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.