Jonathan Orsi

English 431

Nabokov.

Master of Puppets

“Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks of woods alone, of standing lake, and of the night approach ye everyone!” Medea invokes the unseen spirits, she conjures her orchestration, and with her powers she “makes the calm seas rough and makes the rough seas plain, And cover all the sky with clouds and chase them thence again.” With these words, we soar back to Ovid. Entranced and enchanted, with dancing visions we are spellbound. The poetic performance, the spectacle before us, has been composed and conducted with careful wit. Through Ovid the Gods speak, through his characters and stories speak Ovid, singing the soul’s song of metamorphosis. This surrogate storytelling reappears throughout time; it serves the necessary illusion of production. Much as Shakespeare’s theater is not only a stage for his actors but a stage for his own voice. As with our poetic puppeteer Nabokov, we are at witness to literary ventriloquism. We never read Nabokov ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ as it were, rather we read the vicarious voice of Nabokov, portrayed by, and through his invented puppets. With his masterful arts Nabokov creates characters and worlds, dictating and directing them with tethers, tied tight with poetry.

Nabokov uses literature as a very thin, yet extravagantly woven screen between us the reader, and himself the author. It is on this veil Nabokov conveys his voice and ideas, the projection: an irresistible image of literary prose. The screen though, keeps separate the audience to the true authorial voice, or creator. It is if we are trapped in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and we are only given shadows of Nabokov’s figure. The term shadow here, should be taken as a grim analogy, for the shadows cast by Nabokov are some of the mot colorful and vivacious yet thrown onto the page.

What is essential to understand, is that though the dialogue and ideas, the entire extent of written material has come from Nabokov’s hand, it is intended to be read and understood from the narrators mouth. Albeit fictitious, and entirely fabricated, the narrator speaking for Nabokov speaks with careful and intentional accents, and varied perceptions. It is almost as if each narrator applies their own filter to Nabokov’s voice, like holding a candle behind a piece of colored glass. To understand the intention or simply to recognition the placement of this glass is paramount.

In many ways, Nabokov’s characters could be considered a medium, especially now, in reference to the mediums between the dead and living. Crossing over however, the voice must pass through subtle distortions. Michael Wood discusses this veiling in is critical series off essays, The Magician’s Doubts stating, “Vladimir Nabokov himself is not going to show up anywhere here: there are only impersonations.(109)” This masking however, should not be considered or confused with any type of weakness, rather it is his greatest strength. It is these mouthpieces, these elaborate characters we are enthralled with. There is some debate on the likeability of characters such as Humbert, Kinbote, and Hugh (a rapist, a narcissist, and a murder respectively) but it is the elegance with which Nabokov manipulates and maneuvers these puppets, that creates and harbors our affinity with them.

Nabokov’s characters even seem to take on the role of authorship as well. With Pale Fire, the John Shade services the role of poet. It is from John Shade’s dreary and macabre life that the poem Pale Fire flowers. The invented character has been granted life by the creator. Life breathed into him by means of flowing language John Shade is created as he is, as he has been. Like a Bukowski poem Shade is, “Born like this, into this.” The characters are created, given life, but they: their history and personage are entirely controlled. Deplorable behavior and all, Nabokov’s characters are entirely intentional and entirely at bay to Nabokov’s direction. In his book, The Magician’s Doubts, Michael Wood expands upon this, invoking Socrates when he speaks to Phaedrus,

Writing you know, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter’s products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish and explanation, they go on telling you the same thing over and over forever.

Wood, through Socrates is enunciating this idea that, though the characters take and lead their own directional lives, they are still constrained by and to Nabokov’s artistic vision. Wood also beckons Humbert on this matter when he discusses opening King Lear, finding that, no matter how many time the story is opened, it shall never change, “never shall we find the king banging his tankard in high revelry.” As much as Shakespeare and Nabokov give freedom and life to their invented characters, they are still very much shackled or strung to the authors will.

Nabokov though, doesn’t simply cast his figure in colorful shades of shadow; he sheds authorship onto his them. With Pale Fire, we are handed a poet and commentator and we clearly see the discussion of these relationships flowing throughout the text. With deeper inquiry however, we see that it is this displacement of authorship, these fabricated voices, these viceroys of literature, who not only flow through the text, but carry the entire burden.

In the novel Lolita however, we often forget or disassociate Humbert with authorial voice. So entrapped are we with powerful prose and a seductive story we lose sight and recognition that this text is Humbert’s dairy-rewritten- from memory, in a jail cell no less! Humbert has succeeded in seducing our sense, as if in a form of literary Stockholm Syndrome, have become endeared to our captor. We hang on every word, invest trust in the text, and begin to pity the pederast.

With belief established in the manuscript, we again, are audience to another production, this time with Humbert conducting. As the text is meant to be understood as a recount of events, we recognize Humbert as the storyteller. He uses lofty language, humor, alliteration, poetry, pity, a whole plethora of devices to enchant the reader. The chase scenes, love scenes, even murder scenes have all been orchestrated by Humbert to romanticize and elevate himself out of despise.

Humbert employs as cast of characters to carry his story. Lolita, Charlotte, Quilty the elusive yet omnipresent Audrey McFate, even Gordon, the described “haggard masturbator” perform in Humbert’s production. This notion of director/puppeteer is glanced at by Humbert himself on page 57 of Lolita, the preamble for the infamous davenport scene.

Main character: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June. Place: Sunlit living room. Props: old, candy-stripped davenport, magazines, phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze-God bless the good man—had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue-washed room, on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and Mementoes, among these Dolores, were all over the place).

While this may be more of an example of Humbert’s humor, or creative wit, it shed’s an introspective light to the “reality” of the text.

The above-mentioned “reality” may be better suited with one or two more scratches of quotation. Frame outward: here is where the trick occurs. The moment we connect with, or accept Humbert, we have been subject to Nabokov’s slight of hand. Duped in the old double take. If Humbert’s manuscriptal-mirage has fooled us, then Nabokov has done it twice over. What we are witness to is a literary ventriloquism, or as Michael Wood tags it, “a verbal vaudeville, a series of literary impersonations performed by the author.” It is almost as if Nabokov has reincarnated himself into his text, appearing as panting pedophile.

This authorial self-imposition, mirrors and re-mirrors itself from Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest. Nabokov can be seen as Prospero, “by his art…put[ting] the wild waters in this roar. (1.2.1-2)” Like Prospero, Nabokov manipulates his characters with seductive style. The characters are given the illusion of independence, but are all the while at bay to the tempest’s will. Though Nabokov never fully articulates this relationship, Prospero unveils himself, exposing the wires of control, “You demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make…weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed the noontide sun, called forth the mutinous wind, and twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war. (5.1.36-47)”

If another mirror is set in place however, we may be more attuned to say that Humbert would make a better Prospero. Certainly when we remind ourselves -as we have done earlier -that the text of Lolita is Humbert’s creation, and recognize the characters therein are subject to his potent art. The preference of Humbert to Prospero especially highlighted when it is considered that both Prospero and Humbert are visible and present throughout text. Though they create the world in which they live, both Prospero and Humbert are still very much characters. Living on, in an even further reflected sky however, fly the real conductors.

If we follow the marionette strings, upward, ascending off the page and out of the text, we see the true puppeteer. The stage becomes visible, the characters drawn back to the page. Exposed, but never reduced. The performance is instead disbanded, as Prospero decrees:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made of.(4.1.148-158)

We may be freed from the story itself, but we shall never be freed from the Nabokov’s enchantment. The moment we enter his world of texts, the moment we are witness to his performances, we become entwined. Never shall we become detached, never will the strings split for fray, instead we will forever remain suspended in disbelief and awe in poetic pageantry that is Nabokov’s work.

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest 3.2.148-156

Works Cited

Wood, Michael. The Magician's Doubts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Shakespeare, William and David Bevington. The Tempest. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.

paper (whole)

I am posting this with some what bitter sweet feelings.
I had written the entire paper, specifically the second half and saved it on a flash drive, i was supposed to have that flash drive returned to me this weekend, but i should have expected this-as everything this week it seems to be a bust. So i've spent the last few hours rewriting (Humbert Humbert style -from memory- in the jail cell of my library desk job) the second half to my paper. In Nabokovian fashion i feel this to be my "the original of Laura" in that it is not edited, not what i really wanted to say, rather it should be burned than ever published. But alas, i needed to do it, its done, so i reluctantly post with tepid relief:

Note: for what ever reason, when copying and pasting some sort of problem occurs, so there may be italics missing or...something, i don't know why blogger can't handle the cut and past function, but it should be all there.

final thoughts. this was ecstacy

As the semester comes to a close, I feel I must take a note from James and thank everybody. I can honestly say that this has been one of if not the best class I have ever had. I mean this in part due to the material, but mostly due to the classmates and the instructor. I feel the same way reading classmates blogs as I do reading Nabokov’s work, It is impossible to reference any one blog or anyone fragment. I because I would never find a proper place to stop, I would simply have to rewrite them all. Even giving “props” to any of my classmates would essentially result in me writing the class list. So to you all: thank you, this was not simply a class, this was a temple.

When I first heard that the class was focusing on Nabokov instead of Wallace Steven, I believe I was a little worried. Russian writers conjure images of cold, sterile, dry writing. Little did I know the ecstasy that awaited me.

I liken this experience; my Nabokov to Humberts Lolita.

“and then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling turning about on her knees, there was my Rivera love peering at me over dark glasses.”

My paper (a fragment)

I am still waiting on a flash drive to be returned to me which has the better half of my paper on it. All i am left with at present time (with approx 40 minutes to post) is what is saved on my roommates computer, but here is it, or some of it. and I will put the tail of it on hopefully later tonight

Jonathan Orsi

English 431

Nabokov.

Master of Puppets

“Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks of woods alone, of standing lake, and of the night approach ye everyone!” Medea invokes the unseen spirits, she conjures her orchestration, and with her powers she “makes the calm seas rough and makes the rough seas plain, And cover all the sky with clouds and chase them thence again.” With these words, we soar back to Ovid. Entranced and enchanted, with dancing visions we are spellbound. The poetic performance, the spectacle before us, has been composed and conducted with careful wit. Through Ovid the Gods speak, through his characters and stories speak Ovid, singing the soul’s song of metamorphosis. This surrogate storytelling reappears throughout time; it serves the necessary illusion of production. Much as Shakespeare’s theater is not only a stage for his actors but a stage for his own voice. As with our poetic puppeteer Nabokov, we are at witness to literary ventriloquism. We never read Nabokov ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ as it were, rather we read the vicarious voice of Nabokov, portrayed by, and through his invented puppets. With his masterful arts Nabokov creates characters and worlds, dictating and directing them with tethers, tied tight with poetry.

Nabokov uses literature as a very thin, yet extravagantly woven screen between us the reader, and himself the author. It is on this veil Nabokov conveys his voice and ideas, the projection: an irresistible image of literary prose. The screen though, keeps separate the audience to the truth authorial voice, or creator. It is if we are trapped in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and we are only given shadows of Nabokov’s figure. The term shadow here, should be taken as a grim analogy, for the shadows cast by Nabokov are some of the mot colorful and vivacious yet cast on the page.

What is essential to understand, is that though the dialogue and ideas, the entire extent of written material has come from Nabokov’s hand, it is intended to be read and understood from the narrators mouth. Albeit fictitious, and entirely fabricated, the narrator speaking for Nabokov speaks with careful and intentional accents, and varied perceptions. It is almost as if each narrator applies their own filter to Nabokov’s voice, like holding a candle behind a piece of colored glass. To understand the intention or simply to recognition the placement of this glass is paramount.

In many ways, Nabokov’s characters could be considered a medium, especially now, in reference to the mediums between the dead and living. Crossing over however, the voice must pass through subtle distortions. Michael Wood discusses this veiling in is critical series off essays, The Magician’s Doubts stating, “Vladimir Nabokov himself is not going to show up anywhere here: there are only impersonations.(109)” This masking however, should not be considered or confused with any type of weakness, rather it is his greatest strength. It is these mouthpieces, these elaborate characters we are enthralled with. There is some debate on the likeability of characters such as Humbert, Kinbote, and Hugh (a rapist, a narcissist, and a murder respectively) but it is the elegance with which Nabokov manipulates and maneuvers these puppets, that creates and harbors our affinity with them.

Nabokov’s characters even seem to take on the role of authorship as well. With Pale Fire, the John Shade services the role of poet. It is from John Shade’s dreary and macabre life that the poem Pale Fire flowers. The invented character has been granted life by the creator. Life breathed into him by means of flowing language John Shade is created as he is, as he has been. Like a Bukowski poem Shade is, “Born like this, into this.” The characters are created, given life, but they: their history and personage are entirely controlled. Deplorable behavior and all, Nabokov’s characters are entirely intentional and entirely at bay to Nabokov’s direction. In his book, The Magician’s Doubts, Michael Wood expands upon this, invoking Socrates when he speaks to Phaedrus,

Writing you know, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter’s products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish and explanation, they go on telling you the same thing over and over forever.

Wood, through Socrates is enunciating this idea that, though the characters take and lead their own directional lives, they are still constrained by and to Nabokov’s artistic vision. Wood also beckons Humbert on this matter when he discusses opening King Lear, finding that, no matter how many time the story is opened, it shall never change, “never shall we find the king banging his tankard in high revelry.” As much as Shakespeare and Nabokov give freedom and life to their invented characters, they are still very much shackled or strung to the authors will.

Nabokov though, doesn’t simply cast his figure in colorful shades of shadow; he sheds authorship onto his them.

my presentation

This is not entirely necessary, because you have all already heard it, but i will post my script for the presentation, because -though i could never reach the true from- i had tried to impersonate Dr. Sexson in manner, and in summarizing my paper, which may be a better explanation, or a distillation of what i said in long winded form. anyway here it is.

This is the spring of 2011, I am already far underway teaching my capstone class for the semester. Some of you I see are in that class as well. Hands please? In which we are reading such books as Joyce’s Ullysess, we have just fnished the bahgvadgita! And we are primarily dealing with text that relate to this notion of the epiphany. That is to say Light bulbs!

Anyway I came here today to talk to you about a class I taught last year on the author Vladimir Nabokov. And this one student of mine Jon Orsi, not a particularly bright student but I granted him an A for the course Non the less. In fact I believe everyone in the class was awarded an A. You can hold me to that.

Well Jon wrote his final paper, and he was unfortunately unable to be here to present it. So I will fill in to summarize. His paper was entitled Master of Puppets, it dealt primarily with the idea of Nabokov as a sort of puppeteer. Creating the illusion of these fictitious authors all while tending the strings. Putting on a production to which we are witness. Which is essentially to say a discussion of authorial voice. He never got quite down to saying this but think I can safely say this is what he was getting at.

He likeness this to the notion of Plato’s allegory of the cave, that we the audience never see Nabokov himself clearly, instead as a shadow cast upon the wall. Shadow however, he claims is a dreary analogy, rather the gauze that separates the author and audience, is a rich and intricate tapestry. And it is the beauty and delicacy of this gauze that elevates Nabokov to such great heights. In fact I have always said that Nabokov offers more pleaser per square inch than any other writer.

Jon also likens Nabokov to Shakespeare’s Prospero. A character in his final play the Tempest. Prospero uses his powers (which are books) to sort of conduct and orchestrate a series of events, using other characters a sort of his actors or. Puppets? And this has widely been taken as a metaphor for Shakespeare himself.

Jon then argues maybe a better comparison would be Nabokov to Shakespeare, and characters such as Humbert Humbert to be his Prospero, because as we know ‘Lolita’ is Humberts diary. And we never can fully trust if Humerts characters are…what? Real! Or made up! Or if he is using them, manipulating them for his own means.

Anyway a very interesting paper, calling to question the productions that are Nabokov’s novels, what we are reading is sort of a puppet show put on with careful detail and extraordinary style. These fictitious Narrators perform as literary ventriloquism that add many layers of depth and complexity to what is extraordinarily beautiful writing.

a visual

(click to see larger view) try and check out the names and everything its some wild information.

I didn't really have time to explain my last blog and I don't really now, but i just thought of this Artist who is actually a friend of mine's uncle, who took money transactions between, governments, banks, organized crime syndicates, corporations and created these pieces of art with said information. here is a wiki link to him. Mark Lombardi I realize this doesn't really have to do with class, but i just thought this was an interesting image/ person. And now that its the end of the year, for any of my classmates who would even be reading this, i figure I'd give you something more on the entertainment side of things than the educational.
Note: one of this is actually on display at the MoMA
Now if only i had the time do do this with a copy of Lolita.

quick notes on Christina's & Riley's

I am at work right now so I don't really have time to expand on this idea, but hearing/ reading Riley's as well as Christina's I've been thinking a lot about this web of interconectivity within Nabokov's writing. Riley said that he had to punch out his cards -something i was overly cautious not to do with my library copy (library copy should be laminated)- but the idea, or the spatial recognition of having the cards spread out in front of you is really appealing to me. This would be an enormous project for the entire work of something like Lolita, but to see the entire script as an image, a piece of art, possibly with the silks of web spread and tied throughout the text would be, if at all possible one of the coolest things for this class (future MoMA exhibit)
Again, i wish i had time to articulate this point/idea more and give it some elan of it's own but I am just working with the raw idea that Nabokovs work is limited almost when we are given it in the "linear" fashion to which print is confined, we must in turn think and feel out the works. (which we have no problem doing) but to see this confinement broken would be beautiful. As Christina puts it in her paper, "Unlike ordinary writers, however, who may use words to illustrate concepts in a linear fashion (from word to idea), Nabokov manipulates words in a very different way, making them come alive through their varied interactions with one another."
I enthusiastically agree here, but my point is that in the novel form, we are quite literally restrained to the linear form, i just want to see what the image of it would be spatially... this sounds crazy i know, i suppose i don't really know what i'm talking about anymore, i think this semester has cracked me, but just picture it, maybe even try it. push out the note cards in your copy of The Original of Laura. tear the pages out of an old copy of Pale Fire
and Draw a 'web of sense' throughout. see what it looks like.