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Re: : Re: Aisenberg's thoughts on PF]
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On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 12:28 AM, jansymello <jansy@aetern.us> wrote:
> Btw. remembering Quilty's Assyrian beard ( if it was Q's) - what do we
> make of Humbert Humbert's sentence, in "Lolita"?
> "Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever
> spiritual solace I might find[...] Unless it can be proven to me — to me as
> I am now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefaction — that
> [...] unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke)."
>
""Unless it can be proven to me - to me as I am now, today, with my heart
and my beard, and my putrefaction - that in the infinite run it does not
matter a jot that a North-American girl named Dolores Haze has been deprived
of her childhood by a maniac, unless
this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for
the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of
articulate art".
I apologize, I have not followed the "beard" discussion, and will catch up
when I have time. But one thing about HH's sentence it seems to me in my
most recent reading of *Lolita*, is that it is not convincing that this is
what HH feels ("then life is a joke") and may be more what VN feels. I
believe Jansy makes this point beautifully in her article "LOLITA:
FREUDIANS, KEEP OUT, PLEASE".
Barrie Karp
NYC
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> Btw. remembering Quilty's Assyrian beard ( if it was Q's) - what do we
> make of Humbert Humbert's sentence, in "Lolita"?
> "Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever
> spiritual solace I might find[...] Unless it can be proven to me — to me as
> I am now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefaction — that
> [...] unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke)."
>
""Unless it can be proven to me - to me as I am now, today, with my heart
and my beard, and my putrefaction - that in the infinite run it does not
matter a jot that a North-American girl named Dolores Haze has been deprived
of her childhood by a maniac, unless
this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for
the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of
articulate art".
I apologize, I have not followed the "beard" discussion, and will catch up
when I have time. But one thing about HH's sentence it seems to me in my
most recent reading of *Lolita*, is that it is not convincing that this is
what HH feels ("then life is a joke") and may be more what VN feels. I
believe Jansy makes this point beautifully in her article "LOLITA:
FREUDIANS, KEEP OUT, PLEASE".
Barrie Karp
NYC
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/