Chekhov's Mistress

Notes on Nabokov and Notes

by Bud Parr

Nabokov, Marat, Sunday Funnies, Poe

You may recall from my Reading Lolita in Manhattan post that I have embarked on getting to know Nabokov’s writing. I had previously read excerpts of Lolita, some of his short stories and most of his Lectures on Literature. I started with the introduction to the Annotated Lolita, which led me on a couple of side roads to Lewis Carroll and Raymond Queneau. I also picked up a copy of Strong Opinions, which is a collection of interviews and miscellaneous short writings, and Speak, Memory, his highly acclaimed autobiography. As a gateway I’ve chosen to do a very thorough reading of Lolita.



I have started the Annotated Lolita in earnest, yet haven’t covered a lot of ground because of all the other books and reading involved in addition to the normal newspaper, sundry articles and blogs demanding attention in my reading time. Having said that, the book is a faster read than I thought (I’m typically a slowww reader). The writing is so visual that the imagery carries you along quite easily. It’s amazing that such style and allusiveness can be accomplished with relative simplicity and fluidity.



Speaking of allusiveness, the notes are interesting, but I’m grappling with how to handle them. Even the introduction deals with this issue but I’ve yet come to terms with going back and forth between the two. Reading in advance can be too revealing in some instances and helpful in others. For example, this passage, in reference to HH’s first wife:

Her only asset was a muted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt like Marat but with no white-necked maiden to stab me.



This reference, we are told at length in the notes, is to Jean-Paul Marat (1743 – 1793), the “French revolutionist stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday; the subject of a famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, Marat Assassiné (1793)…”



The names all sound familiar, but my erudition is comparatively limited to the Sunday funnies and probably if it weren’t for Marat/Sade I wouldn’t know him at all. Having read the notes in advance though, the Marat reference glided by waving in full appreciation of my new knowledge.



The most interesting aspect of the notes so far is the degree to which Edgar Allan Poe figures in the book. There are at least twenty references, more than any other person (or their works) and the poem Annabelle Lee is central to early elements of the story. I’m a fan of Poe – The Cask of Amontillado is one of the first short stories I remember reading – but I would probably not otherwise have spent much time thinking about his work in relation to Nabokov’s. The problem that I have with the notes is taking the time to read an essay, albeit a short one, midway through reading the novel. So, I am bumbling my way through the notes, which are time-saving nonetheless for those of us that compulsively thumb through the dictionary at the slightest etymological provocation.

posted July 27, 2004

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