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Dec. 1st, 2012
Lo (1,3) That Photograph
Dec. 1st, 2012 04:20 pmWe close the chapter with the climactic disappointment that Humbert would have us believe to have led him down his pedophiliac path. I am sure it is not an argument to be taken seriously, but it did lead us to this great tale about his Annabel.
_ _ _
Among some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there was a snapshot taken by my aunt which showed Annabel, her parents and the staid, elderly, lame gentleman, a Dr. Cooper, who that same summer courted my aunt, grouped around a table in a sidewalk cafe. Annabel did not come out well, caught as she was in the act of bending over her chocolat glacé, and her thin bare shoulders and the parting in her hair were about all that could be identified (as I remember that picture) amid the sunny blur into which her lost loveliness graded; but I, sitting somewhat apart from the rest, came out with a kind of dramatic conspicuousness: a moody, beetle-browed boy in a dark sport shirt and well-tailored white shorts, his legs crossed, sitting in profile, looking away.
[That is a nice, slow, and passive build-up to the close and climax of this chapter.]
That photograph was taken on the last day of our fatal summer and just a few minutes before we made our second and final attempt to thwart fate. Under the flimsiest of pretexts (this was our very last chance, and nothing really mattered) we escaped from the cafe to the beach, and found a desolate stretch of sand, and there, in the violet shadow of some red rocks forming a kind of cave, had a brief session of avid caresses, with somebody’s lost pair of sunglasses for only witness. I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu.
-- “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
_ _ _
Humbert still has one more anecdote of Annabel and their illicit love, which supposedly imprinted her for good on his romantic imagination, reserved for the next chapter, but this was of an earlier episode in our timeline for this fateful summer. I suppose he wanted to end his account on a sweeter note than this rude intrusion by the two bearded bathers, in order to restore the romantic aura of this young love.
_ _ _
Among some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there was a snapshot taken by my aunt which showed Annabel, her parents and the staid, elderly, lame gentleman, a Dr. Cooper, who that same summer courted my aunt, grouped around a table in a sidewalk cafe. Annabel did not come out well, caught as she was in the act of bending over her chocolat glacé, and her thin bare shoulders and the parting in her hair were about all that could be identified (as I remember that picture) amid the sunny blur into which her lost loveliness graded; but I, sitting somewhat apart from the rest, came out with a kind of dramatic conspicuousness: a moody, beetle-browed boy in a dark sport shirt and well-tailored white shorts, his legs crossed, sitting in profile, looking away.
[That is a nice, slow, and passive build-up to the close and climax of this chapter.]
That photograph was taken on the last day of our fatal summer and just a few minutes before we made our second and final attempt to thwart fate. Under the flimsiest of pretexts (this was our very last chance, and nothing really mattered) we escaped from the cafe to the beach, and found a desolate stretch of sand, and there, in the violet shadow of some red rocks forming a kind of cave, had a brief session of avid caresses, with somebody’s lost pair of sunglasses for only witness. I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu.
-- “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
_ _ _
Humbert still has one more anecdote of Annabel and their illicit love, which supposedly imprinted her for good on his romantic imagination, reserved for the next chapter, but this was of an earlier episode in our timeline for this fateful summer. I suppose he wanted to end his account on a sweeter note than this rude intrusion by the two bearded bathers, in order to restore the romantic aura of this young love.
Hunter S. Thompson
Dec. 1st, 2012 04:25 pm
We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Self Portrait, on road to Tijuana (1960)
