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[NABOKOV-L] Lolita and TRLSK
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J.Aisenberg observed that Humbert Humbert "seems to parody sympathy" and I remembered having read a related comment quite recently.
I just found it again. In TRLSK: " the amazing fact that a man writing of things which he really felt at the time of writing, could have had the power to create simultaneously - and out of the very things which distressed his mind - a fictitious and faintly absurd character."
V. also acknowledges: As often was the way with Sebastian Knight he used parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion. J. L. Coleman has called it 'a clown developing wings, an angel mimicking a tumbler pigeon'..."
Fairy-tale Mr. Silbermann, whose peculiar arithmetic concerning his "fees" seemed to place him in permanent debt to V.- but who provided our narrator with "real" names and addresses - says: "I fink it is ewsyless. You can't see the odder side of the moon. Please donnt search de woman. What is past is past" (pag. 132). He not only quotes one of SK's short-stories (the one with Mr. Siller, I think), but profetically, he also announces Lolita's wisdom*: " the past is the past."
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*- I quote J .Aisenberg: "when Lolita steadfastly refuses to be moved by natural wonders during their trip and reads a paper instead; or when Lolita in her last appearance says, "the past is the past"... What moves me are not Humbert grotesque howls, but when Lolita says, "you mean you're giving us four thousand bucks?"
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I just found it again. In TRLSK: " the amazing fact that a man writing of things which he really felt at the time of writing, could have had the power to create simultaneously - and out of the very things which distressed his mind - a fictitious and faintly absurd character."
V. also acknowledges: As often was the way with Sebastian Knight he used parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion. J. L. Coleman has called it 'a clown developing wings, an angel mimicking a tumbler pigeon'..."
Fairy-tale Mr. Silbermann, whose peculiar arithmetic concerning his "fees" seemed to place him in permanent debt to V.- but who provided our narrator with "real" names and addresses - says: "I fink it is ewsyless. You can't see the odder side of the moon. Please donnt search de woman. What is past is past" (pag. 132). He not only quotes one of SK's short-stories (the one with Mr. Siller, I think), but profetically, he also announces Lolita's wisdom*: " the past is the past."
...............................................................................
*- I quote J .Aisenberg: "when Lolita steadfastly refuses to be moved by natural wonders during their trip and reads a paper instead; or when Lolita in her last appearance says, "the past is the past"... What moves me are not Humbert grotesque howls, but when Lolita says, "you mean you're giving us four thousand bucks?"
:
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/