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Fw: Vladimir Nabokov and Christopher Isherwood
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Redjames" <jwomack@yandex.ru>
To: <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 2:38 PM
Subject: Vladimir Nabokov and Christopher Isherwood
>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (18
lines) ------------------
> Hello.
>
> I am reading Christopher Isherwood, The World in the Evening (1954)
>
> The narrator, Stephen Monk, is describing his sexual initiation in Paris
and Berlin, and talks about needing to specialise in your sexual preferences
in Berlin (including, perhaps incidentally, a ▒teen-age virgin▓?). After
his first bout of gonnorhoea has been treated, he thinks melodramatically /
ironically as follows:
>
> 'I didn▓t have to commit suicide. I could go back home.
>
> Back to what? I didn▓t know. My attitude towards the fuiture was quite
passive. I supposed vaguely that it would present me, sooner or later, with
an occupation. Perhaps I▓d write something or try translating. Perhaps I▓d
join an expedition to South America or the Arctic, or get myself
psycho-analysed.▓
>
> Any ideas why he suggests doing the same things (Arctic exploration and
psychoanalysis) that HH ends up doing in Lolita? Were these just zeitgeisty
things to do?
>
> Anyhow, a nice coincidence of details.
>
> James Womack.
> --
> ....soft as the earth is mankind and both
> Need to be altered...
>
From: "Redjames" <jwomack@yandex.ru>
To: <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 2:38 PM
Subject: Vladimir Nabokov and Christopher Isherwood
>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (18
lines) ------------------
> Hello.
>
> I am reading Christopher Isherwood, The World in the Evening (1954)
>
> The narrator, Stephen Monk, is describing his sexual initiation in Paris
and Berlin, and talks about needing to specialise in your sexual preferences
in Berlin (including, perhaps incidentally, a ▒teen-age virgin▓?). After
his first bout of gonnorhoea has been treated, he thinks melodramatically /
ironically as follows:
>
> 'I didn▓t have to commit suicide. I could go back home.
>
> Back to what? I didn▓t know. My attitude towards the fuiture was quite
passive. I supposed vaguely that it would present me, sooner or later, with
an occupation. Perhaps I▓d write something or try translating. Perhaps I▓d
join an expedition to South America or the Arctic, or get myself
psycho-analysed.▓
>
> Any ideas why he suggests doing the same things (Arctic exploration and
psychoanalysis) that HH ends up doing in Lolita? Were these just zeitgeisty
things to do?
>
> Anyhow, a nice coincidence of details.
>
> James Womack.
> --
> ....soft as the earth is mankind and both
> Need to be altered...
>