Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

[steffee]

OK, check to see who did the translation. Hmmm Jeremy again.
Have you seen the movie? Its good.

Right, finally, I have managed to find the translation stuff... well you didn't tell me it would be in huge lettering on the first page

MARCEL PROUST

SWANN'S WAY
BOOK ONE OF
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I sum up remembrance of things past..."

Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrief and Terence Kilmartin



PENGUIN BOOKS​

Haven't seen the film. Didn't even know there was one actually, Pontalba. Will look out for it.

 

[StillILearn]

At this point, I'm feeling sorry for Charlotte.It wasn't her fault she couldn't be what HH desired.

Charlotte would have suited HH right down to the ground back when she was ten or eleven years old.

 

[abecedarian]

Charlotte would have suited HH right down to the ground back when she was ten or eleven years old.

And as an adult, she was just a sad, pathetic, clueless creature.

 

[pontalba]

Well....actually, Humbert had perused the album of Charlotte (p.76) and found that

...a thirty-year-old album, so that I might see how Lotte had looked as a child; and even though the light was wrong and the dresses graceless, I was able to make out a dim first version of Lolita's outline, legs, cheekbones, bobbed nose. Lottelita, Lolitchen.

and a little upwards from that paragraph...

......in which, with wonder, I recognized a resemblance to the lovely, inane, lost look that Lo had when gloating over a new kind of concoction at the soda fountain, or mutely admiring my expensive tailor-fresh clothes. Deeply fascinated, I would watch Charlotte...

So Humbert did indeed acknowledge and use the resemblance between mother and daughter.
And don't feel too very sorry for Charlotte. If she had not been so all consuming Man Hungry, Lolita would not have been the way she was, nor suffered the fate she did.

 

[steffee]

Oh no, don't feel sorry for Charlotte Haze!

She's a witch.

 

[abecedarian]

Well....actually, Humbert had perused the album of Charlotte (p.76) and found that
and a little upwards from that paragraph...
So Humbert did indeed acknowledge and use the resemblance between mother and daughter.
And don't feel too very sorry for Charlotte. If she had not been so all consuming Man Hungry, Lolita would not have been the way she was, nor suffered the fate she did.

I haven't finished the book, but does it ever say how long she'd been widowed, or if she was at all happy in her first marriage? I wonder if she'd EVER truly been happy. Her desparation to make HH love her indicates a very insecure person inside.

 

[pontalba]

Right, finally, I have managed to find the translation stuff... well you didn't tell me it would be in huge lettering on the first page


Haven't seen the film. Didn't even know there was one actually, Pontalba. Will look out for it.

Swann in Love starring the ever so smouldering Jeremy Irons.......need I say more?

 

[steffee]

Swann in Love starring the ever so smouldering Jeremy Irons.......need I say more?

No, nothing more to say really, is there?

 

[pontalba]

I haven't finished the book, but does it ever say how long she'd been widowed, or if she was at all happy in her first marriage? I wonder if she'd EVER truly been happy. Her desparation to make HH love her indicates a very insecure person inside.

I don't recall, and can't find at present any time periods mentioned, except in Charlotte's letter to Humbert mentioning that her husband had been 20 years older than she was. I do recall the book mentions that Charlotte and Lo had only been in Ramsdale for a few years, but I can't find the reference right now.

 

[Peder]

ABC,
I haven't been able to find it either, but it was wonderful skimming through those pages again, from Humbert's arrival up to The Enchanted Hunters hotel. The story seemed to move along so quickly while at the same time so much was happening. Not a boring page in there!
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Now I do see that Charlotte and Lo had been in Ramsdale only 20 months (p.75) On the same page Humbert plants the seed that Lo is actually his daughter {!} Not. and was a distant relative of the late Mr. Haze. again...Not. The longest reference to Mr. Haze I could find is on p.80

I was considerably amused by certain remarkable sexual habits that the good Harold Haze had had according to Charlotte who thought my mirth improper;......

And at some point it is brought out that Mr. Haze had quite a collection of shoes.

I won't touch that one.

 

[abecedarian]

Now I do see that Charlotte and Lo had been in Ramsdale only 20 months (p.75) On the same page Humbert plants the seed that Lo is actually his daughter {!} Not. and was a distant relative of the late Mr. Haze. again...Not. The longest reference to Mr. Haze I could find is on p.80 And at some point it is brought out that Mr. Haze had quite a collection of shoes.

I won't touch that one.

I will! Looks like Charlotte is a wierdo magnet. Why is that? If Mr. Haze didn't have a shoe fetish, why does Nabakov tell us about his collection?

 

[StillILearn]

Swann in Love starring the ever so smouldering Jeremy Irons.......need I say more?

Well, yeah. What are we talking about? What did I miss? Did they make a movie of Swann in Love? And I missed it? I guess I'm off to the Amazon again here ...

(I think maybe I might have just the smallest crush on Jeremy Irons.)

I have it in my head that Charlotte and Mr Haze had a very happy marriage indeed. Thanks to abc, maybe it's time for a reread?

 

[StillILearn]

What the? Swann in Love has been out for twenty years? Was it in English or in French? I'm so confused! And what about this Eragon?

What planet have I been living on?

 

[pontalba]

What the? Swann in Love has been out for twenty years? Was it in English or in French? I'm so confused! And what about this Eragon?

What planet have I been living on?

Zardoz?

I had not heard of Eragon either, but here is another link... http://amazon.imdb.com/title/tt0449010/
and here is the link for Swann in Love http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/102-7665834-6598541?n=130
It is in French with subtitles, and 22 years actually. Irons is Young in this. Actually too young for my taste. But still very.......interesting.

 

[StillILearn]

sigh

Well, I followed your links, and I did just a little clicky here and a little clicky there and I guess maybe I got sidetracked because somehow I ended up by buying Night of the Iguana on DVD. I don't even remember what my original intention was. Was Jeremy Irons in The Night of the Iguana? And how is this all related to Nabokov anyway? Ah! Sue Lyons. It's all coming back to me now. VN was right. Free association is a dangerous thing.

 

[Peder]

I will! Looks like Charlotte is a wierdo magnet. Why is that? If Mr. Haze didn't have a shoe fetish, why does Nabakov tell us about his collection?

ABC,
You are a very unsettling person, he says with broadest and most appreciative grin imaginable. If i hadn't seen the other posts I would have said that was a question that could unhinge any Nabokovian, but now I see i don't have to say it. Imagine what would have happened if you had whispered "Plastics." Someone will get that! I hope!/biting fingernails/.
So let's see.
Q: Why did he mention a big shoe collection?
A. Because they are all doppelgangers? /groan/

Actually, I wonder if that was something he noticed about America, or whether that was a background detail to subtly fill in the picture of poshlost in the Haze household. We know he believed in the importance of detail in story-telling, and we definitely know nothing is ever unintentional with VN, as you point out. So, Baker Street Irregulars, Why, why, why?

And ABC, have you been thinking of Sebastian Knight lately? A mystery worthy of your keen powers. Just wondering, no reason at all. /evil grin, whistling unconcernedly/
Peder

 

[abecedarian]

Unsettling? Me? Um, I get that a lot, specially from my sweet husband One of his favorite things to say to me is, "You see how you are?"




<ABC,
You are a very unsettling person, he says with broadest and most appreciative grin imaginable>

 

[pontalba]

Mentions of Harold Haze in "Lolita" [that I could find]

Chapter 13, page 57 "the late Mr. Harold E. Haze--God bless the good man--had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue-washed room, on a honeymoon trip to Vera Curz, and mementoes, among hese Dolores. were all over the place."

Chapter 15, page 65 "and she struck him, quite painfully, with one of the late Mr. Haze's shoetrees"

Chapter 16 Page 68 "Mr. Haze was a splendid person, a sterling soul, but he happened to be twenty years my senior, and---well, let us not gossip apout the past." (this was in Charlotte's letter to Humbert).

Chapter 18, page 76 "I had my wife unearth from under a collection of shoes (Mr. Haze had a passion for them, it appears) a thirty year old album..."

Chapter
18 "A Midwesterner, as her late husband had also been,...."

Chapter 19, page 80 "I was considerably amused by certain remarkable sexual habits that the good Harold Haze had had according to Charlotte who thought my mirth improper;"


So, as you all can see shoes, shoetrees, and er, remarkable sexual habits are almost the only mentions of the dearly (?) departed. And as you will note, the fetish was not for Charlotte's shoes, it was his own. So does that mean he was a dandy, or imply something else?
Perhaps ABC is right....weirdo magnet.

 

[steffee]

sigh

Well, I followed your links, and I did just a little clicky here and a little clicky there and I guess maybe I got sidetracked because somehow I ended up by buying Night of the Iguana on DVD. I don't even remember what my original intention was. Was Jeremy Irons in The Night of the Iguana? And how is this all related to Nabokov anyway? Ah! Sue Lyons. It's all coming back to me now. VN was right. Free association is a dangerous thing.

Just how did that happen though?