Subject
LOLITA query: hairy hands and labyrinths (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Vitaly Kupisk <104361.1700@CompuServe.COM>
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I'd like to continue this thread not just to defend "the hand" reading, but because something
interesting emerged through the comments of some respondents. But first,
to defend "the hand": To quote my earlier posting:
>Hermaphroditic,because it can gratify man's sex as well as woman's; "a
total stranger", >because, as Humbert was awakened by his own masturbation
from his uneasy sleep,
>his hand acted (and, perhaps, at the moment of awakening, looked) quite apart
from his >consciousness.
>And "small", because Humbert's hand's size is smaller than an average hairy
>hermaphrodite he would expect to wake up copulating with.
Yes, a large hand can look like a small creature. And a hairy hand can
look like a "mohnatyi", furry or fuzzy creature. I believe there are
references in "Lolita" to HH's hirsuteness, "shaving twice a day" is one
that comes to mind; does anyone have more?
Now those who accept "the hand" reading can perhaps consider the
following: Brian Boyd pointed out (in "American Years") the parallel
structure of the two Parkington visits, -- one before posessing Lolita,
another before killing Quilty, -- establishing the emotional homology of
the two deeds. During the second visits Humbert fusses with the gun he
overgreased: "I bandaged him up with a rag, like a maimed limb..."
Humbert's dissociated hand was serving as a sex partner during his
anticipation of sexual paradise. Now that this fantasy (and much of HH
with it) has been thoroughly destroyed, he has a "maimed limb", which, in
accordance with the act he is preparing now, has become an instrument of
death, rather than of sex. A working hand that seemed like a stranger -
sex partner became a "Chum"-gun that seems like a damaged limb.
In another dimension, this hand, with which Humberts acts not quite within
his awareness(and hence the consequences of these actions seem to him as
those inflicted on him by fate or by others) can be examined next to "the
hairy arm of Coincidence" and Quilty's hairy hand that Prof. Dolinin
pointed out. Boyd's essay also shows how HH and Quilty each vie to be that
hand of Fate, Quilty through his control, or even prescience of events as
they unfold in time (after all, the anagrammatic Vivian Darkbloom is h i s
collaborator), and HH through his control of his narrative.
One of the last lines of the book: "One had to choose between him [C.Q.] and
H.H."
Strong Opinions, p.163., discussing Laurel and Hardy films: "There is a film in
which they are sitting on a park bench in a labyrinthine garden and the
subsequent happenings conform to the labyrinth. A casual villain puts his hand
through the back of the bench and Laurel, who is clasping his hands in an
idiotic reverie, mistakes the stranger's hand for one of his own hands, with all
kinds of complications because his own hand is also there. He has to choose.
The choice of a hand."
-------------------------------------------------------------
I'd like to continue this thread not just to defend "the hand" reading, but because something
interesting emerged through the comments of some respondents. But first,
to defend "the hand": To quote my earlier posting:
>Hermaphroditic,because it can gratify man's sex as well as woman's; "a
total stranger", >because, as Humbert was awakened by his own masturbation
from his uneasy sleep,
>his hand acted (and, perhaps, at the moment of awakening, looked) quite apart
from his >consciousness.
>And "small", because Humbert's hand's size is smaller than an average hairy
>hermaphrodite he would expect to wake up copulating with.
Yes, a large hand can look like a small creature. And a hairy hand can
look like a "mohnatyi", furry or fuzzy creature. I believe there are
references in "Lolita" to HH's hirsuteness, "shaving twice a day" is one
that comes to mind; does anyone have more?
Now those who accept "the hand" reading can perhaps consider the
following: Brian Boyd pointed out (in "American Years") the parallel
structure of the two Parkington visits, -- one before posessing Lolita,
another before killing Quilty, -- establishing the emotional homology of
the two deeds. During the second visits Humbert fusses with the gun he
overgreased: "I bandaged him up with a rag, like a maimed limb..."
Humbert's dissociated hand was serving as a sex partner during his
anticipation of sexual paradise. Now that this fantasy (and much of HH
with it) has been thoroughly destroyed, he has a "maimed limb", which, in
accordance with the act he is preparing now, has become an instrument of
death, rather than of sex. A working hand that seemed like a stranger -
sex partner became a "Chum"-gun that seems like a damaged limb.
In another dimension, this hand, with which Humberts acts not quite within
his awareness(and hence the consequences of these actions seem to him as
those inflicted on him by fate or by others) can be examined next to "the
hairy arm of Coincidence" and Quilty's hairy hand that Prof. Dolinin
pointed out. Boyd's essay also shows how HH and Quilty each vie to be that
hand of Fate, Quilty through his control, or even prescience of events as
they unfold in time (after all, the anagrammatic Vivian Darkbloom is h i s
collaborator), and HH through his control of his narrative.
One of the last lines of the book: "One had to choose between him [C.Q.] and
H.H."
Strong Opinions, p.163., discussing Laurel and Hardy films: "There is a film in
which they are sitting on a park bench in a labyrinthine garden and the
subsequent happenings conform to the labyrinth. A casual villain puts his hand
through the back of the bench and Laurel, who is clasping his hands in an
idiotic reverie, mistakes the stranger's hand for one of his own hands, with all
kinds of complications because his own hand is also there. He has to choose.
The choice of a hand."