I take it back - See 2 posts down

It appears to be a problem with the Blogger server. Some outages are causing the blogs to be unable to read the updates from other sites. It's intermittent, which is why some blogs are updating, while others are still left lower in the queue.

Discovery

One page 192, Shade actually predicts his unfinished poem! In his posthumously published poem, "The Nature of Electricity" Shade writes about the nine-hundred-ninety-ninth lamp post and an old friend. The poem Pale Fire is 999 lines long and the last four are:

"And through the flowing shade and ebbing light
A man, unheedful of the butterfly--
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess--goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane."

The hi-lighted words create the setting for John Shades death! Shade walks through the encroaching dusk. He sees a butterfly (but true to dead Aunt Maud's warning [p. 188], does not heed it). The gardener is present (although we don't know his name. We do, however, know that Kinbote had a crush on him [p. 290-292]). The gardener does not, in fact, have a wheelbarrow, but instead a trowel with which he disarms Gradus. However, it may be important to note that one of the definitions of barrow is also a grave or burial site.

OMG! It's working again!

I can see the newest posts that people have made now! Yay, for what ever happened! :D

This is a test

I'm not sure, but I don't think that the blogs are updating properly on my blog. Has anybody noticed this? I'm posting this to see if it bumps my blog up in the list, which hasn't changed in 4 days, and doesn't display a snippet of my latest post.

There is such a bird as a silktail. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the waxwing and lives in the Pacific Islands not east coast US.

Royal Game of the Goose

Developed during the Renaissance, the Royal Game of the Goose is very similar to the children's game of Chutes (or Snakes) and Ladders. Why does Starover Blue remind Kinbote of the Game of Goose? He seems to be trying to connect the game to the phrase "wild goose chase", but I can't find confirmation that the term came from that game. (Rather, it seems to have been a sort of steeple chase in which the lead horse and rider would set the pace and direction while the following riders had to keep up.) The Game of the Goose is based on chance. Two dice are thrown, then the player moves his or her playing piece the number of spaces shown on the dice. As in Chutes and Ladders, there are special spaces that will send the player forward or backwards. So, in the style of Nabokov, should we be paying more attention to Starover Blue because he seems to indicate that the name is just a fluke, a goose chase? Starov is a common Russian last name, also the name of a famous Russian architect in the 18th century. A Russian Blue is a breed of cat.

Oh, cool! A website dedicated to Nabokov, named Zembla!

How to know when to read the forward

I want to say, first off, that had I not read the library's copy of Lolita first I would not have read the forward to Pale Fire. I am a a creature of habit and like constancy, so when I saw that Lolita, or what one would think was the first page, did not start at 1 but at 6 I realized that the forward was in actuality part of the story, as normally forwards, prefaces, and the like are counted with tiny Roman numerals. It is harder to tell on our copies (if you have one from the bookstore) because the copy editor numbered each page after the cover, highly irregular, so the story (counting forward) starts at page 13, go figure.

Ceder Waxing - top
Bohemian Waxwing - bottom

Two Page Paper

Here's a paper written on only one letter!


Camp Q was of some fascination to me in Lolita. Usually, summer camps have long flowery, flowing, frequently formidable names like Quinipet or Quinebarge or Quidnunc. Lolita’s camp is identified only as Q. Nabokov must have had a reason to give such a short name to this camp. Admittedly, the camp plays only a minor role in an otherwise clue filled book, but it is interesting to look at, never the less.

The camp is first introduced in Chapter 14, although the name is withheld. This also happens to be the same chapter in which Humbert hears Quilty’s name for the first time (he feigned a toothache at the thought of being deprived of his lust object). This is not merely an unplanned coincidence, this is the first clue that the camp and Lolita’s exile to that camp is of some importance. The following chapter, in which the camp is named, also contains Charlotte’s love letter (if it can be called that), which induces Humbert’s devious plan of marriage to Mrs. Haze if only for access to Lolita. The camp is obviously the beginning of the end for H.H.

Having such a short name, the camp seems to beg the reader to uncover its clue(s). Chapter 27 tells the reader that each cabin in the camp is dedicated to a Disney character, but, other than a few fairy queens, “Q” does not seem to reference anything about Disney. The idea about fairy queens is in keeping with the enchanted, mythological aspect of the book, but it is a meager correlation in a book full of strong relationships.

For more promising clues, the sound of “q” (incidentally, probably a dark shade of red in Nabokov’s synesthesia, which is in keeping with the red theme through the rest of the book) can be analyzed. Q or cue or queue bears many connotations that are significant to Lolita. “Q” is a nickname for Clare Quilty. “Cue” is a signal to begin: The beginning of Humbert’s flight across America with Lolita. “Queue” can be an order or sequence of events: The camp was one step closer for Humbert to get what he wanted, Lolita to himself, and ultimately to loose everything.

Nabokov rarely makes coincidences and clues so obvious, however. To dig deeper, slang is another aspect of language that he is proficient with. In A Dictionary of the Underworld one can actually find that Q by itself is slang. Referring to the cue (also Quilty's nickname) ball in a game of billiards and coined sometime in the late 19th century, Q means the initiation of a deception. Humbert initiates several deceptions throughout Lolita. With the Farlows, he intimates that he is the biological father (through an old affair) to Lolita. He hides the death of Charlotte from Lolita, saying she is just convalescing at a fictitious hospital. He plays a deception every evening at each hotel they stay at along their route. And the greatest deception of all is the one that Humbert plays on the reader. Since we can never know what actually happens except through Humbert’s eyes, we are compelled to sympathize with a pedophile and murderer; we are tricked into helping Nabokov create Humbert. “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not try to imagine me…” (p 129)

One other “q” word comes up when looking through slang dictionaries. “Quail” is slang for an attractive young woman. As a summer camp for girls, this could be an appropriate name for Camp Q, although it seems as weak as the Disney connection.

Nabokov obviously intended the reader to give Camp Q more than just a passing thought. The clues which are imbedded in the connotations of just the letter Q are numerous and deep. From the innocuous fairy queens to the ominous deceptions, Camp Q should not be passed over lightly.