Week 24/25: Nabokov

Nabokov in 1949 (Cornell publicity photo):


















Links:

CNN's Beyond Lolita,
Vestige.org's coverage,
Cornell's 50th anniversary website, and
Questia's search results.

Class notes:

Humbert's language as the 'bait' that hooks you in..
The construction of the novel - double theme throughout

All the stops are pulled out -> the language [HH as a monster with an (exquisite) aesthetic sense]
- "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style"

Mario Praz -"The Romantic Agony" - Romanticism and Decadence

Aesthetics without a moral force underpinning it (Aesthetics without Beauty) cf Keats - art and beauty, cf Wilde and the shudder

- Aesthetic shaping of the material ->orchestration of detail not unlike the Joycean epiphany.

[The idea that Art and Beauty have nothing in common]

Nabokov admired Joyce - Ulysses - no "social intent" (and nothing bored N. more than social intent)

N. used the Thesis/Antithesis//Synthesis - a fan of the triadic structure.

[Blending enchantment with revulsion]

cf 'A Girl in the Head' -> Boris as a failed HH, in some ways - thinks he's cultured, but... (also cannot act, limited to keeping the girl in his head...)

[end - HH's genuine love, empathy for Lolita. -> unexpected, involuntary - more genuine.

Jekyll/Hyde = Quilty/HH...


Photo (Lolita, Olympia Press, 1955):