Okay maybe the Swift isn’t funny. But I thought the passage illustrated how Lolita is a travelogue.
I am coming to crm’s rescue: this was stolen off the net – but it does indeed explain how Nabokov and Swift were both wonderful satirists and Nabokov especially is relevant considering he was crossing America in a car and staying at motels etc..I ended with the thing quoting Swift of Gulliver on his return because it is funny. http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/schuman.htm III
Both Nabokov’s masterwork and Swift’s are accounts which describe, in minute satiric detail, multiple voyages to strange lands. This is self evident in Gulliver’s Travels, with its perpetually fascinating descriptions of the lands of the Houyhnhnms, Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, etc. In his famous letter to Pope of 29 September 1725, Swift is uncomfortably unambiguous about the purposes to which he intended Gulliver’s journeys:
I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities….Upon this great foundation of misanthropy (though not Timon’s manner), the whole building of my Travels is erected.3
Swift’s methodology, to which he adhered only imperfectly, appears to have been to have each locale which Guilliver visits manifest a related set of follies. Lilliput reveals the pettiness of politics, Brobdingnag the fleshly grossness of humanity, and the like. Utilizing the exaggeration of fantasy (floating islands, talking horses, giant eagles, etc.) Swift, as the classic satirist, is able to expose those follies, cast them into very clear relief, and hold them up to ridicule.
It is not quite as obvious that Lolita is as much the story of a stranger in a strange land as Gulliver’s Travels. The reader needs to be reminded fairly frequently that Humbert Humbert is as new to America as Gulliver to Lilliput. Nabokov, of course, provides those reminders, e.g., “I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European…” (36). As a traveler to, and in, America, Humbert brings a fresh-eyed vision to the landscape which makes it seem as exotic and new, just as does Gulliver. Here, for example, Humbert casts a fresh eye on the classification of various species of American motels:
We came to know–nous connûmes, to use a Flaubertian intonation–the stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, the adobe unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Book of the Automobile Association describes as “shaded” or “spacious” or “landscaped” grounds. (145)
Of course, most of Part Two of Lolita takes place “on the road,” thus affording Humbert an opportunity to see America from coast to coast, and Nabokov to identify, through the eyes of his poetic pervert narrator, examples of poshlust from West (“a winery in California, with a church built in the shape of a wine barrel” [157]); to South (Bourbon Street [ in a town named New Orleans] whose sidewalks, said the tour book, ‘may [I liked the ‘may’] feature entertainment by pickaninnies who will [I liked the ‘will’ even better] tap-dance for pennies’ [what fun], while ‘its numerous small and intimate night clubs are thronged with visitors’ [naughty]” {156}); to East (“What we are concerned with is the adjustment of the child to group life. This is why we stress the four D’s: Dramatics, Dance, Debating and Dating” [177]); and North (“Another group, equally misguided, collected plankton. A third studied tuberculosis in the tundra” [33]). In very many ways, Humbert’s European vision and his pervert’s imagination make of mid-Twentieth Century America a land every bit as exotic and strange as any visited by Lemuel Gulliver. Here is a Dantean description of a simple unfinished storefront display in a small town:
It was indeed a pretty sight. A dapper young fellow was vacuum-cleaning a carpet of sorts upon which stood two figures that looked as if some blast had just worked havoc with them. One figure was stark naked, wigless and armless. Its comparatively small stature and smirking pose suggested that when clothed it had represented, and would represent when clothed again, a girl-child of Lolita’s size. But in its present state it was sexless. Next to it, stood a much taller veiled bride, quite perfect and intacta except for the lack of one arm. On the floor, at the feet of these damsels, where the man crawled about laboriously with his cleaner, there lay a cluster of three slender arms, and a blond wig. Two of the arms happened to be twisted and seemed to suggest a clasping gesture of horror and supplication. (226)
At a certain point, the amused ridicule of folly which constitutes satire can become sufficiently colored by invective and hysteria, and slide into something more sardonic. This is a point which is not infrequently reached, as the above citation might suggest, by Nabokov. Swift, too, often reaches a height of invective which transcends the satiric:
As soon as I entered the House, my Wife took me in her Arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the Touch of that odious Animal for so many Years, I fell in a Swoon for almost an Hour. At the Time I am writing, it is five Years since my last Return to England: during the first year I could not endure my Wife or Children in my Presence, the very Smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same Room. (289)
hmmm…
lolita was a wonderful travelogue of America.
CRM, what’s this fascination with Nabokev? Or dare I ask?
bob, this is where you’re supposed to
come in and say, huh?
He was probably taken by the pictures between the power of his own lines.
v. nabokov never took pictures of power lines
Comments are closed.
A semi-practical use for my 10,000 historical photos
Okay maybe the Swift isn’t funny. But I thought the passage illustrated how Lolita is a travelogue.
I am coming to crm’s rescue: this was stolen off the net – but it does indeed explain how Nabokov and Swift were both wonderful satirists and Nabokov especially is relevant considering he was crossing America in a car and staying at motels etc..I ended with the thing quoting Swift of Gulliver on his return because it is funny.
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/schuman.htm III
Both Nabokov’s masterwork and Swift’s are accounts which describe, in minute satiric detail, multiple voyages to strange lands. This is self evident in Gulliver’s Travels, with its perpetually fascinating descriptions of the lands of the Houyhnhnms, Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, etc. In his famous letter to Pope of 29 September 1725, Swift is uncomfortably unambiguous about the purposes to which he intended Gulliver’s journeys:
I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities….Upon this great foundation of misanthropy (though not Timon’s manner), the whole building of my Travels is erected.3
Swift’s methodology, to which he adhered only imperfectly, appears to have been to have each locale which Guilliver visits manifest a related set of follies. Lilliput reveals the pettiness of politics, Brobdingnag the fleshly grossness of humanity, and the like. Utilizing the exaggeration of fantasy (floating islands, talking horses, giant eagles, etc.) Swift, as the classic satirist, is able to expose those follies, cast them into very clear relief, and hold them up to ridicule.
It is not quite as obvious that Lolita is as much the story of a stranger in a strange land as Gulliver’s Travels. The reader needs to be reminded fairly frequently that Humbert Humbert is as new to America as Gulliver to Lilliput. Nabokov, of course, provides those reminders, e.g., “I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European…” (36). As a traveler to, and in, America, Humbert brings a fresh-eyed vision to the landscape which makes it seem as exotic and new, just as does Gulliver. Here, for example, Humbert casts a fresh eye on the classification of various species of American motels:
We came to know–nous connûmes, to use a Flaubertian intonation–the stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, the adobe unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Book of the Automobile Association describes as “shaded” or “spacious” or “landscaped” grounds. (145)
Of course, most of Part Two of Lolita takes place “on the road,” thus affording Humbert an opportunity to see America from coast to coast, and Nabokov to identify, through the eyes of his poetic pervert narrator, examples of poshlust from West (“a winery in California, with a church built in the shape of a wine barrel” [157]); to South (Bourbon Street [ in a town named New Orleans] whose sidewalks, said the tour book, ‘may [I liked the ‘may’] feature entertainment by pickaninnies who will [I liked the ‘will’ even better] tap-dance for pennies’ [what fun], while ‘its numerous small and intimate night clubs are thronged with visitors’ [naughty]” {156}); to East (“What we are concerned with is the adjustment of the child to group life. This is why we stress the four D’s: Dramatics, Dance, Debating and Dating” [177]); and North (“Another group, equally misguided, collected plankton. A third studied tuberculosis in the tundra” [33]). In very many ways, Humbert’s European vision and his pervert’s imagination make of mid-Twentieth Century America a land every bit as exotic and strange as any visited by Lemuel Gulliver. Here is a Dantean description of a simple unfinished storefront display in a small town:
It was indeed a pretty sight. A dapper young fellow was vacuum-cleaning a carpet of sorts upon which stood two figures that looked as if some blast had just worked havoc with them. One figure was stark naked, wigless and armless. Its comparatively small stature and smirking pose suggested that when clothed it had represented, and would represent when clothed again, a girl-child of Lolita’s size. But in its present state it was sexless. Next to it, stood a much taller veiled bride, quite perfect and intacta except for the lack of one arm. On the floor, at the feet of these damsels, where the man crawled about laboriously with his cleaner, there lay a cluster of three slender arms, and a blond wig. Two of the arms happened to be twisted and seemed to suggest a clasping gesture of horror and supplication. (226)
At a certain point, the amused ridicule of folly which constitutes satire can become sufficiently colored by invective and hysteria, and slide into something more sardonic. This is a point which is not infrequently reached, as the above citation might suggest, by Nabokov. Swift, too, often reaches a height of invective which transcends the satiric:
As soon as I entered the House, my Wife took me in her Arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the Touch of that odious Animal for so many Years, I fell in a Swoon for almost an Hour. At the Time I am writing, it is five Years since my last Return to England: during the first year I could not endure my Wife or Children in my Presence, the very Smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same Room. (289)
hmmm…
lolita was a wonderful travelogue of America.
CRM, what’s this fascination with Nabokev? Or dare I ask?
bob, this is where you’re supposed to
come in and say, huh?
He was probably taken by the pictures between the power of his own lines.
v. nabokov never took pictures of power lines