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Re: The "56 days" conundrum in "Lolita"
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Anthony Stadlen: But that is not the normal meaning of "56 days ago", surely? And why does VN so emphasize 52 (in Appel's notes)?
I'm not sure that "56 days ago" has a "normal" meaning. I suppose it's true that we wouldn't say "two days ago" if we mean "yesterday," but I don't think this rule necessarily applies for longer increments of time. And of course, we have to remember that Humbert is, in Ray's word, "abnormal." In his poem, he refers to Lo's age as 5,300 days. He writes the line "about as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer." Humbert's relationship to time is, well, peculiar--at times weirdly exact, elsewhere not so much. He's also capable of semantic abuses, as when he writes "kissed her in the neck," rather than "on the neck." But maybe this issue isn't easily decided.
I guess it depends on which reading you find more resonant. I find the argument for unusual exactness, if we can call it that, more compelling, partly because the dates then serve as a more explicit cue to look twice at what happens on 9/22 (rather than 9/21, about which the text is silent). In a few crucial ways, the text is explicitly self-referential (think of the reference to Hourglass Lake that overlays the revelation of Quilty's identity in Coalmont). And Ray's Foreword appears to confirm that one of those 9/22 letters has a basis in reality (Farlow's, which mentions the new lawyer, Windmuller). In short, the dates in this light seem to me to be part of a more cohesive design. But I suppose it's possible to argue that the loss of cohesion (again, if we can call it that) on this point could be meaningful too. Best, Bruce Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 02:52:05 -0400
From: STADLEN@AOL.COM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] The "56 days" conundrum in "Lolita"
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
In a message dated 13/03/2012 01:07:32 GMT Standard Time,
bstone41@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
If you
include both the start and end dates of this interval, you should get 56
days: 9/22 - 9/30 (9 days), 10/1 - 10/31 (31 days), 11/1 - 11/16 (16
days).
But that is not the normal meaning of "56 days ago", surely? And why does
VN so emphasize 52 (in Appel's notes)?
Anthony
Stadlen
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