Subject
[ Query ] [ Thoughts?] - Intercostal neuralgia and red-capped
hunters in Lolita and Pale Fire
hunters in Lolita and Pale Fire
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Dear List,
Recently there was a discussion here on how best to apply Appel's Annotated Lolita in class. The latest issue of The Nabokovian ( n.58) also brings up this theme with "Emendations fo Annotated Editions of Lolita" ( Appel's and Boyd's) by Leland de la Durantaye.
On his note on 311. about "The first little throb of Lolita...at a time when I was laid up with a severe attack of intercostal neuralgia... a newspaper story about an ape...first drawing ...the bars of the poor creature's cage..." Durantaye mentioned famous researches on Primate art and charcoaled cage bars, when he brought up VN's "intercostal neuralgia" in connection to the "the pangs of creation" since the pain between the ribs could suggest what poor Adam had felt "when he passively provided life for a woman". I was led to think about two other items: the expression "rib cage" for the visceral protection that emprisons heart and lungs and VN's equally famous "raising of dorsal spinal hairs", which could similarly apply to VN's physical complaints.
This return to VN's early success allowed me to approach a special scene in Pale Fire in which Semberland's King Charles II escapes to freedom to Lolita's own "Enchanted Hunters" seen by Humbert Humbert as "red-capped, uniformly attired hunters" ( joined by a seventh Hunter, a green-capped poet who invented himself as a character who danced with " nymphs, elves and monsters" and the play itself where he had invented himself as this same Poet) - we might be able to note the similarity bt. HH's red-capped hunters to Zembla's patriots (and brocken phantoms gaining shape at an "eerie altitude" inspite of "alfear", or a red-capped Steinmann), disguised like their fleeing King in red-caps.
Such an approach would also link Shade's scattered body parts on line 149: "one foot upon a mountain top" to words like "elves, nymphs", "red-caps", "eerie", mountains and farmers "checking a daughter's virginity", plus Kinbote's notes on "the little cap of red velvet ...as a symbol of menstruation" .... to HH's own doubts concerning Lolita's virginity!
We might even find a degraded "Red Admirable" feasting on oozy plums ( colored like HH's purple sleeping pill) or on corrupted stinking rabbits, flitting in browns and reds like Gradus's tie. Whereas John Shade conceded to CK's mention of red-capped Steinmann that he had "guessed your secret quite some time ago", or that "this is not a paper chase", already on CK's notes to line 894 Shade's smiling words conclude ( right after the alderwood-ancestral German visitor's "eerie note"): "Kings do not die - they only disappear". And yet, the mystery and secret about VN's intended meaning remains, independently of our own paper chases, red and brown ties and sexual identity.
HH's words reminisced: "there would have been... a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smearing pink, a sigh, a wincing child." and Shade's discarded draft held: " There are events, strange happenings, that strike the mind as emblematic. They are like lost similies adrift without a string, attached to nothing. Thus that northern king...forty of his followers that night impersonated him and aped his flight".... and we now return to throbbing innocence, red caps, cages and apes....
Jansy Mello
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Recently there was a discussion here on how best to apply Appel's Annotated Lolita in class. The latest issue of The Nabokovian ( n.58) also brings up this theme with "Emendations fo Annotated Editions of Lolita" ( Appel's and Boyd's) by Leland de la Durantaye.
On his note on 311. about "The first little throb of Lolita...at a time when I was laid up with a severe attack of intercostal neuralgia... a newspaper story about an ape...first drawing ...the bars of the poor creature's cage..." Durantaye mentioned famous researches on Primate art and charcoaled cage bars, when he brought up VN's "intercostal neuralgia" in connection to the "the pangs of creation" since the pain between the ribs could suggest what poor Adam had felt "when he passively provided life for a woman". I was led to think about two other items: the expression "rib cage" for the visceral protection that emprisons heart and lungs and VN's equally famous "raising of dorsal spinal hairs", which could similarly apply to VN's physical complaints.
This return to VN's early success allowed me to approach a special scene in Pale Fire in which Semberland's King Charles II escapes to freedom to Lolita's own "Enchanted Hunters" seen by Humbert Humbert as "red-capped, uniformly attired hunters" ( joined by a seventh Hunter, a green-capped poet who invented himself as a character who danced with " nymphs, elves and monsters" and the play itself where he had invented himself as this same Poet) - we might be able to note the similarity bt. HH's red-capped hunters to Zembla's patriots (and brocken phantoms gaining shape at an "eerie altitude" inspite of "alfear", or a red-capped Steinmann), disguised like their fleeing King in red-caps.
Such an approach would also link Shade's scattered body parts on line 149: "one foot upon a mountain top" to words like "elves, nymphs", "red-caps", "eerie", mountains and farmers "checking a daughter's virginity", plus Kinbote's notes on "the little cap of red velvet ...as a symbol of menstruation" .... to HH's own doubts concerning Lolita's virginity!
We might even find a degraded "Red Admirable" feasting on oozy plums ( colored like HH's purple sleeping pill) or on corrupted stinking rabbits, flitting in browns and reds like Gradus's tie. Whereas John Shade conceded to CK's mention of red-capped Steinmann that he had "guessed your secret quite some time ago", or that "this is not a paper chase", already on CK's notes to line 894 Shade's smiling words conclude ( right after the alderwood-ancestral German visitor's "eerie note"): "Kings do not die - they only disappear". And yet, the mystery and secret about VN's intended meaning remains, independently of our own paper chases, red and brown ties and sexual identity.
HH's words reminisced: "there would have been... a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smearing pink, a sigh, a wincing child." and Shade's discarded draft held: " There are events, strange happenings, that strike the mind as emblematic. They are like lost similies adrift without a string, attached to nothing. Thus that northern king...forty of his followers that night impersonated him and aped his flight".... and we now return to throbbing innocence, red caps, cages and apes....
Jansy Mello
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