Subject
Re: Birthday Wish
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Date
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Steve Blackwell: "I had a wish for VN's birthday, which was to compile a list of the birthdays of his characters, and also a list of major characters for whom we do not (seem to) know the birthdays. My wish, however, did not come true! Still, I have been wondering for most of the past year why we do not know Humbert's birthday (in contrast to Fyodor G-Ch's, his father's, Sebastian Knight's, Pnin's, and John Shade & co's). HH does mention the general concept of his birthday twice ("...before my thirteenth birthday"; "after my sixteenth birthday"), and the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th birthdays of Dolores Haze.
Jansy Mello: Sebastian was born at the turn of the XXth Century and he died at the start of 1936. Nabokov confessed his confusion with birthdates...because he was born in 1899.(d.1977).I noticed that there are two chapters [RLSK] that have a curiously similar beginning and they are related to dates of death. Would this similarity be intentional and what does it mean?
Chapter 4: "Two months had elapsed after Sebastian's death when this book was started."
Chapter 8: "Two years had elapsed after my mother's death before I saw Sebastian again."
Frances Assa A noble goal to compile such a list. It did seem to me with respect to your query "I have been wondering...why we do not know Humbert's birthday (in contrast to Fyodor G-Ch's, his father's, Sebastian Knight's, Pnin's, and John Shade & co's) that the list of characters for whom we know birthdays is a list of good guys, exclusively.
Jansy Mello: Trying to understand your idea: John Shade, Kinbote and Gradus, Sebastian, Pnin, Fyodor ( and perhaps Van Veen) ...are they the "good guys"? What do you mean by "good" ( and "bad")? Did you simply mean "the guys" and not the gals?
Nabokv-L - We also know Gradus's (a Bad Guy) and Dolly's (a Good Girl). I suspect Quilty's, and Pnin's V.V. are 4/23 or a variation of it.
SES: I really like Steve's idea (and thanks for covering for me last night, Steve) of assembling a list of birthdates (and perhaps references to birthday celebrations) for VN's characters. Please chime in with what you notice or find. Perhaps we can come up with a complete calendar by next year?
A. Bouazza: In Part I chapter 2 of Lolita, Humbert Humbert writes:"The only definite sexual events that I can remember as having occurred before my thirteenth birthday (that is, before I first saw my little Annabel).Annabel.a lovely child a few months my junior." HH and Annabel meet in the summer of 1923. So it seems HH's birthday is in the summer.In autumn 1923 HH enters a lycée in Lyon. Four months after HH and Annabel's "fatal summer", she dies of typhus in Corfu. If we assume their thwarted love occurred in August, Annabel must have died in December 1923 -in the same month as Lolita. Later on, in chapter 5, HH writes: "When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine years have elapsed [i.e. 1923], I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf in my life." This confirms that the fatal summer was in 1923.Needless to say, I may have overlooked something or other.
Jansy Mello: An activity that is shared by the VN-L members is another great idea.May I add something else?
Could we search after information concerning character's various occupations, jobs and sources of income, the importance of each, their time and place? (I mean, teachers, dentists, doctors, movie producers, writers, editors, scholars, poets, governesses, tutors, explorers, Kings, landowners, art collectors, photographers, kitchen-boys, butlers, chauffers, stable-boys, secretaries, pensioners aso?). There are many rich or poor otiose gentlemen and ladies among the main characters, true or false?
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Jansy Mello: Sebastian was born at the turn of the XXth Century and he died at the start of 1936. Nabokov confessed his confusion with birthdates...because he was born in 1899.(d.1977).I noticed that there are two chapters [RLSK] that have a curiously similar beginning and they are related to dates of death. Would this similarity be intentional and what does it mean?
Chapter 4: "Two months had elapsed after Sebastian's death when this book was started."
Chapter 8: "Two years had elapsed after my mother's death before I saw Sebastian again."
Frances Assa A noble goal to compile such a list. It did seem to me with respect to your query "I have been wondering...why we do not know Humbert's birthday (in contrast to Fyodor G-Ch's, his father's, Sebastian Knight's, Pnin's, and John Shade & co's) that the list of characters for whom we know birthdays is a list of good guys, exclusively.
Jansy Mello: Trying to understand your idea: John Shade, Kinbote and Gradus, Sebastian, Pnin, Fyodor ( and perhaps Van Veen) ...are they the "good guys"? What do you mean by "good" ( and "bad")? Did you simply mean "the guys" and not the gals?
Nabokv-L - We also know Gradus's (a Bad Guy) and Dolly's (a Good Girl). I suspect Quilty's, and Pnin's V.V. are 4/23 or a variation of it.
SES: I really like Steve's idea (and thanks for covering for me last night, Steve) of assembling a list of birthdates (and perhaps references to birthday celebrations) for VN's characters. Please chime in with what you notice or find. Perhaps we can come up with a complete calendar by next year?
A. Bouazza: In Part I chapter 2 of Lolita, Humbert Humbert writes:"The only definite sexual events that I can remember as having occurred before my thirteenth birthday (that is, before I first saw my little Annabel).Annabel.a lovely child a few months my junior." HH and Annabel meet in the summer of 1923. So it seems HH's birthday is in the summer.In autumn 1923 HH enters a lycée in Lyon. Four months after HH and Annabel's "fatal summer", she dies of typhus in Corfu. If we assume their thwarted love occurred in August, Annabel must have died in December 1923 -in the same month as Lolita. Later on, in chapter 5, HH writes: "When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine years have elapsed [i.e. 1923], I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf in my life." This confirms that the fatal summer was in 1923.Needless to say, I may have overlooked something or other.
Jansy Mello: An activity that is shared by the VN-L members is another great idea.May I add something else?
Could we search after information concerning character's various occupations, jobs and sources of income, the importance of each, their time and place? (I mean, teachers, dentists, doctors, movie producers, writers, editors, scholars, poets, governesses, tutors, explorers, Kings, landowners, art collectors, photographers, kitchen-boys, butlers, chauffers, stable-boys, secretaries, pensioners aso?). There are many rich or poor otiose gentlemen and ladies among the main characters, true or false?
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/