Nabokov - Day Five

*** He wants us to read online, offline – And then continue the good works on the blogs***

The remaining people were put into the groups for the end of the year projects.

• Reading Jared's blog entry for the book.

  • Humbert Humbert on pg. 129 tells us to pay attention to what is happening next. To “imagine him, or else he will not exist.”

Nabokov himself considers himself a crucial part in the novel, a creation, master influence over the characters of the books.

• Reading now John Orsi's blog and the quotes he put into it.

Talking now about the accusations that Nabokov could have been a pedophile, nympholeptic man.

• The greatest authors of all time have the ability to take themselves out of their own minds and into the minds of those they create.

• Shakespeare created some evil people.

People have been searching years and years for the origins of Lolita, some have found his love affairs as a child to be interesting, they also know that there was an aesthetic worship in the victorian era of the pre-pubescent body, and he was interested in that as well.

On pg. 250 of “Speak, Memory” he talks about the thing that haunts him: Losing Time.

• His life was one of a nomad. One of the key events in his life was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

One of the first people to do a Russian crossword puzzle, and to translate Alice in Wonderland into Russian, for $5.

On 287 of “Speak, Memory”, he talks of a wonderful poet he loved.

• Sirin, which is the Russian form of Siren, half-woman;half-bird. It was him he was speaking of. He was the siren, luring the unknowing in.

At end of book, he is sitting on the beach. Dmitri is here.

• Talking now about the decision Dmitri made to publish Nabokov's Last, uncomplete novel – The Original of Laura.

• Once we see something, we can not unsee it. Looking into the other pieces of life, gives us a fragmented mind of what is really, real.

****Put and talk about your picture if you have not done it yet.****

Reading now from Lolita:

• on 316, always picked locations and class lists that were very important.

• The Casbeem Barber that cost Nabokov a month of work. “And at every explodent spat into my neck.” The dead ball player, as if he was alive, was dead in a picture right by him, 30 years ago.

• Took him 3 months of his life to work out that section of the book.

Now we are talking about, white widowed males. The confessions

• The hour glass shape on the bottom of a black widow..... hour glass, our glass [ lake ].

Paronomasia - Paronomasia is the use of words that sound similar to other words, but have different meanings. Just like above.

*** A whole term paper on insect imagery would be woderful. Pg 229, spider web.****

What fairy tale is Lolita displacing? I need to figure it out... It is Beauty and the Beast, Cupid and Psyche, Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, one of Ovid's Metamorphosis's Story

****Annotate a single page from Lolita.... he wants us to dig and write and illuminate it as much as possible****

Asked John to open to a random page in his book.... opened to 256.... Sexson, over joyed by the 1 in 3 chance that this could happen, now reads to us the lines of the magical poem here. It is Beauty and the Beast, “it is beauty that killed the beast” King Kong, Incredible Hulk. Humbert Humbert is not a good poet, but Nabokov is, and still takes a not very good poem and puts a lot into it.

Narcissus!?!