If he was silent. I would be silent too.

lolita031 If he was silent. I would be silent too.

Reading Nabokov is to experience the master. Do not allow yourself to be put off by the subject matter, perhaps because you consider it distasteful. To do so is to fall at the first hurdle.

The end is close. I will probably watch both versions of the film again after finishing the book this week. And then what to read next? I don’t know. Something old rather than something new, methinks. I like writing that has stood the test of time. For a reason.

PS I created the montage/mashup using images from this wonderful collection on Flickr. The person has amassed some amazing retro/vintage/grungy backgrounds which are perfect for the kind of mashups I like creating.

All of my blog entries on Lolita:

Lolita (1997 movie review)
Seduced by Lolita (quote from the book)
An echo on the brink of a russet ravine (quote from the book)
If he was silent I would be silent too (quote from the book)
Loving and leaving Lolita (book review and roundup)

Justin says:

29th March 2010 at 1:51 am

The original film is a masterpiece. It’s incredible. I haven’t seen the remake. It’s a shame that the filmmakers of the remake found it almost impossible to distribute.

I’ve never read Lolita. At least not much beyond the first line, which is *stunningly* beautiful in the original Russian.

That flickr collection *is* wonderful

Milo says:

31st March 2010 at 10:59 pm

Justin – I’ve seen the Jeremy Irons version but not the Stanley Kubrick one. You MUST read the novel! Must. Deeper, darker, more powerful than the film (that I saw). Apparently the (first) film is not massively true to the book even though Nabokov DID screen-write it. Back then the themes were too dark to fully bring to life on screen. Having said that, I’m sure it’s still a great movie and I’m planning to watch it.

1st April 2010 at 12:44 am

I definitely *do* want to read the novel. Maybe I’ll try to brush up my horrifically rusty Russian and try reading it in the original, though I’m sure I’ll need to have a translation on hand to get through it.

Would be super-cool to see if it was ever published in Russian in pre-revolutionary Orthography, which I have a real fondness for. I like pointless, impractical, overly-complex, out-of-favor things like that. Russian spelling used to be very bizarre and they used to have several extra letters that had the same sound as other letters and were abolished in 1918. It even had a silent letter that appeared at the end of every word that ended in a consonant. For no reason whatsoever (well, there was a historic, etymological reason, but that didn’t help schoolchildren).

I have a facsimile reproduction of a Nabokov translation of Alice in Wonderland which is in pre-revolutionary orthography — it was printed by the White Russian émigré community, which used to cling to the old spelling long after it had been abolished in the Soviet Union.

3rd April 2010 at 5:38 pm

Justin – am 99% he wrote it in English rather than it being a translation from the Russian. He travelled all over the US living in cheap motels, etc, to gain inspiration for the story. He did write a lot in his native Russian before he moved to the US, I believe.

Loving and leaving Lolita « The Year Zero says:

5th April 2010 at 7:04 pm

[...] wonderful prose contained in Lolita but consider some of the quotes I have posted here, here and here. You have to read it for yourself. And don’t just take my word for it. It was named the [...]

If he was silent. I would be silent too.

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