Paper, Little overdue

“Easy, you know, does it, son.”

“But the future has no such reality (as the pictured past and the perceived present possess); the future is but a figure of speech, a specter of thought.” (Nabokov 489)

A person notices a rock lying at the bottom of a creek bed; its glassy surface bounces the sun’s light through the water’s surface. They wonder how much time has elapsed for the creek’s flow to smooth the rock enough for such a refraction to occur. The person wonders if it may have fallen from a mountain during a landslide or after an aggressive flood or heavy rainfall. They wonder what carried the rock so many miles to its current location. This person does not wonder, however, what the future holds for the rock; they are stuck in the present, admiring its beauty, pondering what may have happened in the past, and are caught in its current appearance. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things, Hugh Person confronts two major themes: the three tenses and the three forms of consciousness. Similar to the rock laying beneath the water, these themes enable Hugh to have a pictured past, bring him to his perceived present being, and shape the inevitable future that at present times is merely a specter of thought.
The premise that creates synthesis amongst the themes is the three tenses: past, present and future. These tenses go along with the stages of life as well as the conscious and un-conscious; for the many stages of life and ones cognizance throughout it determines how someone reflects on their past, behaves in the present, and views their upcoming future. “Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future. Persons might then straddle the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering this or that object. It might be fun.” (Nabokov 489) Because people can not directly see what their future holds, they look to their past and think about things they should have done differently, or of issues that continue to haunt them in their present. A person holds a multitude of memories from their past, and the choices they made effect how they act in their present state of being. This inevitably influences the choices they will someday make that directly affect their future. If a person knew what was going to happen in the future, they could better balance their lives by not dwelling so much on the past, but instead live in, and enjoy the present.
Hugh constantly deals with issues from his past, issues that compromise his livelihood and are afflicted by irrational fears. Hugh is not able to look at the rock below the surface of the water and see its present state and function. Instead, Hugh looks at an object and notices its color, shape and imperfections: qualities that enable Hugh to lose himself in the object’s past rather than its current form. “When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object. Novices must learn to skim over matter if they want matter to stay at the exact level of the moment. Transparent things, though which the past shines!” (Nabokov 489) Hugh feels awkward when he is in an unfamiliar place in life, making him constantly revert back to how things used to be. When he visits a hotel he has not been to in years, Hugh feels upset when the receptionist is not the same person, the familiar hotel room 313 is occupied, and the hallway is unrecognizable. Hugh continues to dwell on the grief that engrained one fifth of his life; the same time period he last visited the Ascot Hotel. Because Hugh focuses strongly on memories from the past, he makes the Ascot Hotel seem like a dreadful building rather than appreciating it for its purpose and function in the present. Hugh continually breaks through this tension film, and “will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish.” (Nabokov 489)
The rock that lies below the surface of the water, depending on where you stand, may not deliver the same degree of refracted light that a person might see from a different angle. Without the same level of reflection from the sun, the person may not notice the rock’s shiny coat, or worse, the beautiful rock could go completely unnoticed. Past is not the only factor that affects a person’s present being. Society, as well as different viewpoints and interiority, can strongly alter a person’s perception of reality and present time. Hugh Person does not have an optimistic view of the world, giving him tendencies to find faults and imperfections in everything that surrounds him. Some objects Hugh finds many problems with include dingy lilacs, shade-less lamps, broken umbrellas, cheap pine and faceless old pencils. (Nabokov 492) Because of his interpretation and perception of how the world is, Hugh is conditioned to see the worst in both people and his surroundings.
The people in Hugh Person’s life seem to have the same tainted pasts and flawed exteriors as the objects that surround him. Hugh is unable to view people as they exist in present time, which means he always sees their extra baggage as well as their dirty laundry. The only time that Hugh is able to live in the present, rather than thinking about the past, occurs when his father dies. Hugh does not want to be troubled with sending his fathers body home, and suggests to “get rid of the dreadful object practically at once.” (Nabokov 498) In this instance, Hugh does not sink into the history of his father’s body, but instead sees it as merely a carcass that must be disposed of. Bodies have scars, wrinkles and evidence of existence, all of which allows the past to shine though their outer appearances. However, Hugh chooses to view the body from a different angle: not as his father, but as a carcass that needs to be disposed of. Rather than dwelling on the past as he usually does, Hugh finds himself standing in the present moment, letting go of memories attached to the body of “Henry Emery Person, our Person’s father,” who “might be described as a well-meaning, earnest, dear little man, or as a wretched fraud, depending on the angle of light and the position of the observer.” (Nabokov 498)
Out of the three tenses, future is the least discussed in Transparent Things. For Hugh, the future is only a “figure of speech” or a “specter of thought.” He is able to grasp the past because of the pictures he has created inside his memory palace, and is able to perceive what is happening in the present moments; however, Hugh does not look too far into the future for he has no image or recollection of what it will be like. One of the only statements Hugh says regarding future throughout the entire story is that “every task in life should be brought to an end, like completing that road above Witt, where they had a house, a chalet de luxe, but had to trudge up to the Drakonita cableway until the new road had been finished.” (Nabokov 505) Because Hugh knows that every task in life must come to an end, he is aware that changes will be made in the future. For example: Hugh knows he will always finish a book, he knows he wants to climb the mountain that caused him such embarrassment, and he knows that eventually, like everyone else in his life, he too will die. However, even though Hugh understands that everything will eventually come to an end, he is unaware of where the end will lie.
Hugh harnesses dark fears that consist of both the future and the past. During the days, Hugh projects his feelings of fear and low self-esteem onto the objects and people surrounding him. But each day will come to an end, bringing Hugh to face the fact that everything, including daytime, always comes to an end. The end of daytime means the beginning of nighttime, and the beginning of nighttime forces a person to leave the world of the conscious and surrender their thoughts and feelings to the bodies subconscious. The “low sun’s funeral,” (Nabokov 506) does not only refer to the death and end of a day, but the birth of darkness that would soon blanket the entire earth, causing Hugh once again to battle his fears of sleep, and the black world that surrounds it. Like the past, future and present, Hugh is also shaped by his mental patterns, bringing him closer then further away from reality and present time, with each setting or rising of the sun.
Sleeping, dreaming and being awake are three forms of consciousness, or the un-conscious, found throughout Transparent Things. While daytime and consciousness are generally seen as positive and symbolize the present, the idea of darkness and sleeping brings forth Hugh’s problematic nocturnal fears, which makes sleep become a habitual problem. “Ever since childhood…the problem was twofold. He was obliged, sometimes for hours, to woo the black automation with an automatic repetition of some active image-that was one trouble. The other referred to the quasi-insane state into which sleep put him, once it did come. He could not believe that decent people had the sort of obscene and absurd nightmares which shattered his night and continued to tingle throughout the day.” (Nabokov 527) The problems Hugh harnesses with going to sleep are a direct correlation with not being able to control his own thoughts. Once his brain slips away into the abyss of his subconscious, Hugh opens himself up to seeing the unending awfulness of his deepest thoughts; thoughts he is usually able to suppress while awake and in control. Knowing what his brain is capable of conjuring during sleep, Hugh dreads what the dark symbolizes and instead is restless until the first sliver of sunlight enters his room.
The abyss, which is also known as Hugh’s subconscious, is a scary place for him to visit, for he has learned that he has “destructive urges” in his dreams. These destructive tensions and urges are those that have been stored up since infancy, making his past, present and future desires the main storyline for the dreams Hugh will fade into once night falls. “Hugh need not be ashamed of them. In fact, at puberty sexual desire arises as a substitute for the desire to kill, which one normally fulfills in one’s dreams; and insomnia is merely the fear of becoming aware in sleep of one’s unconscious desires for slaughter and sex.” (Nabokov 531) Hugh is already aware enough of his not-so-happy past, and making himself aware of what his present subconscious feels and desires for himself and the future, will only make him more unhappy. Also, knowing that his friends and acquaintances do not have similar dreams makes Hugh feel even more like an outcast. “He could not believe that decent people had the sort of obscene and absurd nightmares which shattered his night and continued to tingle throughout the day. Neither the incidental accounts of bad dreams reported by friends nor the case histories elucidations, presented anything like the complicated vileness of his almost nightly experience.” (Nabokov 527)
Everything must come to an end, death is inevitable, and sleeping without an active subconscious creates an illusion of what death and the future holds. In the end, Hugh determines his own fate. If only Hugh had looked at his life and society from a different point of view, he may have been able to enjoy the present, and appreciate the beauty that surrounded him rather than notice the scars and evidence from histories past.
“Person hated the sight and the feel of his feet. They were uncommonly graceless and sensitive. Even as a grown man he avoided looking at them when undressing.” (Nabokov 548) Every time Hugh glances down at his own feet he becomes aware of all the steps he has taken, the places he is currently standing, and the places his feet will take him in the future. They are reminders of where he has been, and where he will go. If Hugh had only walked a different path, then he may have been able to escape his fears, noticing the rock reflecting brightly from below the tension surface of the small creek.
A person notices a strange figure lying at the bottom of a creek bed; its coarse, uneven surfaces consisting of fabric, hair and decomposing skin make strange shapes and colors reflect through the water’s surface. They wonder how much time has elapsed for the creek’s flow to slowly deteriorate the body and the clothes attached to it. The person wonders if the body was put there by a criminal or carried by a strong flood or if the body had simply drowned on the spot. They wonder what carried the body so many miles to its current location. This person does not wonder, however, what the future holds for the body; they are stuck in the present, knowing a life has ended, pondering what may have happened in the past to cause the bodies current appearance and demise. Hugh Person would never notice the beautiful rock that lies next to the decaying body. Nor does he find beauty in objects where the exterior suggests a rough past. Instead, Hugh Person confronts the themes of tenses and forms of consciousness by exposing fears and pessimisms that have a direct correlation to his past, present and where his future will take him. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things, Hugh is shaped strongly by his pictured past, which brings him to his perceived present being, and shapes the inevitable future to come. If only Hugh had glanced at the riverbed from a different view, he may have seen the beauty of a polished rock, and appreciated the small refraction of sunlight twinkling from beneath the surface.

FINAL Thoughts

I tried to get my final thoughts for this class written down sooner, but I had that little confrontation with the captive woman this morning at my house, putting my daily schedule back a few hours. Like every other Sexson class I have taken, I find myself constantly writing down different quotes and facts, ones that sometimes may just be an MS original one liner, but those scribbles in my notebook continue to be the most important things I will remember from my college experience. This semester has been a rough one for me, and 21 credits is not something that I would like to do again, making my blogs and participation less frequent, for I have been completely overwhelmed. However, the Nabokov class was so intruiging for looking at everyones blogs in class and what they discovered about our different readings made each book come alive in a different way than the first time I read through them. Some of the blogs and discoveries created somewhat of an intimidation factor, giving me authorial anxiety in publishing my own blogs, for I did not at first pick up on the different patterns of colors or repition of names. Regardless to say, I do not think after this semester I will ever be able to read a book the same. This class has made me notice things that I had not noticed before, making me not see the text as a transparent object, but something that is much deeper. Nabokov books are something that I will continue to open up from time to time, just to see if I will pick up on something new that I was not aware of before. While Sexson says the cats are out of the bag, I still feel like maybe a few remain.

Group Presentations

I was impressed and entertained, like I am in all of Dr. Sexsons group presentations, for we are given complete control to do what we want as groups, which usually turns out to be rather enjoyable. It amazes me each time how every group presentation is always extremely different, creative, yet thought provoking. I liked the skit, comparing Lolita to children's fairy tales and the big bad wolf, even though it was rather creepy when the wolf and humbert were drinking vodka while watching the young children play at the park. I also enjoyed group 5 (I think thats the one) where each person retold their stories as a different character, and robert lumis' rather impressive poem. It was amazing how that group wrote their parts separately but in the end it all came together perfectly. And our group video was fun to make, and I still cant beleive how well Adam edited it. I guess my favorite part about these presentations is how each group wants to be creative and entertaining, making the MS projects more entertaining than presentations found in any other class.

whos to blame?

I found this on Tant Mieux's website:
For me this passage below was almost disturbing. This person read all of Nabokovs lesser known books before reading Lolita, and found it to be suggesting that young children really are sexual beings. This idea disturbed me. No child, no matter what a person may think, are sexually aware at the age of the nymphettes in Lolita, and this man is almost standing up for the people that can see this sexual side of the young. He claims that Hubert was not completely to blame, for Lolita was just a sexual being who was dressed up in innocence to hide her true cover. While she may have had some sexual tendancies, as a young child, she was not aware of her sexuality as Humbert had initially saw her. And by photographers photographing young girls with deep looks on their faces and a dress partially draped off the shoulder, does not suggest that the girl is trying to tempt the photographer. "but to deny that children are sexual beings is to turn one's back on our very nature" shows how this person uses these different stories and photographs to maybe support his own nature, that may strongly differ from many others. While his view on nymphettes is interesting, I found myself a little taken aback by this. Part of his blog is included below:



For as long as I can remember, I have loved the work of Nabokov. I remember reading Pale Fire and then Ada or Ardour when i was still a teenager - heavy stuff for that age, or so it seemed to me. While most readers had started or been introduced to Nabokov with his book and later his film, Lolita (with Sue Lyons and Charles Mason), i had started with the lesser known works, and eventually led up to Lolita, often considered the more perverse of his books and to some, an advertisment for incest; this poor little Lolita who is the victim of our so-called antagonist Humbert Humbert. Watch the newer version with Jeremy Irons and you'll see that Lolita isn't entirely the victim here, as anyone who read the book carefully could tell you. We're so quick to judge, and yes, incest is always wrong. But what Lolita really tells us is that children, no matter how hard we try to neuter them and turn them into innocent fairies with angel wings, as was so common in the Victorian era, will always be sexual and sensual beings. This is not an advertisement for incest by any stretch, but to deny that children are sexual beings is to turn one's back on our very nature. It is entirely possible and even likely, that a child can be sensual and even sensual without wanting any kind of touch or relationship. To break that pact, to pursue a relationship, is to traumatize and rape the child. Of this we can be clear. Lewis Carroll, nee Charles Dodgson, author of Alice 's Adventures Underground (later named Alice in Wonderland), is often compared to Nabokov (in contemporary work). We were told "little girls held a strange fascination for Carroll." Few know of Carroll's work as a photographer. That he was one of the preeminent photographers of the Victorian era, alongside Julia Margaret Cameron and O. Rejlander. Who can forget the picture of Alice Liddell, the model for Alice in Wonderland, posing as the "Little Beggar Girl," the jaunty thrust of her hip, the dress slipping off of her shoulder, the smoldering look in her eye. Carroll, unlike his contemporaries, would not sugar coat his models. .Even Nabokov, who much admired Dodgson and translated into Russian Alice in Wonderland, accuses him of "Nympholepsy", adding almost jealously, "he got away with it." Nabokov called Dodgson's models, "half-dressed and bedraggled nymphets," referring to the models that lie about languidly in Dodgson's photographs, their poses clearly suggestive. Really it is only in our backward glance that we find some "evidence" we say of Nabokov's nympholepsy or Dodgson's perversion. It is widely known that the Victorians were preoccupied with mythologizng children, rendering them as innocent water nymphs, frolicking jollily along the shoreline, floating in the air as cherubs, or even as full-breasted women strangely lacking in pubic hair. In this Cult of the Child, children (and women, for that matter) were sexless, yet suggestive. Their sexuality was decorated with the props of innocence, flowers and wings, halos and purifying baths, promoting, as Bram Dijkstra put it, "a genre of child pornography that disguised itself as a tribute to the ideal of innocence." (195, Idols of Perversity) Children were presented provocatively, but in a form that was acceptable. Still, if you strip away the props and the pretense from these airbrushed and dilute images, a more perverse, more fetishistic rendering is revealed.

photos

The caption below this picture states that it came from the Nabokov estate, which I found rather bizarre because I always found, like in Speak Memory, that Nabokov thought the pictures spoke for themselves. However, this picture is not as thought provoking as ones that he included in his Speak Memory book. In those, he had elements of the past, like his mother waving out a window or a baby carriage without him in it, or he had photos of himself sitting at a desk with many objects behind him. Strangly, this photo has only a boring blank wall behind him, making the viewer forced to just look at him. Nabokov is younger in this picture, and it is amazing the scribbles on this, for I wonder if Nabokov himself did this to give the photograph more substance? The butterflies still a present thought on him mind, and the lines above his head suggesting that his head was exploding even though he sat in an empty room.. maybe he wants the viewer of this photograph to think deeper as well. However, the caption on this photo could be wrong, and the drawings and scribbles on this photo could just be from some random person.

a thought provoking quote

I was reading an article on Transparent things, for I have had so much difficulty with it, it is nice to see another persons point of view. I found this quote from Alexandrov that I found interesting:

In his fiction, as Vladimir E. Alexandrov notes, Nabokov often used analogies “between sleep and earthly life on the one hand, and wakefulness and a transcendent world on the other,”thus showing that he incorporated the possibility of an afterlife into his own philosophy. This is also expressed in a passage of “The Art of Literature and Commonsense”: “That human life is but the first installment of the serial soul and that one’s individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution, becomes something more than an optimistic conjecture, and even more than a matter of religious faith, when we remember that only commonsense rules immortality out.”In the context of the essay, in which Nabokov makes a case against “commonsense,” his belief in immortality and an afterlife is given a place alongside his ethics and aesthetics.

I the the idea of sleep and earthly life on one side, and wakefulness and transcendent word on the other. Its almost saying that his dreams and unconcious state are more typical than how he feels while he is away. While he sleeps, he is opening his every day feelings and thoughts, maybe even dreams of the pass, but while he is awake and aware, he is in his transcendent world, opening himself up to superiority and transcending the universe. While he is awake, Nabokov is able to write and exceed in his abilities in an infinite way.

COPS

So I just woke up to a very crazy event, it is similar to Lolita, but instead of dealing with Nymphetes, you may call this woman a Wrinklette. I'm going to start from the beginning of her story.

Her name is Betty Joe, from Los Angeles California. Earlier this year, she went to a church retreat where she met a man who was really attractive. This man took an immediate liking to Betty Joe, told her he loved her, and that she should move to Montana, the most beautiful state in the world. So last Sunday, Betty Joe packed up her house, even though her daughter told her not to, and took a Greyhound to the Big Sky State. According to the story she gave the cops, Betty Joe arrived to a loving man who took really good care of her at first. However, when she tried to call her children and friends a couple of days ago to let them know she was safe, she was supprised to see that every number she dialed was a wrong number. This was when her suspicions arose. She confronted the man and asked why her phone didnt work, and he told her that now she was with him, nothing else mattered, so he changed all the numbers in her phone, to lose complete communication, and start a new life completely rid of its past. Betty Joe began to get upset, so the man duct taped her to a chair, then proceeded to duct tape the doors and block off windows so she could not get out. He did not have a house line so she was unable to call the cops.

Apparently this behavior went on for a few days, making Betty Joe more and more nervous of this situation. She told the cops that yesterday was the tipping point and she knew that she had to escape. She overheard the man, who loved her so much he didnt want to share her with anyone, talking to his friend on the phone about purchasing a bunch of guns for his house. After she heard that, she knew she would have to escape. This morning, when the man left the house, she pryed open the back door that was blocked by an old fridge, and ran down the block knocking on every door she could.

This is where our house gets involved. I saw the lady standing on the street corner, looking like she was waiting for someone, so I didnt think anything of it. After I got into my house, I heard a knock on the door. Over and over. It was the lady. We answered it, and she was shaking, looked like she was running from something that had just hurt her. We didnt let her in the house, but my sister called the cops and I made her some tea to warm up. When the cops got here, she told them that whole disturbing story.

I seriously feel like this captive thing is an ongoing theme. From reading lolita, to watching criminal minds, to poor Betty Joe. Regardless, this was not a boring start to the day, and I felt it necessary to share.