Nabokov - Day Seven

Jeremy Irons playing Humbert Humbert -

In the dark.....soak it in, picture it..... (Awesome!)

The epiphanic moment at the end of Lolita will be used in Sexson's class next semester.

****He wants to know what Jeremy Irons part of the play we would like to listen to in class, and why****

Sam's blog – Article on “Lolita” talks about how it is here to stay

Lolita at number 4 on the Newsweek novels you must read.

Sadly, I missed out on Ben Leubner's poetry presentation.... Nabokov was connected to it, because they touched on the “other world”

Aubrey Beardsly, 19th century artist? Pornographer? Priapic...... relation to Rapunzel?

****He wants to see some more commentary / annotations on one page on Lolita, 5-7 discoveries****

John Orsi's blog – Talking about how it is one of the best books he's ever read and his response to Amanda's blog.

Amanda's blog – The answers to, “Why choose a pedophile?”


Artists play the game of, “What is the WORST that could happen?” John Orsi brings up Shakespeare's “Titus and And...” The raping and the deaths and the cutting and beauties and crazies.

Almost anything can be poetry.

Humbert Humbert as Calaban (wonderful paper)..... Prospero as the stage director.... “The Tempest” is through and through Lolita.


Why would the poet use Billy Collins use “Picnic, Lightning” to title his entire book of poems?
An entire story in two words
An awesome contrast of beauty and serenity vs. intense pain, fear, and death.

Nabokov, “What is the value of a University Education?”

Hiding in his response to this question is the (picninc, lightning) line from Lolita.

****On the first exam you will be asked to name three things that must go into the building of an Artist: Story Teller, Teacher (perhaps least important, and Enchanter (which is most important) ****



The lines at the end of “The Renaissance” by Walter Pater:

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve–les hommes sont tous condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion–that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. [239] Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.
1868.

Prospero tells his daughter to pay “Attention”. Reminds her of the women that watched upon her as a girl, and magically brings them about as the nine muses.


John Ray Jr.'s introduction – Parody on roman numeral 27? - Coincidence and all the other things incorporated within it – Talking about 19th century England and Nabokov interested ….. that's one of the reasons he really focused on this pedophile character....

Humber 9-14, “not a pedohile”, he's only interested in nymphets....

pg. 88 - Talks about Melampus (one of the dogs in the book), one of the hounds of Acteon, who was turned into a stag and eaten by his own dogs.

“Do not look at women with that look in your eye, you will only be put back to square one.” - MS

What play is being put on? “The Hunted Enchantress” and it's all about this Diana and someone comes in to explain how everything is part of an imagination.

Reading pg. 31....... The books in the Prison Library........... He places clue's for the re-reader

Here is the Pym that Sexson wanted me to find:

“ The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship called Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue towards the South Pole. “ -wikipedia.com

Next time we talk about our discoveries and laugh.