The ammount of information that a single Nabokovian sentence may
contain is quite astounding. After I copied down the concluding paragraphs
from "Lolita" my attention was arrested by: "When I started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in
the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit
tombal, seclusion, I thought I would use these notes in toto at my trial, to
save not my head, of course, but my soul. In mind-composition, however, I
realized that I could not parade living Lolita. I still may use parts of this
memoir in hermetic sessions, but publication is to be
deferred.[ ] ". The higlighting of "hermetic sessions"
has developped in part from James Twiggs's
reference to the very few readers who would have used
the phrase “divine love” in the 1950s...and that a discussion "of VN’s
Gnosticism was still several years away."
On my part
I entertained conjectures about HH's emphasis on
"mortal morality" ( 'The moral sense in mortals
is the duty/We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty.'), and to what kind of human or
heavenly Judges he might be addressing while he is
trying to save "not his head but his soul."
I discovered
that he could be referring to the Hermetic societies, or
to their chief social event, the Tribunal session, or something
other along that line*. While reading HH's
confessions we can discover that he invokes not only the members of
a Jury (he sometimes relates to angels).but, quite often in the last
chapters, he summons up the Reader.
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* Hermetic society in the canonic setting is complex and nuanced. While
the Order of Hermes is limited in size...and a Tribunal probably holds less
than ten score magi, these come from long and disparate magical lineages and
traditions [...] The social foundation of the Order is its democratic system
of Tribunals....The chief Hermetic social event is without a doubt the
Tribunal session, including the periodic regional Tribunals and the
magnificent Grand Tribunal session. A second ritual common in nearly all
covenants is the yearly casting of the Aegis of the Hearth, traditionally at
the winter solstice. Hermetic society knows other social events, however,
although these are often more limited in scope.
Hermetic Society www.redcap.org/page/hermetic_society
Em cache All private
editorial communications are read by both co-editors.