Subject
Re: Dieter Zimmer on the 56 Conundrum and Lolita Chronology
From
Date
Body
Jim Twiggs writes:
<<
I would not presume to argue with Anthony Stadlen and Jansy Mello about
"latent" vs. "manifest" narratives, but VN's opinion of Diana Butler's
"Lolita Lepidoptera" is a matter of record.
In a letter to Page Stegner of October 14, 1966, he writes: "You should
have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from
beginning to end" (SL p. 393)
In a letter to Alfred Appel Jr. of March 28, 1967, he speaks of
Lepidoptera as a tricky subject "which led the unfortunate Diana so dreadfully
astray" (SL p. 408).
In his Herbert Gold interview of September 1966, VN speaks of "the essay
by a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction.
The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera.
Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed
proved to be only jarring and absurd" (SO p. 96).
>>
I did know all three of these disparaging remarks. But it seemed to me
that they fell short of, while tending to obscure the fact that they fell
short of, a straightforward denial of Diana Butler's simple central hypothesis
that Nabokov intended some kind of analogy between Humbert's hunting of
Lolita and his own hunting of butterflies.
Anthony Stadlen
Anthony Stadlen
"Oakleigh"
2A Alexandra Avenue
GB - London N22 7XE
Tel.: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857
Email: stadlen@aol.com
Founder (in 1996) and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars: an ethical,
existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy
See
"Existential Psychotherapy & Inner Circle Seminars" at
_http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/_ (http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/) for programme of
future Inner Circle Seminars and complete archive of past seminars
In a message dated 25/03/2012 02:12:31 GMT Daylight Time, jtwigzz@YAHOO.COM
writes:
I would not presume to argue with Anthony Stadlen and Jansy Mello about
"latent" vs. "manifest" narratives, but VN's opinion of Diana Butler's
"Lolita Lepidoptera" is a matter of record.
In a letter to Page Stegner of October 14, 1966, he writes: "You should
have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from
beginning to end" (SL p. 393)
In a letter to Alfred Appel Jr. of March 28, 1967, he speaks of
Lepidoptera as a tricky subject "which led the unfortunate Diana so dreadfully
astray" (SL p. 408).
In his Herbert Gold interview of September 1966, VN speaks of "the essay
by a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction.
The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera.
Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed
proved to be only jarring and absurd" (SO p. 96).
Jim Twiggs
--- On Thu, 3/22/12, Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Dieter Zimmer on the 56 Conundrum and Lolita
Chronology
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012, 11:31 AM
Anthony Stadlen:[to JM's: "I couldn't get your point"] I'm not sure what
you couldn't get. Perhaps my "rather than the reverse" is ambiguous? "My"
point -- or rather, Diana Butler's -- was her hypothesis that Nabokov
simply reverses "Freudian" symbolism.Butler's "Nabokov"'s "Freud" would
presumably interpret a manifest narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales
butterfly" as a way of concealing and revealing the latent narrative "man hunts,
seduces, and rapes girl".Butler's "Nabokov" allegedly invites us to
interpret his manifest narrative "man hunts, seduces, and rapes girl" as a way of
concealing and revealing the latent narrative "man hunts, catches, and
impales butterfly".
JM: That part, about the reversion, is clear. What I didn't understand was
the point of attributing it to Nabokov, as it apparently was intended by
Diana Butler's mockery. It's highly probable that Nabokov had read at least
a few of the books by "the Viennese quack" (although Freud wasn't born in
Vienna - but in Freiberg, Moravia)* and that he must have been aware (for
he was "a good reader") that the manifest content of a dream is always
related to an individual-dreamer's life, to the events that happened to him in
the previous day and to his childhood memories. This means that the
manifest narrative cannot be generalized and fitted into an exact reversal of
its latent meaning, as we find in this attempted parody, with its
mirror-like transposition "man hunts girl...man hunts butterfly and vice-versa."
Besides, D.Butler's reversion, as applied to Freudian symbols, denies the
reality of the intense anguish and pain which repression and dream-distortion
keep at bay, while giving them expression through symbolism at the same
time Nabokov was fully aware of the torments undergone by his characters
(Humbert Humbert, Charles Kinbote), although I have the impression that he
worried too much about demonstrating his compassion for them, for these
"crazy," "despicable" beings.
Nabokov was capable of attaining a rare understanding of the Freudian
theory.Commenting on Gogol's obsession with his nose, he menetions Gogol's
description of the smoothness of a girl's face, because it lacked the Freudian
phallic protuberance, as can be found in his comments about Gogol in
Strong Opinions, and in his Gogol biography.). Or his amusing letter about a
flag-pole, a Pole and the Russian "pol" (cf. Dear Bunny, dear Volodya). In
Lolita, at a certain point Humbert says that if he had consulted a competent
hypnotyzer, perhaps the man would have extracted from him some fortuitous
memories, making them appear much sharper than the images that presented
themselves in his own mind, now that he knew what to search for in the past.
In this sentence, we see that, in spite of the irony, the novelist
acknowledges he is aware of all that psychoanalysis can offer, namely, the access
to the repressed unconscious by means of free association, or through the
distortions introduced by secondary elaboration of a dream.**
The insistent reappearance of a mysterious sort of truth kept surprising
Nabokov, as he, when re-reading his early works, kept coming across certain
episodes of his life that he had transformed into fiction, because these
events, as narrated in that form, seemed to him more faithful to his actual
experience than what he wrote on a much later date, with all sincerity,
when composing his autobiography. In his preface to Maschenka, he confessed
that he never failed being fascinated by the fact that, in spite of some
superimposed inventions, the fictional account contains a more concentrated
resolution of the personal reality than the scrupulously faithful description
attained by the autobiographer. What means other than his own experience
could Nabokov use, in order to describe those fantasies that are.peculiar to
someone who has intensely experienced, and vividly remembers, the ecstasy
of a child who has not yet recognized itself as boy or girl, and who
offers itself to the world, and takes possession of it, with its entire body.
Although Nabokov had to resort to psychiatric manuals and newspapers in order
to describe Humbert Humbert's pedophilia, Humbert's voyeuristic ecstasies,
on the other hand, in his complicity with Lolita's voluptuousness, must
have arisen from memories Nabokov, as an artist, had retained of his own
experience as a child and later transformed into art.
...........................................................................
* - ."I take gleeful pleasure every morning in refuting the Viennese
quack by recalling and explaining the details of my dreams without
using one single reference to sexual symbols or mythical complexes. I urge my
potential patients to do likewise." (1964, interview for Life Magazine)
Cf. also Preface to Bend Sinister [... "a mysterious intruder who takes
advantage of Krug´s dream to convey his own peculiar code message. The
intruder is not the Viennese Quack (all my books should be stamped Freudians,
Keep Out) but an anthropomorphic deity impersonated by me."; the foreword of
King, Queen, Knave: "As usual, I wish to observe that, as usual...the
Viennese delegation has not been invited. If, however, a resolute Freudian
manages to slip in, he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps
have been set here and there in the novel;"; (Speak Memory) "I have ransacked
my oldest dreams for keys and clues - and let me say at once that I reject
completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with
its crankish quest for sexual symbols ... and its bitter little embryo
spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents."
** - "It is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might
have extracted from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance
memories that I have threaded through my book with considerably more
ostentation than they present themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to
seek in the past. At the time I felt I was merely losing contact with
reality...Here is something I composed in my retreat: Wanted, wanted: Dolores
Haze./Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet./Age: five thousand three hundred
days./Profession: none, or "starlet." [...]Happy, happy is gnarled McFate/ Touring
the States with a child wife,...[ ]/Lolita, qu'ai — je fait de ta vie?/
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,/Of hate and remorse, I'm dying./And again my
hairy fist I raise,/And again I hear you crying./ My car is limping, Dolores
Haze,/ And the last long lap is the hardest,/ And I shall be dumped where the
weed decays,/And the rest is rust and stardust.// By psychoanalyzing this
poem, I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff,
lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspectiveless and terrible
landscapes and figures, and magnified parts of landscapes and figures, as
drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their astute trainers. I wrote many
more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of others. But not for a second
did I forget the load of revenge." Cf. "The Annotated Lolita," Penguin,
p.255-57.
_Google Search the archive_
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
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<<
I would not presume to argue with Anthony Stadlen and Jansy Mello about
"latent" vs. "manifest" narratives, but VN's opinion of Diana Butler's
"Lolita Lepidoptera" is a matter of record.
In a letter to Page Stegner of October 14, 1966, he writes: "You should
have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from
beginning to end" (SL p. 393)
In a letter to Alfred Appel Jr. of March 28, 1967, he speaks of
Lepidoptera as a tricky subject "which led the unfortunate Diana so dreadfully
astray" (SL p. 408).
In his Herbert Gold interview of September 1966, VN speaks of "the essay
by a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction.
The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera.
Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed
proved to be only jarring and absurd" (SO p. 96).
>>
I did know all three of these disparaging remarks. But it seemed to me
that they fell short of, while tending to obscure the fact that they fell
short of, a straightforward denial of Diana Butler's simple central hypothesis
that Nabokov intended some kind of analogy between Humbert's hunting of
Lolita and his own hunting of butterflies.
Anthony Stadlen
Anthony Stadlen
"Oakleigh"
2A Alexandra Avenue
GB - London N22 7XE
Tel.: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857
Email: stadlen@aol.com
Founder (in 1996) and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars: an ethical,
existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy
See
"Existential Psychotherapy & Inner Circle Seminars" at
_http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/_ (http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/) for programme of
future Inner Circle Seminars and complete archive of past seminars
In a message dated 25/03/2012 02:12:31 GMT Daylight Time, jtwigzz@YAHOO.COM
writes:
I would not presume to argue with Anthony Stadlen and Jansy Mello about
"latent" vs. "manifest" narratives, but VN's opinion of Diana Butler's
"Lolita Lepidoptera" is a matter of record.
In a letter to Page Stegner of October 14, 1966, he writes: "You should
have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from
beginning to end" (SL p. 393)
In a letter to Alfred Appel Jr. of March 28, 1967, he speaks of
Lepidoptera as a tricky subject "which led the unfortunate Diana so dreadfully
astray" (SL p. 408).
In his Herbert Gold interview of September 1966, VN speaks of "the essay
by a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction.
The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera.
Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed
proved to be only jarring and absurd" (SO p. 96).
Jim Twiggs
--- On Thu, 3/22/12, Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Dieter Zimmer on the 56 Conundrum and Lolita
Chronology
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012, 11:31 AM
Anthony Stadlen:[to JM's: "I couldn't get your point"] I'm not sure what
you couldn't get. Perhaps my "rather than the reverse" is ambiguous? "My"
point -- or rather, Diana Butler's -- was her hypothesis that Nabokov
simply reverses "Freudian" symbolism.Butler's "Nabokov"'s "Freud" would
presumably interpret a manifest narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales
butterfly" as a way of concealing and revealing the latent narrative "man hunts,
seduces, and rapes girl".Butler's "Nabokov" allegedly invites us to
interpret his manifest narrative "man hunts, seduces, and rapes girl" as a way of
concealing and revealing the latent narrative "man hunts, catches, and
impales butterfly".
JM: That part, about the reversion, is clear. What I didn't understand was
the point of attributing it to Nabokov, as it apparently was intended by
Diana Butler's mockery. It's highly probable that Nabokov had read at least
a few of the books by "the Viennese quack" (although Freud wasn't born in
Vienna - but in Freiberg, Moravia)* and that he must have been aware (for
he was "a good reader") that the manifest content of a dream is always
related to an individual-dreamer's life, to the events that happened to him in
the previous day and to his childhood memories. This means that the
manifest narrative cannot be generalized and fitted into an exact reversal of
its latent meaning, as we find in this attempted parody, with its
mirror-like transposition "man hunts girl...man hunts butterfly and vice-versa."
Besides, D.Butler's reversion, as applied to Freudian symbols, denies the
reality of the intense anguish and pain which repression and dream-distortion
keep at bay, while giving them expression through symbolism at the same
time Nabokov was fully aware of the torments undergone by his characters
(Humbert Humbert, Charles Kinbote), although I have the impression that he
worried too much about demonstrating his compassion for them, for these
"crazy," "despicable" beings.
Nabokov was capable of attaining a rare understanding of the Freudian
theory.Commenting on Gogol's obsession with his nose, he menetions Gogol's
description of the smoothness of a girl's face, because it lacked the Freudian
phallic protuberance, as can be found in his comments about Gogol in
Strong Opinions, and in his Gogol biography.). Or his amusing letter about a
flag-pole, a Pole and the Russian "pol" (cf. Dear Bunny, dear Volodya). In
Lolita, at a certain point Humbert says that if he had consulted a competent
hypnotyzer, perhaps the man would have extracted from him some fortuitous
memories, making them appear much sharper than the images that presented
themselves in his own mind, now that he knew what to search for in the past.
In this sentence, we see that, in spite of the irony, the novelist
acknowledges he is aware of all that psychoanalysis can offer, namely, the access
to the repressed unconscious by means of free association, or through the
distortions introduced by secondary elaboration of a dream.**
The insistent reappearance of a mysterious sort of truth kept surprising
Nabokov, as he, when re-reading his early works, kept coming across certain
episodes of his life that he had transformed into fiction, because these
events, as narrated in that form, seemed to him more faithful to his actual
experience than what he wrote on a much later date, with all sincerity,
when composing his autobiography. In his preface to Maschenka, he confessed
that he never failed being fascinated by the fact that, in spite of some
superimposed inventions, the fictional account contains a more concentrated
resolution of the personal reality than the scrupulously faithful description
attained by the autobiographer. What means other than his own experience
could Nabokov use, in order to describe those fantasies that are.peculiar to
someone who has intensely experienced, and vividly remembers, the ecstasy
of a child who has not yet recognized itself as boy or girl, and who
offers itself to the world, and takes possession of it, with its entire body.
Although Nabokov had to resort to psychiatric manuals and newspapers in order
to describe Humbert Humbert's pedophilia, Humbert's voyeuristic ecstasies,
on the other hand, in his complicity with Lolita's voluptuousness, must
have arisen from memories Nabokov, as an artist, had retained of his own
experience as a child and later transformed into art.
...........................................................................
* - ."I take gleeful pleasure every morning in refuting the Viennese
quack by recalling and explaining the details of my dreams without
using one single reference to sexual symbols or mythical complexes. I urge my
potential patients to do likewise." (1964, interview for Life Magazine)
Cf. also Preface to Bend Sinister [... "a mysterious intruder who takes
advantage of Krug´s dream to convey his own peculiar code message. The
intruder is not the Viennese Quack (all my books should be stamped Freudians,
Keep Out) but an anthropomorphic deity impersonated by me."; the foreword of
King, Queen, Knave: "As usual, I wish to observe that, as usual...the
Viennese delegation has not been invited. If, however, a resolute Freudian
manages to slip in, he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps
have been set here and there in the novel;"; (Speak Memory) "I have ransacked
my oldest dreams for keys and clues - and let me say at once that I reject
completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with
its crankish quest for sexual symbols ... and its bitter little embryo
spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents."
** - "It is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might
have extracted from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance
memories that I have threaded through my book with considerably more
ostentation than they present themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to
seek in the past. At the time I felt I was merely losing contact with
reality...Here is something I composed in my retreat: Wanted, wanted: Dolores
Haze./Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet./Age: five thousand three hundred
days./Profession: none, or "starlet." [...]Happy, happy is gnarled McFate/ Touring
the States with a child wife,...[ ]/Lolita, qu'ai — je fait de ta vie?/
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,/Of hate and remorse, I'm dying./And again my
hairy fist I raise,/And again I hear you crying./ My car is limping, Dolores
Haze,/ And the last long lap is the hardest,/ And I shall be dumped where the
weed decays,/And the rest is rust and stardust.// By psychoanalyzing this
poem, I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff,
lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspectiveless and terrible
landscapes and figures, and magnified parts of landscapes and figures, as
drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their astute trainers. I wrote many
more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of others. But not for a second
did I forget the load of revenge." Cf. "The Annotated Lolita," Penguin,
p.255-57.
_Google Search the archive_
(http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en) Contact the Editors _Visit "Nabokov Online
Journal"_ (http://www.nabokovonline.com/) _Visit Zembla_
(http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm) _View Nabokv-L Policies_
(http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm) _Manage subscription options_
(http://listserv.ucsb.edu/) _Visit AdaOnline_ (http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/) _View NSJ Ada
Annotations_ (http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html) _Temporary L-Soft Search
the archive_
(https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L&X=58B9943B29972AFF64&Y=nabokv-l@utk.edu)
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
_Google Search the archive_
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_Manage subscription options_ (http://listserv.ucsb.edu/) _Visit AdaOnline_
(http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/) _View NSJ Ada Annotations_
(http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html) _Temporary L-Soft Search the archive_
(https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L&X=58B9943B29972AFF64&Y=nabokv-l@utk
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
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