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Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Peder said:
It feels like time to wake up the place!
:) :) :)
Peder
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Good morning, Peder. What time is it where you live? It's six AM here and still pitch dark, but here I am too. :)

I'll be back after coffee. Real coffee. ;)
 
So, who's the girl, Mister?

It is the eternally interesting question! It never goes away! It first surfaces on the porch at The Enchanted Hunters hotel (p.126)

Mysterious voice: "Where the devil did you get her?"

Humbert: "I beg your pardon?"

Voice: "I said: the weather is getting better"

Humbert: "Seems so."

Voice: "Who's the lassie?"

Humbert: "My daughter."

Voice: "You lie --- she's not"

Humbert: "I beg your pardon?"

Voice: "I said July was hot. Where's her mother?"

Humbert: "Dead."
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The mists swirl and the scene slowly changes in our imagination to a courtroom,

Magistrate: So, who's the girl, Mister? Where did you pick her up?

Humbert: She's my step-daughter, Your Honor. The daughter of Charlotte Haze.
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Again our imagination blurs and we are at a reception at the Harvard Club. (Vera p.229)

Admirers: "[we] had not exactly expected the author to show up with his distinguished looking wife of thirty three years."

Vera: /smiling, unflappable/ "Yes, that is exactly why I am here."
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The stage turns yet again and through the mists we see emerging a visit with a biographer.

Reader: Who was Lolita? Who was the real-life Lolita?

Boyd: "he took one arm from a little girl who used to come to see Dmitri, one kneecap of another. He visited the school principal on the pretext of placing his little daughter. [He had none!] He searched out recent studies on physical and psychological development of American schoolgirls..." (Boyd, The American Years, p211)
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Still inquisitive, the reader turns to Mrs. Nabokov, still nearby, (Vera p.214)

Reader: Where did he find Lolita? Who was she in real life? Someone he knew?

Vera: "[he] sat on the Ithaca buses with notepad and listened carefully. He had also haunted playgrounds until his doing so had become awkward. There were otherwise no other little girls in his life" (p214)

Reader: No one else?

Vera: "[some of our friends] came to understand [his] earlier interest in their prepubescent daughter, whom Vladimir had taken to interviewing extensively..." (p205)
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The stage turns a final time, and as the clouds part we imagine an unexpected meeting with the author himself, with the tables turned.

Author: So, now, who is Lolita to you? How do you see Lolita?

Reader: Well, might she really be a daughter of Galatea? The latest of her daughters, created in the same way, full-grown from an artist's imagination? Smudged up a bit, but brought to life from the mythically beautiful ivory statue created by the sculptor Pygmalion? The sculptor who fell in love with his creation and prayed to Venus that his statue might live? And he with her? A sculptor who appears transformed totally downward in the modern version of your story to a degenerately lustful man. Whose wish for a nymphet of his imagination to live is nevertheless granted? But granted in a young girl whose love he can never have?

Author: Bosh! Nonsense! That is NOT how I created her! /showing considerable impatience with the visitor, now more like an intruder/

Reader: You say! But now she belongs to us, and for all time, in that immortality you wished for her. And now we will imagine how we see her, and bring her to life in our own imaginations.

Author: /silently fixes the intruder with a very hard stare, says nothing for a long time, then sighs resignedly./ And just how do you see her?

Reader: I see her as having a little bit in her of all girls growing up into womanhood. A little bit of each of our own twelve-year olds. And when we look at our own twelve-year olds, we each see just some bit of Lolita in them too. Lolita is partly our creation also, changing ever before our eyes, just as our own twelve-year olds change day-to-day before our eyes. She might have grown up to hum "I am a Natural Woman," along with Carole King, and then to sing out loud "I am Woman! Hear Me roar!" along with Helen Reddy. She might have become the perfect She. She had a look in her eyes, a restlessness in her spirit. She might have become anything, just anything she wanted to be! And, one day, she shall be.

Author: /Now perhaps smiling faintly just a bit, he turns/ And the rest of you? How do you see her?
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StillILearn said:
Good morning, Peder. What time is it where you live? It's six AM here and still pitch dark, but here I am too. :)

I'll be back after coffee. Real coffee. ;)
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'Morning, Still,
You're up early!
Well, it was 8:00 am when I started putting the finishing touches on that, and it is 9:30 now. And now I am headed out for a cup of coffee to start the engine.
I trust you are having the usual California weather?
Peder
 
Peder /she sighs happily/ You have done it again. Yes you have. Rousted out the essence of the author/reader relationship. I have only one thing to say.....
BRAVO!

The conversation you quote from p.126 at the hotel, is priceless, one of my favorites. Hearing either Sellars or Langella in my mind everytime. :) Arch intonation and all that.

The rest is pure Peder. And btw, I believe Vera has again migrated to the top of my stack. ;) :D She would have to have been one strong minded, amazing woman to stick with him. He kept marrying until he got it right, and then stuck like glue. I like that in a man.

And StillI I hope that coffee has chicory in it. :p
 
Peder said:
'Morning, Still,
You're up early!
Well, it was 8:00 am when I started putting the finishing touches on that, and it is 9:30 now. And now I am headed out for a cup of coffee to start the engine.
I trust you are having the usual California weather?
Peder
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Peder, you did that without coffee? I stand in awe. What a lovely way to start the day. Thank you.
 
pontalba said:
Peder ]The rest is pure Peder. And btw, I believe Vera has again migrated to the top of my stack. ;) :D She would have to have been one strong minded, amazing woman to stick with him. He kept marrying until he got it right, and then stuck like glue. I like that in a man.
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I agree, pontalba, with all you have said. Pure Peder -- and Vera, too! That's where I intend to begin my further studies.

But, no chicory for this gal. That must be a suthren thang. :)
 
StillILearn said:
But, no chicory for this gal. That must be a suthren thang. :)
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I suppose it is actually, the use of chicory began during the Civil War. Blockades kept so much from coming in, we resorted to digging up roots! :) :eek: But it actually is good for you. Herbal and all that.
 
Pontalba, StillILearn,
Thanks for the very nice words.
And no Still, I didn't do that without coffee. I sketched it off-line over what must have been a very unusual cup of coffee. At the coffee shop, one drizzly calm deserted evening that was just oozing atmosphere and begging for the mind to roam.
But having written it, and after having had two daughters, I realize that Lolita must speak to me in some very, very deep way. Do I hear 'archetype?' :)
Plus it was rewarding to get in touch with my feelings. Those were the songs around the house when mine were 12 and pre-12, and now it falls to some modern person to write the modern chapter for Lolita.
Plus, did you catch that statue of Galatea? Woo woo.! :) :) :)
Peder
 
P.s.

Actually, the number of myths and tales involving men with women coming to life must be huge! Sleeping Beauty comes to mind, for example. But Pygmalion and Galatea capture the idea of the perfect artistic creation at the hands of the artist. And rattling around loose in my head is the thought of a story where the artist took the prettiest hand, and the prettiest arm, and the prettiest face, and so on, but I didn't see that in the Galatea myth. Does that ring a bell with anyone?
P.
 
p.p.s.

Given the interest in Vera, I was wondering whether the women here caught the precise meaning of her dry comment "That's precisely why I am here."? It took a while for it to sink in with me. :eek:
Peder
 
pontalba said:
Do you suppose that is where VN found the name "Schiller"?
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Pontalba,
Oh, I see!
Maybe. Probably? Must be?
Otherwise it is quite a coincidence.
Man, it is hard to keep up with you and Nabokov! :D

But then, he had Galatea in mind, because he read Shiller? Or Shiller in mind because he read the myth? But, either way, Galatea in mind? As well as Shiller?

That's an extraordinary double coincidence if so, and Appel is mum on the matter. (If he is?)
Peder
 
Peder It had been many years since I'd read any mythology, and did not remember the story of Galatea at all, so I read you link. The name Schiller just jumped out at me. I thought this quote especially reminded me of Mrs. Richard Schiller:
"And then, in all my ardour sharing,
The silent form expression found;
Returned my kiss of youth daring,
And understood my heart's quick sound.
Then lived for me the bright creation,
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Dick was in fact the receiptant of the "bright creation".

And frankly, I don't see the name/word Vladimir Nabokov and coincidence in the same sentence! :rolleyes:

If I had to guess, I'd say:
Shiller in mind because he read the myth
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