First Thoughts on Transparent Things

About a year ago I decided to take my love of food to the next level and climb my own personal culinary Everest and make croque en bouche. While I knew it could be considered a particularly difficult task it seemed rather basic, multiple cream puffs stacked in a tower and glazed with sugar. How wrong I was, however after about three days and four fallen messes of cakes I finally got it right and it was quite possibly the most delicious dessert I have ever had. I now see that Transparent Things is possibly my literary croque en bouche, I underestimated it due primarily to its short length. While I enjoyed the work I am rather confident now that coming to a comprehensive understanding of the text will be a long process of trial and error.

I was really loving Nabokov’s attention to and use of the relationship between the afterlife and those who are living, and the narration from beyond the grave. That was until Tuesdays class when the possibility of multiple narrators was brought up, sending me spiraling back into a state of complete confusion. It seems to me that Transparent Things is an entirely different type of writing in which the reader is the main character ( You Person) and the narrator is both a fictional dead man and possibly also the author himself ( who also seems to be a character in a book by the previously mentioned dead narrator in the form of his anagrammed name in Adam Von Librikov.) So while you are a character in a story by Nabokov, he is a character in a story by Mr. R? This jumbled and confused line of thinking I am on is feeling more and more like that that mess of deflated cream puffs and burnt sugar by the second.

Nabokovs Latest Novel

Here is a link to a New York Times article about Nabokov and Original of Laura its an interesting article and is worth looking at for the picture of Nabokov in shorts with high socks and a butterfly net alone!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Gates-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Poprishchin and Kinbote

One of the most interesting things that I have found reading Nabokov is seeing all of the different things that influenced his work, whether they be from history or literature or even his own life. In looking at Nabokov and finding out more about him and his work I have continuously come across references to Nikolai Gogol. Gogol is even mentioned in pale fire , as a “marvelous humorist such as Gogol.” Pg. 155 and in reading information on Pale fire Gogols “Diary of a Madman” was mentioned, the title alone would suggest it is quite similar to Pale Fire. So I checked out a copy from the library and skimmed through it and found that the title is not the only thing that the two works have in common. Poprishchin, the main character becomes completely insane in the story and convinces himself that he is the heir to the recently vacated throne of Spain. It would seem that Poprishchin and Kinbote would have a lot of notes to share if the two characters were ever to meet, as they both are mad and have assumed the identities of missing kings. Since Nabokov wrote a biography of Gogol and his works it would seem that Poprishchin is a likely candidate for the inspiration of Kinbote.

Pale Fire

First reading Pale Fire to me was a little bit like first reading Beloved, I was confused. After getting further into the commentary, however, and understanding the tone of the book and seeing the humor and fun in the book, I have grown to really enjoy it. I was not expecting a work that was so funny and I really enjoyed that aspect of the book, I also saw a lot of connections between the book and Nabokovs’ real life. The murder of Shade and the murder of Nabokovs’ father on the same day was especially interesting. The exile from a Country similar to Russia, placed in a close proximity to Russia after the monarchy is overthrown in the story seems influenced by Nabokovs’ own experiences in Russia during the Revolution.
The work seems to place literary criticism in a particularly harsh light, as one mad mans analysis forever changes the poem itself. Even when the reader knows that the poem is not about Charles the Beloved and Zembla, the work is still altered into something different. The critic kills the poem ( and in a sense the poet as well.) I wonder how Nabokov would feel about our analysis of this text.

list of obnoxious traits in Charles Kinbote

Six things that annoy me about Charles Kinbote:
1. He is arrogant, and completely self-absorbed. He thinks things like,“ My free and simple demeanor set everybody at ease” pg. 21 or “ Shade could not write otherwise than beautifully- but void of my magic, of that special rich streak of magical madness which I was sure would run through it and make it transcend its time.” Pg.296-297
2. He is crazy. (this could actually be something I love about him as well) I love when the woman in the grocery store comes right out and says “ what’s more, you are insane” on page 25, it sums it all up quite nicely.
3. It would appear that he doesn’t know when he is unwanted, and I feel bad for Sybill and John Shade, because, after all, haven’t we all had neighbors a bit like Kinbote?
4. His note to line 680 “ Why our poet chose to give his 1958 hurricane a little-used Spanish name ( sometimes given to parrots) instead of Linda or Lois, is not clear.” pg.243
5. Stealing someone’s poem is not cool, even if it does make for a good story.
6. The way he calls Shade “our poet” is creepy.

I think that my favorite paper that I read would have to be Jana Curries paper on the letter Q in Lolita. I was impressed on the papers ability to take such a specific point and form it into a coherent, interesting paper. Reading through it was like following a trail of clues, which is equally what reading a Nabokov text is like. I think that the discovery about the letter Q being slang for the word cue, which is given to Quilty as a nickname was fascinating. Further the finding that Q means initiation of deception was very interesting to me; it really proved that absolutely nothing that Nabokov put into his novels was without complete purpose and meaning. I think it was a great paper with new ideas and discoveries, obviously not the only paper of this type as there were many papers that I thought were amazing. This particular one just seemed to grab me though!

short paper

Lolita and The Little Mermaid

It would seem that nothing in Nabokov’s Lolita is written into the novel purely by chance, instead every one of the intricate facets carries with it great purpose and meaning. Due to this no simple sentence can be looked over without further examination, so when Humbert Humbert buys Lolita a book for a gift it is guaranteed that the book holds certain meaning in the story. Humbert narrates, “I bought Lo, for her thirteenth birthday, a de luxe volume with commercially “beautiful” illustrations, of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.” (pg.174) It is from this line that one can begin to see the references to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid throughout the story of Lolita.
The similarities drawn between the two characters of Lolita and Ariel are numerous, Lolita is described as a charming dancer throughout the story just as the character of Ariel is said to be the most graceful dancer ever seen, a skill which she must utilize as she is unable to speak. Further the two are both described as young princesses, Humbert calls Lolita “My Frigid Princess” (pg 166) and “A fairy princess” (pg 52) and Ariel is the youngest daughter of the merman king, a beautiful mermaid princess. Humbert notes on the fairy tale aspect of his labeling of Lolita as a princess saying, “And as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess.” (Nabokov, 39) Humbert here seems to acknowledge the fabled sense he gives to both himself and Lolita, he later even describes himself as crying “merman tears” (pg. 255) for Lolita after he has lost her. Near the end of the novel Humbert visits a married, pregnant Lolita and attempts to persuade her to return with him by offering her a clichéd fairytale ending saying “Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.” (pg.278) In a even more blatant illustration of the fairy-tale theme between Humbert and Lolita, Humbert describes himself as a type of prince charming, “What a comic, clumsy, wavering Prince Charming I was.” (Nabokov, 111)
As Humbert refers to Lolita as his little “princess” and even “my little Creole,” (Nabokov, 174) the prince in The Little Mermaid calls Ariel “his little foundling.” Both female characters are made into subordinate objects that both of the Male characters take advantage of. While Ariel wants to “enchant a mortal heart” in order to gain an eternal soul it would seem that Lolita wants to do the same in order to seem like an adult, like one of the movie stars that she loves to read about. Both Lolita and Ariel though are in the end destroyed by the “prince” characters though, just as Ariel is unable to return to the sea and her life as a mermaid, Lolita is unable to return to her childhood and a normal life. The Prince in The Little Mermaid breaks Ariel’s heart by marrying another, thereby killing her and ruining her ability to gain an eternal soul. And by taking away Lolita’s childhood essentially through raping her, Humbert destroys her soul and in the end she too dies.
While the word Nymph is used as a synonym for mermaid, the word enchantress is used as a description for both characters. Both Lolita and Ariel are portrayed by their narrators as enchantresses, but they are also similarly victims.