Presentatoin Day 1

Group 1 Presentation

I really liked how each person played a character from a Nabokov book, and how the different scenes were meant to be Nabokov's thoughts while he was writing on his note cards. I thought that it was really creative, as well as funny. Each person did a good job of portraying the character that they were supposed to be. My favorite one had to have been the portrayal of drunken Shade, since we all know that he has an alcohol problem. The back and forth portrayal of the scene between Humbert and Quilty in the enchanted hunters was really funny as well, and that is quite possibly my favorite scene in the book simple because of its humour.

Group 2 Presentation

I thought that group 2's presentation was really creative as well. The characters of Dolores (Lolita), Humbert, Kinbote, Quilty and Hazel Shade were all played and brought together in a talk show like setting. Kinbote's bit was obviously hilarious because he is so full of himself and has something to say about everything. Hazel Shade's character was quite interesting, and creepy, as well. The fact that they included Vivian Darkbloom (ie Vladimir Nabokov) as the interviewer was clever. A discovery that they included that I found interesting as well was the comparison of each character to a character in Greek mythology. Lolita was compared to Persephone because both girls were raped, and although crude, it was funny when she said, "Well at least I get some!" Of course Kinbote compared himself to Zeus, the almighty king of the Gods.

Group 3

That was ours

Our Group (#3) Presentation

We had a difficult time coming up with a presentation topic. Initially we had played with the idea of doing a kind of skit or play type of thing where each person would play a character from one of Nabokov's books, and then possibly making the setting "Humbert Land." After discussing it, we couldn't decide how we would go about doing that and incorporating the theme of discovery into it.

The next idea that got brought into play was a game. After all, Nabokov is quite fond of games, especially chess. We initially came up with an extremely confusing idea in which there would be a question regarding 5 topics (memory, time, illusion, framing, and coincidence). Somehow we were trying to make the answer for each question correspond in a way with all of the other questions. However, a number of the group members found the game too confusing, and we figured it might be too confusing for the class as well so we nixed that idea. Next, we talked about doing a kind of jeopardy type game or possibly a cranium kind of thing where a representative from each team would come up and try to act out, draw, or sculpt something for their team to guess. This is similar to what we ended up with, but felt that we needed to participate more in the game, and so we decided to do the acting ourselves.

First we decided that we wanted the last question to be an anagram composed of the first letter of each answer. So we came up with the word "lepidoptera." It was a word that we thought would be relatively hard to guess, although that didn't end up being the case. From there, we decided on answers who's first letters begin with letters in the final word and have to do with discoveries (a lot of them were literary allusions that we discussed in class) from the novels. Once we came up with those, each person was assigned certain ones to act out or draw, and we went from there.

Infinite Cats and Rungs

Last night my little sister, a senior at Bozeman Highschool, asked me to help her pick out a book to analyze for her AP English author paper. The paper has a required length of 10 to 15 pages, and can be on basically any significant book pre-approved by the teacher. Although they are not limited to it, each student was handed an extremely long list of suggested books to chose from. It included many expected authors, such as Jane Austen and Mark Twain, but to my surprise included a book from Vladimir Nabokov as well. It was not Lolita, quite arguably his most famous novel, but Pale Fire!

Upon seeing this I was taken aback. Had we not just written a short essay on the extreme complexity and never ending discoveries to be made in this very novel on our last test? How could any student, much less a highschool student with an extremely limited knowledge of literature, be expected to analyze Pale Fire in 15 pages or less? The thought is absolutely absurd! One could not even write a great analyses about the index in 15 pages, much less the whole book.

I just found the thought of attempting to write such a paper amusing, in fact it makes me chuckle. I know that if I had chosen it as the book to write my paper on when I was in the same class, I would have panicked and absolutely gone out of my mind. You would be quite unpleasantly surprised after doing even a minute amount of research. If I had to write a paper analyzing the entire novel now, even after all of our conversations in class about the novel, I would still go crazy. One would have to write an entire book in order to even begin to shed light upon the infinitely deep shadows that make up Pale Fire.Whoever put that book on the list has obviously either never read it, or just not understood even the most basic parts of it. A book with infinite levels of understanding and never ending supply of cats to be taken out of the bag is most definitely not a good candidate for this paper.

Lolita vs Lilith

I stumbled upon something interesting that kind of connects with Lolita being presented as an Eve like character.

While going through names that sound similar to Lolita, I found the name Lilith. It is of Babylonian origin, and means "belonging to the night." I thought that was kind of funny because night or darkness generally represents evil and can be used to represent temptation, and Lolita is most definitely characterised as a temptress. However, that is not all. According to middle aged legends, Lilith was also the names of Adam's (as in Adam and Eve) first wife. I don't come from a particularly religious family, so I'm not sure if that is generally taught when speaking about Genesis, but this was news to me. Apparently, as the legend goes Lilith refused to obey Adam, and as a result she was turned into a demon and Eve was created to take her place.

I just found this interesting because it ties into my paper topic in kind of a weird way.

Test 2 Study Guide

1. When does Gradus first come into the story?
In the first word of Shade's poem (his character is a function of the poem itself)

2. Who are the main three characters according to Kinbote?
1. Kinbote
2. Shade
3. Gradus

3. What do the daughters of Judge Goldsworth and the Zemblan Royal family have in common?
Their names are alphbetically arranged according to the letter that they start with

4. Beauty + pity = art

5. What type of butterfly lands on Shade right before he is shot?
A Vanessa Atalanta

6. According to Kinbote, what is it that gives Shade's poem reality?
His own commentary

7. What two primary Shakespearean plays could the title of the book possibly come from?
1. Timon of Athens
2. Hamlet

8. What does "kinbote" mean in Zemblan?
king killer (Botkin = dagger/stilleto)

9. What is the password?
pity

10. How does Shade predict his own death?
In the last refrain of the poem (the gardener)

11. Where in the poem does Hazel commit suicide?
The exact center (line 500)

12. Who gives Gradus a ride to Dulwich Lane to kill Kinbote?
Gerald Emerald

13. Ultima Thule means what?
"ultimate land"

14. What was the title that Kinbote thought Shade should give to his poem?
Solus Rex ("sun king"; also a chess problem)

15. Who translated, albeit poorly, Timon of Athens into Zemblan?
Jack Conmal

16. According to the index, what is Zembla?
A distant northern land

17. What word game does Shade like?
Word Golf , an example of which can be found in the index changing one letter at a time to form a new word (from last to male in index)

18. Who is the toilest?
T.S. Eliot

19. What is the misprint on which Shade had based life everlasting?
white "mountain" instead of white "fountain"

20. What does Kinbote think the last line of the poem should be?
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain (A repetition of the first line of the poem)

21. What is the one thing that Kinbote says he cannot forgive?
treason
-->Shade says he can forgive everything other than not having read the assigned text

22. Just this. Not text, but texture.

23. What are the names of the two books (the first and last) at Judge Goldsworth's house?
1. Forever Amber
2. The Prisoner of Zenda

24. Kinbote is like who?
Hazel Shade -- both have a tendency to reverse words

25. What does "Bretwit" (pg. 180) mean?
Chess intelligence

26. Zembla = resemblance

27. IPH
Institution for the Preparation of the Hereafter

28. How many days does it take to write each of the Cantos?
3-7-7-3

29. What is Kinbote's supposed wife's full name?
Paradisa Duchess of Payn and Moan

30. Ampersand
& (brought with the dropping of the rubber band)



*READ THIS ARTICLE* http://www.tnr.com/article/books/bolt-the-blue

Paper One Topic

I started out with two ideas on what to write my first paper on. The first of which was brought up in class by John, and it was the relationship of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" to Lolita. I had just read this play in my world lit class, and one could make a number of connections between the two. First off, either Humbert or Quilty could be compared to Prospero. Both manipulated things in a way so as to cause certain events to happen. In the end like Prospero, Humbert comes to see that what he did was not necessarily as good as he had originally intended it to be.

The second paper topic, and the one I am going to pursue is the inclusion of Genesis in Lolita. There are numerous instances in which Lolita is compared to Eve, and in which Humbert compares himself to Adam. He represents himself as an innocent man tempted by Lolita into taking a bite of the sweat flesh of "knowledge." Humbert blames her more than once in the book for his fall into a world of chaos. There are a lot of other religious images strewn throughout the book as well. My focus, however, is going to be on how Lolita is connected to Eve in the story.

Emily Dickinson

So we talked briefly in class about Emily Dickinson, and am reading her work in another class, Dr. Leubner's 19th Century American Lit. One of the assigned poems was the one below, and although Nabokov surely was not referring to Dickinson when searching for the title of Shade's poem, aspects of it did remind me of "Pale Fire."


Dare you see a Soul at the "White Heat"?
Then crouch within the door -
Red - is the fire’s common tint -
But when the vivid Ore

Has Vanquished Flame’s conditions -
It quivers from the Forage
Without a color, but the Light
Of unanointed Blaze -

Least Village, boasts its Blacksmith -
Whose Anvil’s even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs - within -

Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze -
Until the designated Light
Repudiate the Forge -

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Not only does she talk about include "White heat" in her poem, but about the light blaze of a really hot fire. This imagery has obvious similarities to a "pale fire." I think that the above poem could also be construed as a poem about the creation of a poem by a poet. The poet continues to "refine" his poems until the intended light shines through and captures the spirit the poet intended. Shade himself does this. There were a number of passages which he decided to omit and replace with others. He played with the words of the poem until he had molded something truly beautiful, a work of art complete with pity, and a poem that served as a remembrance of his lost daughter.