Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021301, Mon, 7 Feb 2011 09:49:57 -0200

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[NABOKOV-L] Oxford Book of Dreams: old sighting
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The Oxford Book of Dreams (chosen by Stephen Brook), Oxford Univeristy Press, 1983.

Introduction: ..."Although this anthology does contain examples od dream interpretation, most of the dreams in this book are instances of the literary exploitation of the dream experience. Of course, the distinction is in many respects a false one, if only because the dream as a literary device is bound up with the use its creator chooses to make of it. The invention of a dream is in itself an act of interpretation...[H]ow exactly does one distinguish, even in literature, between dream, daydream, hallucination, and reverie?..."

Index:: Nabokov, Vladimir 2, 45-6, 206-7, 243.

Prologue: "Human dreams do not easily forget old grudges." (Perfection, 1974)

Love and Sex,: 45-6: [Humbert Humnbert is lodging with Mrs. Charlotte Haze and her daughter Lolita.] "I have turned on the light to take down a dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed that since the weather promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday after church [...] Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback arount the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air - one of those little omissions due to the absent-mindedness of the dream agent" (Lolita, 1955).

The absurd; 206-7: Singularly enough, I seldom if ever dreamed of Lolita as I remember her - as I saw her constantly and bsessively in my conscious mind during my daymares and insomnia. More precisely; she did haunt my sleep but she appeared there in strange and ludicrous disguises [...] weeping in my bleding arms...in a dream disorder of auctioneered Viennese bric-a-brac, pity, impotence, and the brown wigs of tragic old women who had just been gassed." ( Lolita, 1955).

Interpretations; 243: " I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifiling with psychitrists, cunningly leading them on; never letting them see ethat you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style ( which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake 'primal scenes'; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one's real sexual predicament." (Lolita,1955).
Humbert dixit!


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