Steve Blackwell: "I had a wish for VN's birthday,
which was to compile a list of the birthdays of his characters, and also a
list of major characters for whom we do not (seem to) know the birthdays.
My wish, however, did not come true! Still, I have been wondering for most
of the past year why we do not know Humbert's birthday (in contrast to
Fyodor G-Ch's, his father's, Sebastian Knight's, Pnin's, and John Shade
& co's). HH does mention the general concept of his birthday twice
("...before my thirteenth birthday"; "after my sixteenth birthday"), and
the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th birthdays of Dolores Haze.
Jansy Mello:
Sebastian was born at the turn of the XXth Century and he died at the start of
1936. Nabokov confessed his confusion with birthdates...because he was born in
1899.(d.1977).I noticed that there are two chapters [RLSK] that have a
curiously similar beginning and they are related to dates of death.
Would this similarity be intentional and what
does it
mean?
Chapter 4:
"Two months had elapsed after Sebastian's death when this book was
started."
Chapter 8: "Two years had elapsed after my mother's death before I saw Sebastian
again."
Frances Assa A noble goal to compile such
a list. It did seem to me with respect to your query "I have been
wondering...why we do not know Humbert's birthday (in contrast to Fyodor G-Ch's,
his father's, Sebastian Knight's, Pnin's, and John Shade & co's) that
the list of characters for whom we know birthdays is a list of good guys,
exclusively.
Jansy Mello: Trying to understand your
idea: John Shade, Kinbote and Gradus, Sebastian, Pnin, Fyodor ( and perhaps Van
Veen) ...are they the "good guys"? What do you mean by "good" ( and
"bad")? Did you simply mean "the guys" and not the gals?
Nabokv-L - We also know Gradus's (a Bad Guy) and
Dolly's (a Good Girl). I suspect Quilty's, and Pnin's V.V. are
4/23 or a variation of it.
SES: I really like Steve's idea (and thanks for covering
for me last night, Steve) of assembling a list of birthdates (and perhaps
references to birthday celebrations) for VN's characters. Please chime in
with what you notice or find. Perhaps we can come up with a complete
calendar by next year?
A. Bouazza: In Part I chapter 2
of Lolita, Humbert Humbert writes:"The only definite sexual
events that I can remember as having occurred before my thirteenth birthday
(that is, before I first saw my little Annabel)…Annabel…a lovely child a few
months my junior." HH and Annabel meet in the summer of 1923. So it
seems HH’s birthday is in the summer.In autumn 1923 HH enters a lycée in Lyon.
Four months after HH and Annabel’s “fatal summer”, she dies of typhus in Corfu.
If we assume their thwarted love occurred in August, Annabel must have died in
December 1923 –in the same month as Lolita. Later on, in chapter 5, HH
writes: "When I was a child and she was a child,
my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own
right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952,
after twenty-nine years have elapsed [i.e. 1923], I think I can distinguish in
her the initial fateful elf in my life." This confirms that the
fatal summer was in 1923.Needless to say, I may have overlooked something or
other.
Jansy Mello: An activity that is shared by the
VN-L members is another great idea.May I add something else?
Could we search after information concerning character's
various occupations, jobs and sources of income, the importance of
each, their time and place? (I mean, teachers, dentists,
doctors, movie producers, writers, editors, scholars, poets, governesses,
tutors, explorers, Kings, landowners, art collectors, photographers,
kitchen-boys, butlers, chauffers, stable-boys, secretaries,
pensioners aso?). There are many rich or poor otiose gentlemen
and ladies among the main characters, true or
false?