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[QUERY] HH Chronologies and pseudonyms
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1. The little black diary mentioned by Humbert Humbert, with false precision, in his Sept/Nov. 1952 Confessions "was destroyed five years ago and what we examine now (by courtesy of a photographic memory) is but its brief materialization, a puny unfledged phonix.I remember the thing so exactly because I wrote it really twice." He started to use it in 1947 ( &, from Ramsdale, since the last days in May).
Does anybody remember when,why or how was this diary destroyed?
2. In his Preamble, John Ray Jr. warns the readers about a change of the names referred to by HH in his Confessions: "Its author's bizarre cognomen is his own invention... While 'Haze' only rhymes with the heroine's real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it... References to 'H.H.''s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers...For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the 'real' people beyond the 'true' story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. 'Windmuller,' of 'Ramsdale,' who desires his identity suppressed ...His daughter, 'Louise,' is by now a college sophomore, 'Mona Dahl' is a student in Paris. 'Rita' has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. 'Richard F. Schiller' died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl...'Vivian Darkbloom' has written a biography, 'My Cue'..."
From his reborn notes we read: "Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People's Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that a child's pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart." At the end of the list, he adds: "A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this "Haze, Dolores" (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses - a fairy princess between her two maids of honor."
Angel, Grace / Austin, Floyd / Beale, Jack / Beale, Mary / Buck, Daniel / Byron, Marguerite / Campbell, Alice / Carmine, Rose / Chatfield, Phyllis/ Clarke, Gordon/Cowan, John /Cowan, Marion/ Duncan, Walter/ Falter, Ted /Fantasia, Stella /Flashman, Irving / Fox, George/ Glave, Mabel/ Goodale, Donald/Green, Lucinda / Hamilton, Mary Rose/ Haze, Dolores/ Honeck, Rosaline/ Knight, Kenneth/ McCoo, Virginia/ McCrystal, Vivian/ McFate, Aubrey/ Miranda, Anthony/
Miranda, Viola /Rosato, Emil /Schlenker, Lena / Scott, Donald/ Sheridan, Agnes /Sherva, Oleg / Smith, Hazel/ Talbot, Edgar /Talbot, Edwin /Wain, Lull /Williams, Ralph /Windmuller, Louise.
Everything indicates that the altered names were created by John Ray, Jr. (with the exception of the Humbert Humbert cognomen)
If he altered the name of "Ramsdale" and those of Louise Windmuller, Dolores Haze, aso, was JR Jr. equally responsible for coining Aubrey McFate's?
I was never a very attentive Lolita rereader of the entire novel. Please, excuse me if my question is somehow redundant..
It seems to me that if the McFate class-mate's name was invented by JR Jr. there is some serious authorial irony at play there...
3. Humbert's sentences swerve making unexpected travels in time. The sentence describing the moment when he set his eyes on Lo (no longer the McCoo's Virginia he'd been dreaming of until then), in the "breathless garden" is an interesting example (I underlined the tenses):
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies." / "Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."
Comments?
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Does anybody remember when,why or how was this diary destroyed?
2. In his Preamble, John Ray Jr. warns the readers about a change of the names referred to by HH in his Confessions: "Its author's bizarre cognomen is his own invention... While 'Haze' only rhymes with the heroine's real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it... References to 'H.H.''s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers...For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the 'real' people beyond the 'true' story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. 'Windmuller,' of 'Ramsdale,' who desires his identity suppressed ...His daughter, 'Louise,' is by now a college sophomore, 'Mona Dahl' is a student in Paris. 'Rita' has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. 'Richard F. Schiller' died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl...'Vivian Darkbloom' has written a biography, 'My Cue'..."
From his reborn notes we read: "Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People's Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that a child's pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart." At the end of the list, he adds: "A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this "Haze, Dolores" (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses - a fairy princess between her two maids of honor."
Angel, Grace / Austin, Floyd / Beale, Jack / Beale, Mary / Buck, Daniel / Byron, Marguerite / Campbell, Alice / Carmine, Rose / Chatfield, Phyllis/ Clarke, Gordon/Cowan, John /Cowan, Marion/ Duncan, Walter/ Falter, Ted /Fantasia, Stella /Flashman, Irving / Fox, George/ Glave, Mabel/ Goodale, Donald/Green, Lucinda / Hamilton, Mary Rose/ Haze, Dolores/ Honeck, Rosaline/ Knight, Kenneth/ McCoo, Virginia/ McCrystal, Vivian/ McFate, Aubrey/ Miranda, Anthony/
Miranda, Viola /Rosato, Emil /Schlenker, Lena / Scott, Donald/ Sheridan, Agnes /Sherva, Oleg / Smith, Hazel/ Talbot, Edgar /Talbot, Edwin /Wain, Lull /Williams, Ralph /Windmuller, Louise.
Everything indicates that the altered names were created by John Ray, Jr. (with the exception of the Humbert Humbert cognomen)
If he altered the name of "Ramsdale" and those of Louise Windmuller, Dolores Haze, aso, was JR Jr. equally responsible for coining Aubrey McFate's?
I was never a very attentive Lolita rereader of the entire novel. Please, excuse me if my question is somehow redundant..
It seems to me that if the McFate class-mate's name was invented by JR Jr. there is some serious authorial irony at play there...
3. Humbert's sentences swerve making unexpected travels in time. The sentence describing the moment when he set his eyes on Lo (no longer the McCoo's Virginia he'd been dreaming of until then), in the "breathless garden" is an interesting example (I underlined the tenses):
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies." / "Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."
Comments?
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/