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THOUGHTS: Water nymphs in the Styx
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Rachel Ronning writes:
I very much enjoyed Brian Boyd’s articles in Cycnos and The American
Scholar.
I am intrigued with the Humbert/Merlin comparison and found this
illustration by Aubrey Beardsley (one of Quilty’s cognomens) depicting
the
scene where Merlin is entrapped by his beloved Vivien/Nimue.
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/22.html
Nimue is a maiden of the Lady of the Lake in Malory’s Arthur who is so
exasperated by Merlin’s lust for her that she uses his own enchantments
to
trap him in a cave. Lolita may have mimicked Nimue as Humbert
describes “she had been so pretty in the weaving of those delicate
spells,
in the dreamy performance of her enchantments and duties!” Lolita like
Vivien/Nimue observes Humbert and even mimics his own “spell”, the
Carmen
song; “her voice stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating.”
Lolita’s powers of deception eventually rival Humbert’s and he ends up
in “tombal seclusion” in a “tombal jail” the equivalent of Merlin’s
enchanted cave. (There is a definite cave motif associated with Humbert
and as Jansey Mello suggested in an earlier posting, Humbert may be
alluding to cave art in his tender final sentences.)
It may be a stretch to imagine Charlotte morphing from a “mediocre
mermaid”
to a more respectable Lady of the Lake (though Humbert does change
Hourglass Lake (Ourglass) to “my and Charlotte’s glass lake?”)
To follow the dog theme of Cavall and Melampus, Mona Dahl mentions three
hounds that were drugged for the play where Lolita was to depict an
enchantress at a time when her deception is most successful and when she
is
planning her arrival at Wace to coincide with the opening of “Magic
Cave.”
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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I very much enjoyed Brian Boyd’s articles in Cycnos and The American
Scholar.
I am intrigued with the Humbert/Merlin comparison and found this
illustration by Aubrey Beardsley (one of Quilty’s cognomens) depicting
the
scene where Merlin is entrapped by his beloved Vivien/Nimue.
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/22.html
Nimue is a maiden of the Lady of the Lake in Malory’s Arthur who is so
exasperated by Merlin’s lust for her that she uses his own enchantments
to
trap him in a cave. Lolita may have mimicked Nimue as Humbert
describes “she had been so pretty in the weaving of those delicate
spells,
in the dreamy performance of her enchantments and duties!” Lolita like
Vivien/Nimue observes Humbert and even mimics his own “spell”, the
Carmen
song; “her voice stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating.”
Lolita’s powers of deception eventually rival Humbert’s and he ends up
in “tombal seclusion” in a “tombal jail” the equivalent of Merlin’s
enchanted cave. (There is a definite cave motif associated with Humbert
and as Jansey Mello suggested in an earlier posting, Humbert may be
alluding to cave art in his tender final sentences.)
It may be a stretch to imagine Charlotte morphing from a “mediocre
mermaid”
to a more respectable Lady of the Lake (though Humbert does change
Hourglass Lake (Ourglass) to “my and Charlotte’s glass lake?”)
To follow the dog theme of Cavall and Melampus, Mona Dahl mentions three
hounds that were drugged for the play where Lolita was to depict an
enchantress at a time when her deception is most successful and when she
is
planning her arrival at Wace to coincide with the opening of “Magic
Cave.”
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm