Speak, Memory Chapter 8 Part 1

"In choosing our tutors, my father seems to have hit upon the ingenious idea of engaging each time a representative of another class or race, so as to expose us to all the winds that swept over the Russian Empire. I doubt that it was a completely deliberate scheme on his part, but in looking back I find the pattern curiously clear, and the images of those tutors appear within memory's luminous disc as so many magic-lantern projections"(Nabokov, 153-154).

This passage is talking about his range of tutors that his father had for Nabokov and his brother four about ten years of their lives. His father didn't want them to be ignorant to the world, and think that there was only one type of person, so he chose a varied group of people to educate his children. As he remembers this experience of people, Nabokov's memory experiences it like a movie, with pictures playing of all the different he met and all the different people he knew in his life. He remembers his father's plan with happiness and respect.

The Poplar Response

I was assigned the poem The Poplar. Before reading this I looked up what a poplar was, I wasn't sure. I learned that it is a large tree that is a part of the willow family. This poem tells the story of a tree that grows outside of a house that I believe is the home to an older man. This poem is told in a couplet rhyming scheme, with AA BB CC. This makes reading it very simple.
My belief was that the man in the poem was peering out of his window at the tree, and a boy and girl who interact beneath it. It seems as though the man goes off into a memory, a flashback of sorts. He mentions a different time period, "And she-she seems to hold a dim/ Hand mirror with an ivory rim/ Framing a lawn, and her, and me/ Under the prototypic tree,/ Before a pillars porch, last seen/ In July, nineteen seventeen". This part is different than the rest. He uses himself in the context with the girl, instead of "a boy in black", and the poem itself was written in 1952, and he references something that hasn't been seen since 1917. The poem also mentions, "Of Populus that taps at last/ Not water but the author's past." He had mentioned before that the poplar was a dowsing tree, but in this case, the tree reaches for his memories, not a water supply.
By analyzing this poem, I realized that this was a memory about his past, about an old love, and about a specific time under a poplar tree in his front lawn.

Response to Articles

In Lolita and the Dangers of Fiction by Mathew Winston, it talks about how Humbert Humbert confuses what he is writing between fiction and reality. Winston also talks about how Nabokov is mocking the characters in the novel as well as the readers. One part that interested me in the book, is the fact that the whole basis for why Humbert is the way that he is, could very well be fake. He blames most of his troubles on the loss of his young love, a girl named Annabel Leigh. But, Edgar Allan Poe has a poem called Annabel Lee. Even Humbert remarks about the poem, and there are many similarities between them. But while Humbert is writing this story in prison, he could just be making this story up, to make it seem more appealing to the jury.

Possible Theme Choice

For my theme, I was really interested in talking about and researching the concepts of beauty in Lolita. It always stood out to me when I was reading. Like, when Humbert goes to pick her up from the camp and sees her for the first time he is highly disappointed, "She was thinner and taller, and for a second it seemed to me her face was less pretty than the mental imprint I had cherished for more than a month: her cheeks looked hollowed and too much lentigo camouflaged her rosy rustic features"(pg. 111). Humbert has built this image in his mind of what Lolita is to look like, it hasn't fully set in that she is going to grow and her body will change. He is picturing her as Annabel, which in his mind is the perfect girl for him. 

I wanted to write more about how Humbert pictures each of his characters and what about them makes them so special and detailed, to the point where I can visualize them. I also wanted to go outside of the book and talk about the trend called Lolita. Where women try to look and dress like prepubescent girls, because thats what they deem to be more attractive.

Lolita Response #4

In order to keep Lolita from going to the police, as she said she would, he threatens her into staying by mostly scaring her, "So I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? Well, you are luckier. You become the ward of the Department of Public Welfare-which I am afraid sounds a little bleak. A nice grim matron of the Miss Phalen type, but more rigid and not a drinking woman, will take away your lipstick and fancy clothes. No more gadding about!"(pg. 151). By showing her how horrible her life would  be if she left him, she doesn't tell anyone. They end up going around the country for the better half of the year, or practically a full year, before they settle somewhere and he finally lets her go to school. I found it interesting that he does in fact let her go to school, and that he has learned to trust her enough. Which obviously proves to be a mistake.

Lolita Response #3

Reading the ending of Part I went by very fast for me. I was so excited to see what was going to happen, even though I already know the story. I paid very close attention because when Nabokov killed off the wife in The Enchanter I had no idea for a while because he did it so suddenly, he simply called her "the person". If you were not reading close enough, you would never know that she had died. So while reading Lolita I tried to pay close attention to everything that was going to be happening in this part. With Humbert having to face Charlotte after she read his writing entries, followed quite shortly by her death, and then everything that goes on to happen with Lolita. The ending of this part was very fast paced and very captivating.
I noticed that the hotel that Humbert decided to have them reside in was called The Enchanted Hunter, I believe this is most likely a play on words referring to his novella. I noticed a lot of parallels to The Enchanter throughout this book, and I noticed it while reading the novella. I am more excited now, because we have gotten to the point where they are truly going to be different because they are now leaving the hotel, after Lolita gave consent to having sex with Humbert, which surprised the audience almost as much as it did Humbert.

Lolita Response #2

I found it interesting that back when Humbert Humbert was in Paris and married to Valeria that he was very cocky and arrogant, "Let me repeat with quite force: I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor"(pg. 25). He thinks of himself as quite a catch, and he is stuck in a marriage that he doesn't want, with someone he isn't attracted to. But once he goes to America and meets Lolita, his perspective of himself changes quite drastically, "But instead I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows and a queer accent, and a cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile"(pg. 44) This view of himself has changed  so much, in my opinion because he has finally me someone that makes him feel nervous and someone that he is truly attracted to, or in the words of Nabokov, someone that makes him throb.

Lolita Response #1

At first the forward made me very confused, but then looking back at it I realized that it was indeed Nabokov himself using a pseudonym. He explains that he has been sent to take over the finishing touches on the book because the author has passed away. Ray was going to keep the book more minimalist and keep the anonymity in the book, to keep it from getting out of hand. Ray even mentions that Humbert is in prison for an unnamed crime, where he inevitably passes away. Humbert Humbert even in the first chapter calls the readers of the story the jury, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle go thorns"(pg. 9). He lets you know that it is a messy situation.
The story itself draws me in. I have always loved this story,  even though the situation is not a preferred one. It is a love story. It started when Humbert was a teen, but since she passed away, he has been trying to find her again in others. To me this is very sad, and even though Humbert is an arrogant hebephile, I can't help but feel bad for him. I think that this has to do with the word choice. The poetic language that Nabokov uses creates images in your mind and the reader can envision everything that is happening to him. It also makes me happy when he finally sees Lolita because of his happiness, it is so evident, even though I know what will happen.

The Enchanter Response #2

As I continued to read The Enchanter the faster I read it because the intenser it got and it drew me in. This novella has a great affect on a person when you read it. It really makes you think about certain things in life. The poetic aspect of the story, the diction, are some of Nabokov's high points of the novella. He uses specific word choice to bring out emotions in the reader, "He knew he would make no attempt on her virginity in the tightest and pinkest sense of the term until the evolution of their caresses had ascended a certain invisible step"(pg. 56). Using the words "tightest and pinkest" not only refers to her virginity, but he is also referencing his strictness as a father-figure, by not allowing her to have sex. He also uses specific word choice when you find out that the wife has passed away, "on the way to the station he reluctantly stopped by and learned that the person was no more"(pg. 48). By referring to her as "the person" it shows no remorse at all, and it was so subtle that the first few times I read it I had no idea that she was actually dead.

The characters in the novella are very interesting, besides the fact that they don't have names, but that they all play such a role that invoke something from the audience. The wife is a very ill woman who doesn't know that she is being played by this twisted man, but when I found out that her surgery was a success I got angry. I found myself not liking her, because Nabokov wrote it so that you kind of have to root for the bad guy. With that being said, I found myself, be it very grossed out by what the man- or enchanter- was doing and thinking, still wanting to know how it plays out. Is he going to be alone with her? Is he going to get to touch her?

The Enchanter Response #1

Nabokov's short story, a precursor to Lolita, The Enchanter, both made me want to keep reading and see what happens next, but it also made me cringe. The fact that a story can too this is saying a lot about it. The Enchanter keeps the audience wanting to keep reading but also making them feel slightly dirty for reading it at the same time. 

Some of the things that made me so interested in the novella were the fact that no one has a name in the story until page 57 when he refers to her as "his little Cordelia", if this is even her real name. The story simply uses pronouns the entire time, or uses titles such as "the girl" or "the knitter". This gives the novella a sense of mystery. 

The Enchanter has the same essence, and almost storyline, as Lolita and it is interesting to see a different outcome from the story that everyone knows. Much like in Lolita this story focuses on a hebephile that is trying to control their urges. But ends up doing anything to be near the object of their desire. 

In the novella, though, the man known simply as the enchanter, has a lot of guilt built up because he knows what he is doing is wrong. When he first meets her in the park he has an use to turn around and see her once more, "Even though he knew from experience that one more look would simply exacerbate his hopeless longing, he completed his turn into the iridescent shade, his eyes furtively seeking the violet speck among the other colors"(pg.10). Also he had only planned to turn around and see her once more, his plan obviously didn't work. 

Nabokov's novella is beautifully written and contains beautiful figurative language that helps to make the story so much more realistic and enticing.