There were various exchanges in the List about HH's caged ape, including a reference to Leland de La Durantaye's article dealing with Kafka (more details in the N-L Archives).

While I was reading a new translation of RM Rilke's poems, the prefatory comments, by José Paulo Paes, invited me to dwell a little longer on a specific poem, "The Panther."

 

J.P. Paes mentions the article "Impresionismo y expresionismo" *(translated by M.B.Heimerle. Madri. Guadarrama, 1963) by Walter Falk, in which Kafka's "expressionism" and R.M.Rilke's "impressionism" (based on his theory about Weltinneraum ) are contrasted, one of the examples being related to how both presented human beings and caged animals.

 

Rainier Maria Rilke had been advised by the sculptor Rodin to visit the Parisian Zoo to watch the various animals. Here are a few lines from the last lines of Rilke's poem

 

"Nur manchmal  schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille

und hört im Herzen auf zu sein."   .    

 

Rodin and Rilke are connected to caged animals in le Jardin de Plantes and, according to Falk, unlike Kafka, Rilke tries to "get inside" the feline's mind or sensations to try to look at the world outside the cage through his eyes. 

 

Nabokov's indication concerning the "first pangs of Lolita" may have conflated the two writers (both wrote in German, both are from Prague), to render Humbert Humbert's universe, while emphasizing his limitations and prison.

Rilke's feline, not the ape, might also correspond to agile, tennis-playing Lolita, caged by her predator HH..

 

Jansy Mello.