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Fwd: HH's age
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This question of the ages of characters (and the implicit comparison of their
ages to ours) always
takes one aback. Frinstnace, how old is Raskolnikov's mother? Part of the
difficulty in dealing
with Humbert's age is deciding whether he is a character out of a 19th or 20th
century novel.
Humbert himself tries to push Lolita back into the 19th century -- or even
further -- which would
make their relationship much more "normal." In what year of what century did 37
become "the prime
of sexual life"?
The daughter of a colleague -- now in her 2nd or 3rd year at Harvard -- once
told me that she
had just read Lolita and found it very interesting, "because I'm exactly her
age". At the time
I had no idea what to reply, but now I see that it confirms the UVA admissions
data posted a
couple years ago on Nabokv-L.
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:07:53 -0800
"Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> EDNOTE. I too have often pondered this question.
> I can understand why teenagers and college students (to whom I have taught the
> novel) take HH as middle-aged. (Cf. Einstein's theory of relativity.) When I
> would ask a class HH's age, the answer was usually absurdly high--showing, if
> nothing else, that they were inattentive readers.
> Being now twice HH's age, 36-37 seems to me to be barely beyond adolescence.
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> ----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 19:48:12 EST
> From: STADLEN@aol.com
> Reply-To: STADLEN@aol.com
> Subject: Re: daily telegraph review of maar
> To:
>
> In a message dated 17/11/2005 18:58:32 GMT Standard Time,
> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:
>
>> in particular, Lolita, the story of a middle-aged émigré scholar (again)
>> with a desperate passion for a 12-year-old American girl.
>
> Why is HH always described as middle-aged? He was born in 1910 and met the
> 12-year-old Lolita in 1947.
>
> The same happens with Herr K. in Freud's "Dora" case, which I recently
> compared with "Lolita" in my anniversary seminar (100 years for "Dora", 50 for
> "Lolita"). Freud does not give K.'s age (my historical research shows that he
> and
> Dora were almost the same ages as HH and Lolita at the first molesting). But
> readers always assume, wrongly, and quite without evidence from Freud or
> elsewhere, that K. was "middle-aged", rather than his actual age of 35 or 36.
>
> Is it somehow a little safer to think of these men as middle-aged, rather
> than, presumably, in the prime of sexual life?
>
> Anthony Stadlen
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
ages to ours) always
takes one aback. Frinstnace, how old is Raskolnikov's mother? Part of the
difficulty in dealing
with Humbert's age is deciding whether he is a character out of a 19th or 20th
century novel.
Humbert himself tries to push Lolita back into the 19th century -- or even
further -- which would
make their relationship much more "normal." In what year of what century did 37
become "the prime
of sexual life"?
The daughter of a colleague -- now in her 2nd or 3rd year at Harvard -- once
told me that she
had just read Lolita and found it very interesting, "because I'm exactly her
age". At the time
I had no idea what to reply, but now I see that it confirms the UVA admissions
data posted a
couple years ago on Nabokv-L.
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:07:53 -0800
"Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> EDNOTE. I too have often pondered this question.
> I can understand why teenagers and college students (to whom I have taught the
> novel) take HH as middle-aged. (Cf. Einstein's theory of relativity.) When I
> would ask a class HH's age, the answer was usually absurdly high--showing, if
> nothing else, that they were inattentive readers.
> Being now twice HH's age, 36-37 seems to me to be barely beyond adolescence.
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> ----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 19:48:12 EST
> From: STADLEN@aol.com
> Reply-To: STADLEN@aol.com
> Subject: Re: daily telegraph review of maar
> To:
>
> In a message dated 17/11/2005 18:58:32 GMT Standard Time,
> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:
>
>> in particular, Lolita, the story of a middle-aged émigré scholar (again)
>> with a desperate passion for a 12-year-old American girl.
>
> Why is HH always described as middle-aged? He was born in 1910 and met the
> 12-year-old Lolita in 1947.
>
> The same happens with Herr K. in Freud's "Dora" case, which I recently
> compared with "Lolita" in my anniversary seminar (100 years for "Dora", 50 for
> "Lolita"). Freud does not give K.'s age (my historical research shows that he
> and
> Dora were almost the same ages as HH and Lolita at the first molesting). But
> readers always assume, wrongly, and quite without evidence from Freud or
> elsewhere, that K. was "middle-aged", rather than his actual age of 35 or 36.
>
> Is it somehow a little safer to think of these men as middle-aged, rather
> than, presumably, in the prime of sexual life?
>
> Anthony Stadlen
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----