest for understanding is as much about satisfaction as it is about suspicion, and the character John Shade in Pale Fire exemplifies this search. How is one satisfied with the explanations of religion? How is one satisfied with a state of unknowing? The poem Pale Fire written by the fictional John Shade is deeply personal and probes the concepts of God, mortality, and the afterlife. It is here, in the poem, where the thematic vein begins to weave in and out of the heroic couplets, that Shade's epiphany of art transforms the unsure to the satisfied.

I do not presume to create a time line of Shade's beliefs; however, the discovery of differing ideas about metaphysical themes brings the reader quite climatically to Shade's own revelation. In canto one, he writes about his disbelief of God. “My God died young. Theolatry I found // Degrading, and its premises, unsound” (36). However, he does not fall into an atheistic category of nonbelief. Shade goes on, “No free man needs a God; but was I free? // How fully I felt nature glued to me” (36). These lines suggest that his disbelief of his “old” God was changed from a belief to a feeling. This feeling allowed for the existence of a higher being through the logic that he was not free from a natural setting, or in other words, his mortal body. According to the previous line, if he was a free man then a God would not be necessary, but he quite promptly realizes he lacks this fundamental freedom.

The end of the first canto relays Shade's experience of some type of seizure wherein he was introduced to a mystical place. A place where the, “blackness was sublime. I felt distributed through space and time” (38). This metaphysical allocation only worked to increase his dissatisfaction with the nebulous nature of the afterlife, as the second canto begins with strong doubts. Shade wonders how anyone could live without knowing “what doom // Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb” (39). This lays the groundwork for John Shade's belief position. He seems to adhere to a form of agnosticism that does not deny an existence of a higher being, but he does not claim to know anything about that higher being. Shade yearns not for knowledge of God, but for satisfaction in the unknowable characteristics of a God and the otherworld.

It is interesting to note Vladimir Nabokov's own dislike for the loss of consciousness. In Speak, Memory he makes his position quite clear by writing, “...the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me” (108). It is curious then how John Shade appears to share the same negativity towards the loss of conscious thought. The unease that is represented towards the unknown of the afterlife makes sense if the author is so utterly repulsed by the idea that it might resemble sleep in some form.

Canto three begins Shade's rigorous search for an understanding of the otherworld. He deals with the Institute of Preparation of the Hereafter which he finds to be absolute nonsense, but learns from them what to ignore in his “survey of death's abyss” (57). The relaying of his experience with IPH ends on a wholly depressing note by his concession that “... there would be nothing: no self-styled // Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood // to rap out her pet name; no phantom would // Rise gracefully to welcome you and me” (57). Shade goes on in Canto three to mention his heart attack where he is again transported to a different state of being where this time he has a vision. It is the great white fountain that seems to be an icon in his search for understanding. When this icon fails to match up (fountain, mountain) Shade finally has his epiphany.

This is the moment, the center of the poem, the body of the butterfly. Shade's gestalt is beautiful in its simplicity. He realizes not what he has been trying to understand about the existence of the otherworld, but instead that what is unknowable is tolerable. The point is not the content itself (text) but the feeling and tacit connections (texture) that bind all things. Shade imagines some sort of force from beyond, but instead of trying to understand it or picture it he writes “It did not matter who they were. No sound, // No furtive light came from their involute // abode” (63). Since there is no way to know what the higher force is that controls the great game of life, Shade instead focuses on the beauty of the interrelated, seemingly coincidental elements of it.

Canto four marks the beginning of Shade's delving into the material world. It starts out, “Now I shall spy on beauty as none has // Spied on it yet.” (64). He continues, focusing on detail, on the beauty and aesthetics of the physicality of the human condition. Resolution is found when he writes, “I feel I understand // Existence, or at least a minute part // Of my existence, only through my art” (69). This is the point of satisfaction. Shade has found the cure of the fear of unknowing. It is through art that Shade finds solace. It is through art that he is satisfied.

Nabokov, when lecturing on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, said “Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art” (Kafka Project). There is a distinct moment in Pale Fire where pity comes into play. Kinbote transcribes a conversation that he and Shade had regarding traditional religious views and the extent to which that information can be known. Shade, who is post-epiphany and satisfied with unknowing of metaphysical types of topics, operates off of feeling when asked by Kinbote about the existence of sin. Shade simply tells Kinbote that he can only think of two: “murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain” (225). Then, in a rare moment of forced staging, Kinbote asks, “And so the password is?” to which Shade replies: “pity” (225).

If art is the manner in which Shade finds hope, then pity must play a significant role in this fulfillment. Art is a remembrance of sorts as all beauty eventually dies. This is why pity must also be an element. With all art there is loss and with all life there is loss. It is in these realms that life and art operate: aesthetics and remembrance. Shade finds satisfaction in what he calls “his art” (69). The art of the poet is to observe the details, to notice the coincidences, and to portray elegantly these webs of existence. Pity then, implores the artist to not forget the imminence of mortality, but to understand its relationship to the beauty of life.

To exemplify these ideas, Nabokov juxtaposes Shade's satisfaction of the unknowable with the seemingly shallow faith of Kinbote's “Zemblan brand of Protestantism” (224). It is shallow only in the sense that he does not allow for the absence of a planning higher power, the belief is based off of text, not texture. Under Kinbote's belief, a God who manages souls and where they go in the afterlife is absolutely necessary for satisfaction to occur. Kinbote, in a sense, is a critique of modern religion and anything that bases metaphysical thought on matters of text as opposed to texture.

Going back to canto one, Shade describes how “we are most artistically caged” within nature (37). This is the same reason that he realizes he is not free, but held somehow by the natural world. Then he makes sweeping gestures towards time and timelessness, “Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and // Infinite aftertime: above your head // They close like giant wings, and you are dead” (37). Shade then goes on to describe the carefree attitude of the “regular vulgarian” who only looks up at the Milky Way when they are relieving themselves outside. In ways this acts as a metaphor for Shade-like characters and Kinbote-like characters. It is easier for those who do not contemplate such high things, who look up in the sky only to admire the big picture then it is for those who must think deeply about such things and pick out all the telling details. Satisfaction comes to both, as in the case of Shade and Kinbote, but when doubt arises, a unacceptance of the unknowable makes it difficult to remain ignorant.

The impending abyss of death accentuates two elements of life: remembrance and aesthetics, loss and coincidence, beauty plus pity. This abyss is long and wide, and if one agrees that its characteristics are fundamentally unknowable, then when does satisfaction arrive? It is through art that the web of sense is found, and the inter-connectivity of life, in our caged physicality, is realized in the details. Beauty, pity, remembrance, aesthetics, the unknown, the abyss and sweet satisfaction.

Works Cited

Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

“Lecture on 'The Metamorphosis' by Vladimir Nabokov.” kafka.org. Mauro Nervi, 10 Nov. 2004. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Individual Presentations Day 2

Again, great work to everyone who presented today. These are definitely the most insightful and creative essays that I have seen in this type of class.

Christina took some very thorough notes over all the presentations. I will not even attempt to try to do (from memory) what she has done. If you haven't seen it yet, it is here.

I do have to mention that I was very impressed with the depth of Doug's study about the Zodiac and Nabokov's Transparent Things. I don't know a thing about the Zodiac, but was thoroughly impressed. James' index of Transparent Things also sounded very in depth and also very creative.

Good work to everyone, see you all on Thursday.

Individual Presentations Day 1

Hello all, and congratulation to all of the people that went today. Awesome stuff!!

Things that stuck in my head:

Christina's paper was really impressive. I think that if I had to choose a paper to sum up the major themes of this class, her's would pretty much be at the top of the list. Texture not text. And how appropriate from an art major. (that's right isn't it?) It is a very important theme when the characteristics of immortality are involved. Very insightful, and I'll probably use it to help me sum up my paper. Thanks Christina!

Elissa and her number stuff! There is some crazy stuff going on there. I wasn't following all the dates that carefully but it is great that someone was! Good job picking up where most of us slacked off!

Amanda's teaser of her Gradus story was great, and I'm definitely going to go read it.

Everyone else did a great job too. I'm excited to see everyone else go next Tuesday and Thursday.

Group Presentations.

To all the groups - Good work, the projects were entertaining and insightful, just what the Dr. ordered.

I especially liked group 4's video, props to them for the cool ideas. I really liked the portrayal of the chess game starting as the book was opened. Nabokov's genius at work!

I was also highly impressed with Robert's memorization of his poem. Good work sir.

And now on to the individual presentations. I am very interested to see what our classmates are going to be focusing on. Nabokov lends himself and his works very nicely to rich study and in depth critique on countless captivating topics.

Good luck to everyone who is presenting today.

Transparent Things

My First Thoughts.

To be quite honest I read Transparent Things in one sitting. It helped that I was stuck inside the room of a mountain home for the whole weekend. Outside were chilling temps and a hungry mountain lion, in the other room was a loud TV playing soap operas. Therefore, my best option was to read.

I loved it, and am about 1/3 through my second reading. I really enjoy how much Nabokov plays with layers of meaning in his novels. On one level, Hugh Person makes repeat visits to Switzerland, the last time to derive meaning by giving himself spatial reminders and memorable landmarks. It is interesting how the levels of the story become totally jumbled at the end when he is in the hotel. The story lines cross and cross back again, straying into ambiguity and eventually ending with the death of poor Person. Is meaning gained from looking inside layer after layer after layer? I was reminded of the film Synecdoche New York. The main character of the film tries to find meaning in increased depths of layers and eventually dies somewhere in the depths of the all the layers. He thought he was directing the story, until he realized that he was only a part, like all the other actors, in the bigger story.

I am glad that we discussed narration in class today because I was aware of the odd multiple narration going on. On page 521, the scene is being described with Julia, Armande, and Hugh. "... Julia and he (alias Alice and the narrator) ..." I think that this is pretty interesting. Is Hugh a narrator as well? I think this story will be a great peak at Nabokov's ideas of time and the afterlife and how they are related. Hugh dies, but do ghosts rise above the constraints of time and jump from the future into the past? hmm. I'll keep this in mind on the second read.

Also as a reminder, we are supposed to pay attention (underline) every instance of fire and associated imagery, ghosts and synonyms, and foreshadowing of strangling.

happy reading.

More Butterfly Fun.

On page 145 I ran into a sentence that interested me.

Nitra and Indra (meaning "inner" and "outer"), two black islets that seemed to address each other in cloaked parley, were being photographed from the parapet by a Russian tourist, thickset, many-chinned, with a general's fleshy nape.

I did a search on those two "islands" and found, not surprisingly, something very interesting. For an interesting bit on how these terms fit into a bit of wordplay go HERE. HOWEVER, I took a slightly different route.

I found with some quick searching that these terms are specific types of Swallowtail butterflies. These are found in the western United States in areas like Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming (all places where Nabokov studied butterflies).
To read about the Anise Swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon nitra) go HERE.
To read about the Indra Swallowtail (Papilio indra) go HERE.

Here is a picture of the Indra Swallowtail.


NOTE: The two spots at the bottom of the wings.

I looked up the words "islet" as I understood it to mean "island." Another meaning of the word however is "An isolated piece of animal or vegetable tissue." (from the OED)

And then I realized... Nabokov is using this beautiful image of a Swallowtail to help Kinbote describe his escape. The islands that Kinbote sees are like these spots, "addressing each other in cloaked parley."

What more? These islands are being photographed by a RUSSIAN TOURIST!! A Russian tourist who is: "thickset, many-chinned, with a general's fleshy nape." Sound familiar??


Yep:

I see that this is one of those little gems that await the attentive reader, but I couldn't help thinking: if Kinbote commandeers Shade's poem to talk about Zembla, then Nabokov plays the game also.

He interrupts Kinbote's story to insert himself, an actual character into his own novel.

Blog Feed Problem.

I did a little research and found that this problem we are having is across the board with Blogger. For some reason the feeds aren't updating, which is why the links aren't showing the latest blog post.

I was curious, I wanted to see if a normal rss feed to another application would work. So, I added the "subscribe to" gadget to my blog (see left side), I subscribed to my own blog using Google homepage, and it worked. I then went to other blogs in our class, and mine seems to have updated. It looks like it is working, we'll see if it keeps updating or if it was a one time thing.

So, the only fix I can see right now is to add a "subscribe to" gadget. I don't know if you need to actually click it in order for it start updating again.

I hope this works for everyone. If you need help just send a comment or email at kylekienitz@gmail.com


Good luck.

Alphabetics.

During the last class, the children of Judge Goldsworth were mentioned. The interesting point, of course being that the names of the kids are alphabetical, from A to D. Alphina, Betty, Candida, and Dee.

It is interesting to note also, that this order is from youngest to oldest. This means that for the alphabetical pattern to work, Mr. and Mrs. Goldsworth would have had to have known that they were going to have four kids before they named their first. They knew that when they named their first child Dee their last child would end on A. Alphina.

Just an interesting point I thought I'd share. The childrens' introductions along with their ages can be found on page 83.

The Barber's Son.

Please skip down to the previous post for the forward which is, sadly, one of those that you would normally skip at the beginning of a book.

The Barber's Son

Humbert Humbert's understanding of immortality is shaped by an old barber, with a tremulous hand, in the small town of Kasbeam. On Humbert and Lolita's second trip, the fact that Lo is scheming to leave is quite apparent to the contemplative reader, which is to say, the second time reader. First time readers are grasped helplessly in the artful hand of the enchanter Nabokov, though they are not alone in their naivety. Humbert is along for the ride as well, he allows his paranoia to whisk his attentiveness away.

The barber tells Humbert of his son, a ball player, who adorns many pieces of paper by way of pictures and print. When H.H. realizes that the young man has been dead for thirty years, he is shocked. For most of the haircut, Humbert has not been paying enough attention, and in that span of time, the young man actually exists.

There is an important distinction here between existing and potentially existing. It was not enough that the barber's son was written about and that his physical image was copied, this process only allows for him to potentially exist. It was not until Humbert allowed the story of the young man to enter his imagination that he actually became immortal.

Nabokov crafts his novel, Lolita, as if Humbert wrote the story after this experience. The barber could therefore have caused Humbert to write the powerful lines that beg the reader for help earlier during the Enchanted Hunters scene. “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me” (129). Humbert understands that he has the potential to be immortalized, however it is imperative that the reader imagine him, just as he imagined the barber's son and thus gave him immortality.

This is Humbert's hope at the end of the novel. The only immortality that he and Lolita may share is that of art. Not only of art, but of art that resides in the imagination. Humbert uses the words, “refuge of art,” to describe the medium by which the girl and her lover will obtain immortality (309). The word “refuge” projects connotations of a shelter, or the safety of a confined area. This refuge is the imagination of the reader that is necessary for Humbert and Lolita to be immortalized.

In analogy form, the barber is to Humbert, as Nabokov is to the reader. The reader is entreated to the enchanter's story just as Humbert is treated to the barber's. In this, the reader feels a sense of solidarity with Humbert. If the enchanted allows the characters refuge, then those characters are allowed existence. An existence based on the brilliance and freedom of imagination, and this existence can only occur alongside the renewing power of memory. If the reader forgets the story, then Humbert and Lolita will no longer dwell in the immortality that H.H. desired for them. Or is it Nabokov, the real enchanter, who desires this for his work? Just as the barber's son was brought alive by Humbert's imagination, so too will the doomed characters of Lolita be immortalized in the imagination of the reader.

Works Cited

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Print.







By the way, who else totally digs the new MLA style? I know, I'm a nerd.

A Boring Forward.

Unfortunately, I do not have a great engaging Nabokovian forward. However, it is important regarding my paper and the topic that it discusses. Sadly the papers could only be two pages long, and I'm sure many of us had the same problem of not having enough white space to explore as much as is necessary for most topics involving Nabokov and/or his work.


The mid-term paper that I handed in to Dr. Sexson earlier today (titled: The Barber's Son) takes a look at the impact of the Kasbeam barber scene on Humbert. The paper argues that just as Humbert allows the barber's son to exist in his imagination, the reader also must allow Humbert and Lolita to take refuge in the imagination for them to actually gain immortality.

While beginning to research this topic I found that I had opened a trap door, that lead to other trap doors and each other door lead to even more. It is the area of time, timelessness, mortality, and immortality according to Nabokov. I found many interesting arguments regarding Nabokov and his concept of these very abstract ideas. After spending a couple hours researching and thinking about this topic, I realized how vast it eventually be, how broad my research will take me. I decided to reserve this for my term paper and focus in on one scene in Lolita that might be a good stepping stone for further thought development.

I find it immensely exciting that the concept of imagination and memory are as tightly related to mortality and immortality as the concept of time, maybe even more so. Therefore, the argument of my paper is admittedly based on a pair of precarious stilts that wade through the thick soup of thought that surrounds Nabokov's work.

Come, let's fall down the rabbit hole.

My longest most inter-related blog post yet.

OK.

This afternoon at approximately two o'clock I started my exploration on page 40 of Lolita. My attention was caught by a particular sentence near the bottom of the page.

“May 30 is a Fast Day by Proclamation in New Hampshire but not in the Carolinas.”

The proceeding paragraphs are a parody by Nabokov on the literary devise of a diary, or introverted method of writing, which Alfred Appel points out in the annotations. (see page 356 for quotes from speak, memory about Nabokov's thoughts on “self-analysis” and “carefully created 'honesty'”) The sentence I noted above is another addition to the parody of this devise. Humbert Humbert tries to gain a certain amount of “authenticity” by recalling to his memory the smallest of details as they were in his little black book. He fails at this(produced by the “Blank Blank Co. Blankton, Mass.”), but continues with his mask of “honesty.” Humbert acts as if he even remembers the holidays, as if they had been printed in his black diary.

Of course, the reader will not be too surprised to find that this holiday is reported inaccurately. Humbert Humbert's memory is not what he thinks it is. BUT WAIT! Did Nabokov pick this holiday out on purpose? Possibly.

Fast Day in New Hampshire has had an interesting history. Basically, the president of the council for the Province of New Hampshire fell ill. It was thought by the council that the illness of their president and a recent sighting of a comet were signs of “divine displeasure” and they decided to enact a day of prayer and fasting, to apparently regain the pleasure of the divine and save their leader. Their plan failed. A month later in 1681, John Cutt died, but the holiday lived on. As time progressed, the holiday of public prayer and fasting lost its meaning to the colonists and began to be abolished by the individual state governments. In 1894 Massachusetts changed the holiday to Patriot's Day. Maine did the same. There was a push by the current governor of New Hampshire to abolish Fast Day as well, however the legislature thought differently and made it an official holiday in 1899. The exact day was to be determined each year by the governor, though it was customary for it to occur on the last Thursday of April. (full history HERE )

Does anyone want to guess the name of the governor who pushed to abolish this law that surely Humbert the Sinful needs more than anyone? Anyone? It was George A. Ramsdell. Hmm... interesting.

Of course I had to look that up. It was just so close to the imaginary town Ramsdale that is located somewhere in New England. Is was not surprising to find that the surnames Ramsdell and Ramsdale were closely related. The come from the same origin which just so happened to be Hampshire, England. There was actually a town in Hampshire that went (in the late 1800s) by two names both Ramsdale and, of course, Ramsdell.

I went to Wikipedia for a bit more info on Hampshire. What did I find in the second paragraph? It just so happens that two famous writers are from Hampshire. Who could they be? They are, of course, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

It also just so happens that these were the two authors that Nabokov lectured on in his 'European Fiction' class at Cornell. These were the authors that his friend Edmund Wilson suggested after Nabokov requested his opinion. That info found Here. Have we made a circle yet? Are we done? Hardly. The bit about the Carolinas has yet to be explored. Could the answer be found in the locations which Humbert and Lolita visit in the Carolinas during their road trip? Go HERE to explore that option. But there are thousands of other trails that lead to thousands of other connections.

Obviously, the web of connections never ends, and the more you look for the end, the farther the horizon appears, and the crazier you probably get. I only stopped my searching for a quick dinner, then it was on again. I have felt, for the better part of the day, as if lost in a web. I have been following a white rabbit down the hole, spending hours falling. It has been wonderful, yet at the same time maddening. Coincidence. I must confess I don't believe in coincidence.

Here are the sources of great information that I have used in this post, and that I ran across and just found interesting, if not entirely related to my search.

Lectures on Literature By: Vladimir Nabokov, Fredson Bowers, John Updike (page xxi) link to google.books

Lots of interesting Nabokov and Lolita insights here: http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/index.htm

Great essay on Nabokov and place names: http://ejas.revues.org/document7550.html

Info on Fast Day in NH: http://www.nh.gov/nhinfo/fast.html

Stuff about the Ramsdale / Ramsdell connection: http://www.ramsdale.org/hamlet.htm#T4

and of course the wonderful time-stealer: http://www.wikipedia.org

The Vacuum of a Soul.

Here is a beautiful connection I stumbled upon this afternoon. I was in my side yard, hugged by a white long sleeve that was once too big for me, holding in one hand a mug of black coffee, and in the other Speak, Memory. I was reading, again, my favorite passage which comes from the end of chapter six, the 'butterfly' chapter. And, again, I was lost in the words of Nabokov:

"I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal." p. 139 speak, memory.

Reading this passage invoked a memory response in me that took my mind (for the third time) to the back porch of "that Haze woman's" home. Humbert Humbert had his mind set on catching the next train out of Ramsdale until he saw what was about to change his life. It was, of course, his Lolita. And trembling as he was, Humbert was in absolute bliss:

"In the course of the sun-shot moment that my glance slithered over the kneeling child (her eyes blinking over those stern dark spectables - the little Herr Doktor who was to cure me of all my aches) while I passed by her in my adult disguise (a great big handsome hunk of movieland manhood), the vacuum of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against the features of my dead bride." p. 39 Lolita.

Nabokov seeks to describe Humbert's desire for Lolita in the most capturing way he knows how. Just as Nabokov slips into a medium of ecstatic timelessness when in the presence of his butterflies, in the same way the vacuum of Humbert's soul is completely engrossed in lapping up all the details of his powerful desire.

Time does not exist, and again I trip.







This is a picture from this last weekend, taken in the Gallatin Canyon. I am on lead, and my soul is sucking in the views, my heartbeats, the texture of the rope, smooth metal cams and rough granite. Here, there is no time. I can't explain it.

Discovery.

How slowly do the pages turn while reading Lolita for the second time! I now understand how someone can so easily slide into the enchanting abyss that Nabokov weaves for the reader.

As for a discovery? There are many, too many for the meager hours and days of this semester, so many that I must fight the fading line between interest and obsession. Oh well, I guess I won't fight it. Vladimir: the great Hunter, the great Enchanter. See what I mean? You can't escape it.


So, on page 10, in the same sentence, even, as the great aside (picnic, lightning) is another great one. I almost past it on the second reading like I had on the first. It is the next aside that caught my attention this time. The sentence now:

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: ..."

Here is a great example of a Nabokoffian aside. Which is to say that though we have been trained to disregard information within parentheses, the readers' ears, mind, and memory should perk up at the sight of them. When H.H. says "if you can still stand my style" I now get the feeling as if that is a remark to the psychiatrists that are watching him. Remember on page 308 when Humbert says that he started the memoir 56 days ago under "observation" in the psychopathic ward.

In the second page of the novel, Humbert tells the reader that he is in some type of captivity while writing the story. And... under 'observation'... Humbert must be going crazy. This is of course what happens, but this first clue is written in a way (the "if you can still stand my style" to the doctors observing him, and the aside "I am writing under observation" back to the reader of the story) which a casual read doesn't quite reveal.

In the same sentence on page 308 Humbert claims that he is writing these "notes" for use at his trial, "to save not my head, of course, but my soul." Whoa. Quite the heavy purpose, writing to save the soul? And of course, Humbert immortalizes himself not in the words, but in the imaginations of his readers. There is much much more on this that will have to wait for another blog.

Lesson: close watch on those parentheses.

Nabokov and Dodgson.

Nabokov and Dodgson. Vladimir Sirin and Lewis Carroll. Lolita and Wonderland? Or is it: Humbert and Carroll?

Nabokov said, "I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll because he was the first Humbert Humbert." (p. 381 in annotations)

Nabokov obviously makes countless references to other writers and their works, Poe being one of the most dominating. But have you noticed all of the similarities, or allusions to Alice in Wonderland, or Carroll? This interested greatly as I read through Lolita the first time, now on the second pass I will be hyper aware of these references, especially after reading that Nabokov even called Carroll a type of Humbert.

Why is this? Readers familiar with the life of Charles Dodgson will know that he was extremely interested in photography, one of his subjects being children, often in the nude. Was Dodgson a pervert? Nabokov seems to think so. But it also seems that Nabokov has found a source of inspiration through this stuttering author, mathematician and logician.

Yes, Carroll was a logician. However, he loved coincidences and the type of wordplay that supposedly "logicians loathe and poets love." (See the last poem of "Through the Looking Glass" that is a not so hidden acrostic of his inspiration ALICE PLEASANCE LIDDELL)

The top picture is Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the bottom is his close girl-child friend Alice Liddell.


There will be much more on Carroll and Wonderland as it is related to Nabokov and Lolita in the near future.

the creek.

This photo, one of the earliest on my computer, was taken during Spring break in 2007. We are halfway through our seven day stay in Indian Creek, Utah, a climbing mecca just south of Canyon Lands National Park. Various pieces of climbing gear, both ours and borrowed (thanks Ryan), lay scattered in the shade of the huge slanting slab of red sandstone behind me. The white book with a blue spine, solitary picture on the cover and large red block letters for the title was a gift to me from my friend and neighbor at the time, William. I read it constantly during that trip, while on the road, or watching someone else climb. It still remains one of my favorite novels of all time. It is The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. The brown pullover I am wearing was soft and comfortable and from J.C. Penny in Billings. Unfortunately, I would mysteriously lose it sometime in late summer 2009. The Chacos I am wearing are still around, though they are much farther from the end of their life than at the present, though I still wear them regularly.

My cousin Zach stands opposite me preparing to climb a wide hands crack called Mud Slide (5.11). Little does he know that the three Black Diamond #3 Camalots on his right side are not going to be enough, he will end up running it out near the top. Another thing that Zach doesn't know at the point this picture was taken is that he will take a long fall near the top of the climb, causing him to hit the big slab behind me, and be caught by a poorly placed, over-cammed Rock Empire; being the largest piece, it was employed for a crack wider than its proper range.

Inside my stomach a battle is raging between the green pepper refried beans I had just eaten on a large 10” tortilla and my natural digestive process. I was given (every morning around 8:15, and always much too far from the fixed Forest Service type bathroom) good reason to believe that my stomach and subsequent parts were tired of the food and physical stress I continually put on it throughout the trip.

Other interesting things to note: the open sore on the back of my left hand (a byproduct of crack climbing), Zach's red rope bag (which his mother hand made for him, quite the bit of handiwork!), the Black BD wired Hex named Michael, and Zach's figure of 9 knot (at the point where he is tied in), which I just found out two days ago that he has always used this knot to tie in with.

Everything in this photo still exists, except for a little piece of Zach's confidence that was undoubtedly left in the dusty crevasse as he free-fell only to be saved by a magical piece of protection, our 10.2mm Beal rope, and my alert belaying.

Magic.

As Professor Sexson mentioned in class, Nabokov is a very quotable author. Speak, Memory is littered with sentences and phrases worthy of reproduction, though probably not found on a “Random Quote of the Day Generator” widget on even the best blogs. One of these I particularly like is on page 125. Talking about his studies of butterflies he says, “I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.”

I love the exploration and breaking down of demarcations between nature and art. Here Nabokov says straight away that he was intrigued by the blurring of those lines as well. Not only is it beautiful or wondrous or mind boggling, but it is MAGIC. Nature is Magic and art is Magic and the game that they play is not simple, it is not singular, but rather “intricate” - a spell put on us to enchant and deceive.

I am curious if Nabokov would include memory in this form of magic. Though he, quite passionately, argues that memory, and specifically the action of “probing” childhood memories, is of utmost importance and quite opposite of “nonutilitarian”, I would surely describe his musings of memory as intricately enchanting.

The beauty of memory is astonishing. But that is at its least! Memory is not just beautiful, or intriguing, or valuable, or wondrous, or even enchanting, … it is nothing less than true MAGIC. A portal to the soul.

My First Memory.

I have an advantage in recalling childhood memories. This is the major event of my family's moving from Colton Blvd. to Burlington Ave, a demarcation in my mind that separates the very early memories from the later ones. We moved in the summer that I turned five, which means that my first memory is probably in the range of 3 to 4 years old. As I think back, most all of my memories contain clues about location, which quickly categorize my early memories. As I said, this is quite helpful.

It was morning. It wasn't a hot morning or a cold morning, but a morning full of a humidity that would occur more often in western Oregon than Billings Montana. All of the plants were a fantastic green that basked in the dew that made my yellow and red Nikes wet as I crossed the lawn from my house. I had heard and felt the low rumble just moments before and now I was headed outside for my weekly ritual. The anticipation gripped me as I climbed the rough wooden jungle gym to the top perch. I peered over the edge of my landing, and over the out of bloom lilac bush, and into the alleyway. There sat, grumbling and heaving in a rough idle, two monstrous garbage trucks. What they were doing I could only surmise - I believed them to be taking an early morning coffee break. I would watch them, silently, until they left - full of curiosity about their magnificently green trucks, about their consistent weekly ritual.