Post for 10/24

Danielle and I have been collaboratively assigned Nabokov's poem "The Ballad of Longwood Glen" as signifying something about Nabokov's themes, and narrative quirks, in reflecting Lolita. The poem is typically Nabokovian in a number of ways.

First, and most obviously, is the reflection (and parody) of folk tales. The piece is about a father who (never having climbed a tree) goes into the tree, to find a ball in a tree, never to return. This is fantastical in the same way a fairy tale, and almost seems like a cautionary tale without a moral, or an invocation of caution in its audience. This isn't much unlike Lolita in the sense that Humbert loves fairy tales, (as messed up as they are) and in fact, is constantly creating "real life" (whatever that means in this book) parallels between his life and fairy tales.

Secondly, is the fun Nabokov has creating a puzzle for his readers. The poem seems, to me, really to be a poetic reflection of his statement that good art places not characters against one another, but rather the author against the reader. In this reading, Art, (you see what I'm saying?) is symbolic of Art, and the people at the bottom of the tree try to analyze, try to unpack, and try to understand where Art went, but are unable to. Art places itself against the reader, and hides itself. Lolita is a sparring match. It's wonderful, though difficult and elusive. Not only is Humbert Humbert's reliability completely questionable, but the whole story forces you to either (in my opinion) misread him, or you are forced to have complicated feelings about him. And like Joyce's Ulysses, there are no arguments that hold up, unchallenged. Nabokov has the humanity, or rather, the understanding of the complexity of humanity that reflects Humbert Humbert, not as an archetype, but rather, as a person.

Thirdly, the piece is very clearly structured, and the aesthetics, and the "rules" of the game are very clear. The poem is written in AA BB CC format. This is, perhaps, a variation from Lolita in a certain way. Part of the fun of Lolita, is that it's a game we don't know the rules to. But, the way the poem and Lolita are connected, is through the fact that there are very much rules that are tightly followed by the author. I think about Nabokov's insistence that he is in control of his novels. He is in control of his writing, micromanaging, and being hyper selective with every word.

There are a number of other small details that are typically Nabokovian, (the doppelgänger names of Paul and Pauline, the judgemental narrator, the importance of names, the use of epic language, the frequent appearance of cars) that are more nitty-gritty, and perhaps less interesting for the greater picture of understanding Nabokov as an author and elusive figure overall.