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Re: The "56 days" conundrum in "Lolita"
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On Mar 13, 2012, at 2:52 AM, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
> And why does VN so emphasize 52 (in Appel's notes)?
I guess I haven't considered very deeply Nabokov's numerology.
Its significance I generally take to be as evidence of an arranger.
On Mar 14, 2012, at 6:21 AM, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
> But it is also possible that this is a deliberate error of Nabokov's, intended to show what Freud called a motivated slip of Humbert's.
I'm not sure we need to get all Freudian about it, but one might well conjecture
that Humbert views the number 52 fatalistically,
i.e. that he is just a card in a deck;
or that he is himself the deck,
and the telling of Lolita, in the span of 52 days,
is analogous to turning over all the cards in a deck
one at a time.
Also analogically, in this vein,
the novel was composed on cards.
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> And why does VN so emphasize 52 (in Appel's notes)?
I guess I haven't considered very deeply Nabokov's numerology.
Its significance I generally take to be as evidence of an arranger.
On Mar 14, 2012, at 6:21 AM, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
> But it is also possible that this is a deliberate error of Nabokov's, intended to show what Freud called a motivated slip of Humbert's.
I'm not sure we need to get all Freudian about it, but one might well conjecture
that Humbert views the number 52 fatalistically,
i.e. that he is just a card in a deck;
or that he is himself the deck,
and the telling of Lolita, in the span of 52 days,
is analogous to turning over all the cards in a deck
one at a time.
Also analogically, in this vein,
the novel was composed on cards.
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/