Dear List,
This is a rather long-winded road to reach a connection
bt. Lolita's "Annabel Lee" and VN's "Tamara" through a reference to devils ( ie:
envious angels).
After I read again Ch.
1 of "Lolita", I
found an old marginal note that underlined two
interesting references to angelic hordes - which were almost
"symmetrical":
Ch. 1 last paragraph reads:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed,
simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at
this tangle of thorns."
The closing lines of the novel return to "angels
and aurochs" :
"I am thinking of aurochs and
angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the
refuge of art. And this is the only imortality you and I may share, my
Lolita."
In Appel's notes on Ch. 1, note 1, we find the
entire text of Poe's poem and in it there is a reference to
seraphs:
" But we loved with a love that was
more than love -
I and my
Annabel Lee -
With a love the winged
seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me."
And on the corresponding note to line 8/9 Appel
wrote: " a pastiche composed of a phrase from line 11 of
"Annabel Lee" and a verb from line 22." He ignored the
"coveted", but emphasized: "Went envying her
and me: -" that mentions angels, not
specifically seraphs.
(A.Appel also refers to "The seraph with his six
flamingo wings" invoked in line 225 of Pale Fire's
poem.)
Appel calls our attention to the importance of this
kind of symmetry in "Lolita":
(a) (note 308/1) "the end of
the novel was written at the outset. In any event, two kinds of wonder are
conflated in Lolita's version of the letter's [ VN-EW letters,
Sept.1951];
(b) "The final phrase sounds the
'Latin' locution that has echoed through the narrative ( see 45/1 and 192/2),
and the last word of the novel, that fatal constriction, repeats the first:
"Lolita'. It is a fitting and final symmetry for this Byzantine edifice,
this verbal equivalent of an ordered ( divinely ordered?) universe".
But, although Appel mentions HH's "transcending
his solipsism" to reach a "fourth-dimension" in the last chapter and
echoing the VN-EW letter he selected, he does not explicitly link the "ordered
universe", " heavenlogged system"... to the "order of angels", even though
he also mentioned their hierarchy in his note 8/9.
He wrote:
"The image of the 'heavenlogged
system' on pg. 307 posits a fourth-dimension..." (note 308/1) and " The
book-length system of planned coincidences and harmonious authorial patterning
can also stand as a metaphor for evidence of cosmic Author's work, divine
Revelation of some 'heaven-logged system'." (note 307/2)
QUERY
Instead of pursuing the spiritual ascending motif
related to heavenly angels or any divine Revelation, I would like to bring up
those "envious, covetous angels or seraphs", emphasizing their "envy"
(inspite of their being "noble-winged"), for these can only indicate
the most envious among all of them, namely, Lucifer and from Lucifer and the
Devil.
A few months ago I was sent a poem in connection
with a line in "Ada", about Demon's eyes, that was written by
Lermontov: "The Devil: an Eastern Legend", where we find
a certain princess called Tamara.
Poe's "Annabel Lee" mentions covetous, envious
angels:
1. May I consider Poe's reference as directly
implying devils, perhaps even Lucifer?;
2. Could we consider that VN took up Poe's "envious
angels" to suggest "the devil"?
3. If VN in Lolita writes about first
love in relation to Poe's Annabel Lee, could he
be then indicating his own Tamara by the devilish
reference through Lermontov?
NB: I'm sorry if this connection should have been made
already, or if it is too preposterous to consider! But the insistence on evil
envious angels made me think more about devils than about heavenly
angels...
.