Vladimir Nabokov: The Enchanter

[steffee]

Right, I've caught up with the obligatory read-before-you-post upto page 9, and it's taken me all night, so I just have to have my tuppence worth in right now!!

Firstly, I read the two author's notes (two notes, from the same author, that is), even though we learnt in a level English not to read introductions or authors notes at the start of the book, but I always do, else what is the purpose of putting them in at the beginning otherwise! Then I jumped right in. Two things surprised me: the first was the language, which wasn't really a major problem but it was hardly the "Lolita, light of my fire..." stuff we are used to with Nabokov. The second was that it wasn't in first person. That probably doesn't seem like too much of a big deal, but it totally threw me, and I had to re-read te first few pages before I could actually take it in... actually there were three things, what on earth are their names?! I've read this entire thread (upto page 9) and everyone seem's to be commenting on an Arthur. I'm presuming that unless this novel(la) has a kind-of-Quilty too, then Arthur must be the um... Humbert-equivalent(?!).

Aside from those teeny obstacles, I think it's going well

I am up to the part where he (Arthur?!) is sat on a bench, with the girl skating by (again) and then she stops to look at his watch, which has no hands. I have to give Nabokov credit here, who but him could make me remember such an insignificant detail as a watch with tiny blobs of black visible where the ends of the hands would be. Amazing!!

Whilst searching for the charcter's names, I found this

Reading List for Nabokov's Classes


Jane Austen
Mansfield Park
Charles Dickens
Bleak House
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary
Nikolay Gogol
"The Overcoat", Dead Souls
James Joyce
Ulysses
Franz Kafka
"The Metamorphosis"
Aleksandr Pushkin
Eugene Onegin
Marcel Proust
Swann's Way
Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina, "The Death of
Ivan Ilyich"
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
Fathers and Sons

from here

And so, I think I need to read a bit more!

 

[pontalba]

Steffee wrote--I've read this entire thread (upto page 9) and everyone seem's to be commenting on an Arthur. I'm presuming that unless this novel(la) has a kind-of-Quilty too, then Arthur must be the um... Humbert-equivalent(?!).

Yup.
Look in Authors Note One, p.xvi. Explains why we are calling him Arthur.

Oddly The chauffeur is referred to as a precursor to Quilty in Dimtri Nabokov's section---p. 106...

....the suspicious chauffeur who vaguely foreshadows Clare Quilty...

 

[steffee]

Yup.
Look in Authors Note One, p.xvi. Explains why we are calling him Arthur.

Duh! Of course.

 

[Peder]

Gives whole new meaning to the term stalker doesn't it?

Pontalba,
Stalker is definitely the word, and notice how it never quite came up with Humbert that I can remember. If true, that's a very telling difference between the two stories. IMO
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
Stalker is definitely the word, and notice how it never quite came up with Humbert that I can remember. If true, that's a very telling difference between the two stories. IMO
Peder

The closest I can come to stalking, is not really stalking. Wait, now let me explain. Lolita p. 49--

I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens. Sitting in the middle of a luminous web and giving little jerks to this or that strand. My web is spread all over the house as I listen from my chair where I sit like a wily wizard. Is Lo in her room? Gently I tug on the silk. She is not.......Let us have a strand of silk descend the stairs. I satisfy myself by this means that she is not in the kitchen......

Now just perhaps one could count the chase of Quilty after Lo has fled......but that was more of a tearing, screaming running after someone, not stalking.........

Humbert was not in the class with Arthur as far as cold, conniving creepiness was concerned. HH had a real passion about him. This man is all coldness. Frankly I doubt he would even have gotten that much pleasure for very long if he had succeeded in his endeavors. Something would have ruined it for him. He was not capable of satisfaction in the way Humbert was.

 

[Peder]

The closest I can come to stalking, is not really stalking. Wait, now let me explain. Lolita p. 49--

Now just perhaps one could count the chase of Quilty after Lo has fled......but that was more of a tearing, screaming running after someone, not stalking.........

Humbert was not in the class with Arthur as far as cold, conniving creepiness was concerned. HH had a real passion about him. This man is all coldness. Frankly I doubt he would even have gotten that much pleasure for very long if he had succeeded in his endeavors. Something would have ruined it for him. He was not capable of satisfaction in the way Humbert was.

Pontallba,
I'm smiling at the different ways we begin to see both Arthur and Humbert, now that we have them to compare one against the other.

Arthur is clearly ice-cold -- talk aout solipsism -- especially compared to Humbert, while OTOH we ourselves haven't ever actually called Humbert a stalker (even though that spider image did reappear in Lolita, now that you remind me).

And, alongside Arthur's coldness, I also start thinking more in terms of Humbert actualy having a 'personality.' Probably because we see more sides to Humbert than the one deliberately cunning side of Arthur? Humbert actually talks to Lolita, for example, through circumstances of the plot, for sure, but still he talks to her. And he did start getting out of his solipsism toward the end. Phrasing it that way now brings the further thought: that Arthur's solipsism actually drove him toward his end?

So we have the increasingly noticeable contrasts between 'cold stalker' and 'personable pedophile' the more we look at them?

Another reason crowds felt awkward welcoming Lolita? Which I guess echoes exactly what one of the articles said. Hmm, hmm, hm.

Another reason for having read Enchanter!
Peder

And another reason for casting yet another glance at Pifer, to see if that is what Nabokov wanted us to think, or only Humbert. What a hall of wavy mirrors! /groan, but good groan /
P.

PPS: And yes it is not clear that Arthur would know what to do with a girl if he ever got one. Which may explain that long drawn out very tense scene at the end? Brrrrr!
all leer, no action! It sill gives me the creeps! Arrrgggghhh!
p.

 

[Peder]

Startling revelation (to me anyway)

In looking carefully at segues, I actually happened to notice the plot of Enchanter. Duh! Noticed that it was different than I had thought, that is.

I thought the girl's mother lived in a separate city. Not so! Nothing so simple!

I found out that the mother lives in the same city as Arthur, call it Paris following the external notes, and that it is the governess who lives in Provence (again from the notes). Just the reeverse of what I had thought.

Which leads to a very complicated plot structure for a very simple story.

For example, Arthur sees the girl in a park in Paris. But she is only there from Provence visiting her mother. Why is she visiting? Well the governess lives in Provence, and it is the husband of the governesss who had business in Paris. So the governess decided to come along from Provence, and take the opportunity to let the girl visit with her mother in Paris.

So, why is the girl with the governess in the first place? Of course, because the mother is ill. And she has to be ill to serve the later purposes of the plot. Unless VN is going to invent a meteorite from the sky, or an earthquake, to intervene at the appropriate point and make the story go. Certainly not repeat (prepeat?) another auto accident!

So the governess is in Paris, not because she lives there, which she doen't. And the girl is in Paris, not because she lives there, but she might. And the girl leaves Paris not to be with her mother but to be away from her mother. And the governess leaves Paris to go home because her husband is going home.

Wanna hear that again?

All of that to propel a supposedly simple triangle, "pedophile marries mother to get at daughter."

It is not clear that Lolita is even that complicted in that part of the story!

Same story? Not at all!
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Peder
Also I thought it was interesting that the connection between the governess, for want of a better word, or you might call her a foster mother nowadays I suppose, and the mother was not a blood relationship. On p 16 during the conversation between Arthur and this woman, it comes out that :

.....there existed a five year friendship (her own husband's honor had been saved by the widow's late spouse); that last spring this widow had after a long illness..........

Yada, yada, yada...........
So really the woman looked after the child well, but had no real emotional ties to her. But the debt would have been a real one.

Yes, the more one examines the story, the less it resembles Lolita.

 

[Peder]

Peder
Also I thought it was interesting that the connection between the governess, for want of a better word, or you might call her a foster mother nowadays I suppose, and the mother was not a blood relationship. On p 16 during the conversation between Arthur and this woman, it comes out that :

Yada, yada, yada...........
So really the woman looked after the child well, but had no real emotional ties to her. But the debt would have been a real one.

Yes, the more one examines the story, the less it resembles Lolita.

Pontalba,
Thanks for explaining that in words, instead of what Nabokov sometimes uses.
I only put down that much that I could understand. I was next going to tackle the nature of 'the debt' between them. To figure out their all's reactions about the care of the girl. What you have said really clarifies that a lot! Now I can try to make some more headway on getting to the 'inside' of the story, instead of just the events on the outside.
Mne tnx!
Peder

 

[StillILearn]

Pontalba, To figure out their all's reactions about the care of the girl. Peder

pontalba, I do believe that our Peder is picking up your suthren accent! Next thing we know he'll be putting chicory in his decaf!

 

[pontalba]

pontalba, I do believe that our Peder is picking up your suthren accent! Next thing we know he'll be putting chicory in his decaf!

Ya mean he doesn't already??

Why Shucks..........
I usually make my coffee ahead of time, and drink it cold. I'd run out of made coffee for a few days, and a friend came over and it was pretty obvious I was in a crummy mood. Well, I mentioned I had to make coffee, as I'd been out, and she said........Oh! Thats whats wrong!

When I made the fresh pot I poured a hot cup into some instant hot chocolate..............aahhhh.....coffee and chocolate. What else in life is there.....well besides VN I mean...

And if I'm not wrong, missy, I hear a trace in yours too.....

 

[StillILearn]

And if I'm not wrong, missy, I hear a trace in yours too.....

Nah. I'm pure California -- through and through. Disgustingly so by some accounts.

 

[Peder]

Nah. I'm pure California -- through and through. Disgustingly so by some accounts.

Ohhhh, the image!

 

[Peder]

About half-way through a reread, I am noticing yet another different 'vibe' from Arthur than I recall from Humbert.

Arthur refers to his preference for certain girls as being entirely his mental condition. Thus on the very first page he refers to "my unique flame." Two pages later he is saying "I'm not attracted to every schoolgirl..." One more page and it is "I am merely seeking justification for my guilt." And then the most significant, "when healthy shame and sickly cowardice scrutinize you every step.."
He is not proud of his weakness, and clearly sees it as his own defect. And later we will see exactly that drive the story to its conclusion.

Humbert, on the other hand, seemed rather proud of his talent for spotting nymphets, and strongly seemed to imply that it was the fault of the nymphets that he became enraptured by them. After all, it was they who were the nymphetrs and they who were irresistably attractive. At least that's the way I seem recall it now.

Ring a bell with anyone?
Peder

 

[pontalba]

About half-way through a reread, I am noticing yet another different 'vibe' from Arthur than I recall from Humbert.

Arthur refers to his preference for certain girls as being entirely his mental condition. Thus on the very first page he refers to "my unique flame." Two pages later he is saying "I'm not attracted to every schoolgirl..." One more page and it is "I am merely seeking justification for my guilt." And then the most significant, "when healthy shame and sickly cowardice scrutinize you every step.."
He is not proud of his weakness, and clearly sees it as his own defect. And later we will see exactly that drive the story to its conclusion.

Humbert, on the other hand, seemed rather proud of his talent for spotting nymphets, and strongly seemed to imply that it was the fault of the nymphets that he became enraptured by them. After all, it was they who were the nymphetrs and they who were irresistably attractive. At least that's the way I seem recall it now.

Ring a bell with anyone?
Peder

No, I think HH is more the emotional hand-wringing wailer than Arthur. HH was not attracted to every school girl either though, only the nymphets, and so, I think, is Arthur. If I remember correctly, HH (post Lolita) was not attracted to any other even nymphet either.
No page numbers, just what I recall.

Still not quite up to Lolita in Vera yet. What an amazing marriage. True partnership. But their brand.

 

[Peder]

Pontalba,
No page numbers needed, Your recollection is the way I remember it also, especially now that you mention it. And now further thinking about it brings to mind that Humbert would check humself iinto the hospital when he felt his urge getting out of control. So I guess they both recognizeed that it was an urge they had within themsleves, and it wasn't the fault of the nymphets. As usual you are right on the money.
Charles

 

[Peder]

What an amazing marriage. True partnership. But their brand.

Pontalba,Right there also!
"True partnership. But their brand" sounds perfect as a summary!
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
No page numbers needed, Your recollection is the way I remember it also, especially now that you mention it. And now further thinking about it brings to mind that Humbert would check humself iinto the hospital when he felt his urge getting out of control. So I guess they both recognizeed that it was an urge they had within themsleves, and it wasn't the fault of the nymphets. As usual you are right on the money.
Charles

humself? Great typo, if in fact it was a typo! After Ada, I wonder..........

I'd forgotten for a moment that Humbert checked himself into sanatoriums at the drop of a hat. Practically sport to him! And occasionally really was!
You know VN was really a charming fellow, and he imparted that quality to Humbert. (Did I mention that already? ) Anyway, somehow he made a pedophile charming! Without the pedophilia of course. Now how on earth did he do that???

 

[Breaca]

......You know VN was really a charming fellow, and he imparted that quality to Humbert. (Did I mention that already?) Anyway, somehow he made a pedophile charming! Without the pedophilia of course. Now how on earth did he do that?

I think Asif Nafisi answers this one beautfully. 'Humbert appears to us both as narrator and seducer - not just of Lolita but also of us, whom throughout the book he addresses as "ladies and gentlemen of the jury" (sometimes as "winged gentlemen of the jury"). As the story unfolds, a deeper crime, more serious than Quilty's murder is revealed: the entrapement and rape of Lolita (you will notice that while Lolita's scenes are written with passion and tenderness, Quilty's murder is portrayed as farce). Humbert's prose, veering at times towards the shamelessly overwrought, aims at seducing the reader....'

If memory serves me right, there are many more instances where HH elicits our favour using language (and charm). But also the greater seduction is VNs mastery of language - how else could we get so much enjoyment from reading about the rape and abuse of a 12 year old. Because, whether we'd like to admit it or not, the novel is a joy to behold - a definite one to keep on the bookshelves for future readings and musings. (However, Arthur has no such charm and it's only the charm of VN's styalised writing that keeps you reading).

 

[Peder]

Pontalba,
No, humself was a straight (Freudian) typo! But good!

How did VN do it? I can only think of that Persuasion chapter in Pifer for a close reading of his techniques.

I think by far the most charming Humbert scene is the one where he crawls to her on all fours, and then, when she says Oh no, not again, he desists. That scene sounds so much like he wanted acceptance from her, the same way a puppy would. If my memory has it right.

Charles