"The Bells" Published 1849

The Bells (1849)

by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the diacopic repetition of the word "bells." The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling and the tinkling" of the bells in part 1 to the "moaning and the groaning" of the bells in part 4.

I

Hear the sledges with the bells —
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells —
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! — how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells —
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now — now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells —
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells —
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people — ah, the people —
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone —
They are neither man nor woman —
They are neither brute nor human —
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells,
Of the bells —
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells —
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells —
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Analysis

This poem can be interpreted in many different ways, the most basic of which is simply a reflection of the sounds that bells can make, and the emotions evoked from that sound. For example, "From the bells bells bells bells/Bells bells bells!" brings to mind the clamoring of myriad church bells. Several deeper interpretations exist as well. One is that the poem is a representation of life from the nimbleness of youth to the pain of age. Growing despair is emphasized alongside the growing frenzy in the tone of the poem.[1] Another is the passing of the seasons, from spring to winter. The passing of the seasons is often used as a metaphor for life itself. The poem also suggests a Poe theme of mourning over a lost wife, courted in sledge, married and then killed in a fire as the husband looks on. The tolling of the iron bells reflects the final madness of the grief-stricken husband.

The sounds of the verses, specifically the repetitive "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells," lie on a narrow line between sense and nonsense, causing a feeling of instability.[2] Poe uses the word "tintinnabulation", which many critics believe is merely an onomatopoeic nonsense term. Poe biographer Hervey Allen suggests the word is based on an ancient bell-based instrument called "tintinabula."[3] The series of "bells" echo the imagined sounds of the various bells, from the silver bells following the klip-klop of the horses, to the "dong, ding-dong" of the swinging golden and iron bells, to screeching "whee-aaah" of the brazen bells. The series are always four, followed by three, always beginning and ending on a stressed syllable. The meter changes to iambic in the lines with repeated "bells," bringing the reader into their rhythm. Most of the poem is a more hurried anapestic (**/) meter.

The bells of which he writes are thought to be those he heard from Fordham University's bell tower, since Poe resided in the same Bronx neighborhood as that university. He also frequently strolled about Fordham's campus conversing with both the students and the Jesuits.

Critical response

"The Bells" is often criticized for being mechanical and forced.[4]

Publication history

Poe is believed to have written "The Bells" in May 1848 and submitted it three times to Sartrain's Union Magazine, a magazine run by John Sartain, until it was finally accepted.[5] He was paid fifteen dollars for his work, though it was not published until after his death in November 1849.

Inspiration for the poem is often granted to Marie Louise Shew (above), a woman who had helped care for Poe's wife Virginia as she lay dying.[5] One day, as Shew was visiting Poe at his cottage in Fordham, New York, Poe needed to write a poem but had no inspiration. Shew allegedly heard ringing bells from afar and playfully suggested to start there, possibly even writing the first line of each stanza.[6]

Adaptations

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) composed a choral symphony The Bells, Op. 35, based on a Russian adaptation of the poem by Konstantin Balmont. The symphony follows classical sonata form: first movement, slow movement, scherzo, and finale, thus honoring the poem's four sections.[7] (The work is sometimes performed in English, using not Poe's original, but a translation of Balmont's adaptation by Fanny S. Copeland.) The Scottish composer Hugh S. Roberton (1874–1947) published "Hear the Tolling of the Bells" (1909), "The Sledge Bells" (1909), and "Hear the Sledges with the Bells" (1919) based on Poe's poem.[8] Josef Holbrooke composed his "The Bells, Prelude, Op. 50" on Poe's poem and Phil Ochs composed a tune to the poem recorded his album All the News That's Fit to Sing. Eric Woolfson, musical partner to Alan Parsons in the Alan Parsons Project, has written two albums based on the writings of Poe. His second, Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination includes a song entitled "The Bells", for which he set Poe's words to music. This album was also the basis for a musical stage production that was performed in England, Austria, and other European countries.

References

1.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York City: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0060923318 p. 403
2.^ Rosenheim, Shawn James. The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. p. 125. ISBN 9780801853326
3.^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 25. ISBN 086576008X
4.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992. p. 223. ISBN 0815410387
5.^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. p. 25. ISBN 081604161X
6.^ E. A. Poe Society of Baltimore
7.^ AmericanSymphony.org
8.^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. p. 212. ISBN 081604161X

"The Raven" in Popular Culture: Music/Spoken Word

Lou Reed's 2003 album The Raven is based on Poe's work, including his own version of The Raven in a song by the same name.

The psychedelic band The Glass Prism released an album in 1969 entitled "Poe Through the Glass Prism," with the lyrics coming entirely from various poems by Poe. "The Raven" was the single from the album.

The Alan Parsons Project album Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976) includes a song based on "The Raven" and entitled the same, but with only two verses.

A musical variation of "The Raven" was performed by the Grateful Dead during Space on April 19, 1982.

The black metal band Carpathian Forest used the first two verses of the poem for "The Eclipse / The Raven" on their EP Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods (1995).

The gothic metal band Tristania released a track titled "My Lost Lenore" on Widow's Weeds (1998). It is clearly inspired by this poem, but does not incorporate the poem as part of the lyrics. The entire album is in fact reminiscent of The Raven."The Ravens" is another song inspired by the poem, although its main theme is terrorism.

The German black metal band Agathodaimon quotes "The Raven" in the song "Les Posédes" on their 1999 album Higher Art of Rebellion.

A song based on "The Raven" appears on the Grave Digger album The Grave Digger (2003), alongside other songs based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

The song Kremlin Dusk, from Japanese pop star Utada Hikaru's English-language album Exodus (2004), begins "All along, I was searching for my Lenore/In the words of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe/Now I'm sober and "Nevermore"/Will the Raven come to bother me at home." It also refers to the "dying ember" line in the poem.

Seattle, Washington metal band Nevermore got its name from the repeated refrain in "The Raven". The band also referenced it in the title track from their 2005 album This Godless Endeavor.

The Dutch neoceltic pagan folk band Omnia put a slightly edited version of the poem to music as the second track on their 2007 album Alive!.

The American gothic horror band Nox Arcana released a CD entitled Shadow of the Raven in 2007. Three songs—"Midnight Dreary", "The Raven" and "Nevermore"—as well as the album's title, are direct references to the poem.

The German symphonic metal band Xandria included the quote "Thus spoke the raven, 'Nevermore'" in their song Ravenheart, which is inspired by the poem as well..

The Christian third-wave ska band Five Iron Frenzy quotes many of Poe's lines in "That's How The Story Ends", from The End Is Near, and alludes ironically to the mysterious and somber mood of "The Raven".

The song "Campanas en la Noche" ("Bells in the Night") by the Argentine rock band Los Tipitos, the tale of a man wishing for the return of his lover, is loosely based on the poem. This relationship is even more evident in the song's video, which features the bust of Pallas and the titular raven itself.

Rapper MC Lars released the track "Mr. Raven" on The Laptop EP, quoting some lines directly from the poem and modifying others (e.g. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I kicked it weak and weary").
The song "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler begins, "Once upon a midnight deary...", a reference to the opening of The Raven.

The extreme metal band, Cradle of Filth, has quoted the poem in their song entitled "An Enemy Led the Tempest".

The Canadian artist Nash the Slash included an instrumental track called "Lost Lenore" on his vinyl album The Million Year Picnic.

Jean Sibelius allegedly based an early conception of his fourth symphony on "The Raven".

The Devil Wears Prada used a track of a man reading a part of "The Raven" as a part of an introduction to concerts during a 2008 tour with Underoath. The piece led into the ending breakdown in the song "Goats on a Boat."

The Dutch based hardstyle artist DJ Pavo released a track entitled "Raven", which quotes various lines from the poem.

Buddy Morrow and His Orchestra recorded an album of songs based on Poe's works. The album, "Poe for Moderns," includes a condensed, jazzy version of "The Raven."

The hip hop group CYNE included a track called "The Raven" on their 2009 album Water for Mars. The group paraphrases Poe's famous line in a few cynical lines (e.g. "Nevermore said the raven, goodbye to innocence").

"The Raven" in Popular Culture

The Baltimore Ravens

Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" has been frequently referenced and parodied in contemporary culture. Immediately popular after the poem's publication in 1845, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Some consider it the best poem ever written. As such, modern references to the poem continue to appear in popular culture.

Bela Lugosi in The Raven (1935)

In part due to its dual printing, "The Raven" made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately and turned Poe into a national celebrity. Readers began to identify poem with poet, earning Poe the nickname "The Raven." The poem was soon widely reprinted, imitated, and parodied. Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success. As he later lamented, "I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life—except in hope, which is by no means bankable."

Elizabeth Barrett (Browning)

The New World said, "Everyone reads the Poem and praises it... justly, we think, for it seems to us full of originality and power." The Pennsylvania Inquirer reprinted it with the heading "A Beautiful Poem." Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Poe, "Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a fit o' horror, here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by 'Nevermore'." Poe's popularity resulted in invitations to recite "The Raven" and to lecture – in public and at private social gatherings. At one literary salon, a guest noted, "to hear [Poe] repeat the Raven... is an event in one's life." It was recalled by someone who experienced it, "He would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the center of the apartment he would recite... in the most melodious of voices... So marvelous was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken." Parodies sprung up especially in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and included "The Craven" by "Poh!," "The Gazelle," "The Whippoorwill," and "The Turkey." One parody, "The Pole-Cat," caught the attention of Andrew Johnston, a lawyer who sent it on to Abraham Lincoln. Though Lincoln admitted he had "several hearty laughs," he had not, at that point read "The Raven." However, Lincoln eventually read and memorized the poem.

Abraham Lincoln

Diamanda Galas "Masque of The Red Death" (1989)

Diamanda Galás (born August 29, 1955) is a Greek-American avant-garde composer, vocalist, pianist, performance artist and painter.

Known for her expert piano as well as her distinctive, operatic voice, which has a three and a half octave range, Galás has been described as "capable of the most unnerving vocal terror." Galás often shrieks, howls, and seems to imitate glossolalia in her performances. Her works largely concentrate on the topics of suffering, despair, condemnation, injustice and loss of dignity. She has worked with many avant-garde composers, including Iannis Xenakis, Vinko Globokar and John Zorn.

Deathday: Lon Chaney, Sr. 1883-1930 "The Man of a Thousand Faces"

Lon Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930), nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema. He is best remembered for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted characters, and his groundbreaking artistry with film makeup. [1]

Early life

Lon Chaney was born Leonidas Frank Chaney in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Frank H. Chaney and Emma Alice Kennedy; his father had mostly English and some French ancestry, and his mother was of Irish descent.[2] Both of Chaney's parents were deaf, and as a child of deaf adults Chaney became skilled in pantomime. He entered a stage career in 1902, and began traveling with popular Vaudeville and theater acts. In 1905, he met and married 16-year-old singer Cleva Creighton (Frances Cleveland Creighton) and in 1906, their first child and only son, Creighton Chaney (a.k.a. Lon Chaney, Jr.) was born. The Chaneys continued touring, settling in California in 1910.

Marital troubles developed and in April 1913, Cleva went to the Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where Lon was managing the Kolb and Dill show, and attempted suicide by swallowing mercury bichloride. The suicide attempt failed and ruined her singing career; the ensuing scandal and divorce forced Chaney out of the theater and into film.

The time spent there is not clearly known, but between the years 1912 and 1917, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing bit or character parts. His skill with makeup gained him many parts in the highly competitive casting atmosphere. During this time, Chaney befriended the husband-wife director team of Joe De Grasse and Ida May Park, who gave him substantial roles in their pictures, and further encouraged him to play macabre characters.

Chaney also married one of his former colleagues in the Kolb and Dill company tour, a chorus girl named Hazel Hastings. Little is known of Hazel, except that her marriage to Chaney was solid. Upon marrying, the new couple gained custody of Chaney's 10-year-old son Creighton, who had resided in various homes and boarding schools since Chaney's divorce in 1913.[3]

Career

By 1917 Chaney was a prominent actor in the studio, but his salary did not reflect this status. When Chaney asked for a raise, studio executive William Sistrom replied, "You'll never be worth more than one hundred dollars a week."

After leaving the studio, Chaney struggled for the first year as a character actor. It was not until 1918 when playing a substantial role in William S. Hart's picture, Riddle Gawne, that Chaney's talents as a character actor were truly recognized by the industry.

In 1919, Chaney had a breakthrough performance as "The Frog" in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man. The film not only displayed Chaney's acting ability, but his talent as a master of makeup. Critical praise and a gross of over $2 million put Chaney on the map as America's foremost character actor.

Chaney is chiefly remembered as a pioneer in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. His ability to transform himself using self-invented makeup techniques earned him the nickname of "Man of a Thousand Faces." In an autobiographical 1925 article published in Movie magazine, Chaney referred to his specialty as "extraordinary characterization."

He also exhibited this adaptability with makeup in more conventional crime and adventure films, such as The Penalty, in which he played an amputee gangster. Chaney appeared in 10 films directed by Tod Browning, often portraying disguised and/or mutilated characters, including carnival knife-thrower Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (1927) opposite Joan Crawford. In 1927 Chaney co-starred with Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran in the Tod Browning horror film, London After Midnight, considered one of the most legendary lost films. His final cinema role was a sound remake of his silent classic, The Unholy Three (1930), his only "talkie" and the only film in which Chaney displayed his versatile voice. The actor signed a sworn statement declaring that five of the key voices in the film (the ventriloquist, the old woman, a parrot, the dummy and the girl) were his own.

In Quasimodo, the bell ringer of Notre Dame, and Erik, the "phantom" of the Paris Opera House, Chaney created two of the most grotesquely deformed characters in film history. However, the portrayals sought to elicit a degree of sympathy and pathos among viewers not overwhelmingly terrified or repulsed by the monstrous disfigurements of the characters, who were victims of fate.

"I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice," Chaney wrote in Movie magazine. "The dwarfed, misshapen beggar of the streets may have the noblest ideals. Most of my roles since The Hunchback, such as The Phantom of the Opera, He Who Gets Slapped, The Unholy Three, etc., have carried the theme of self-sacrifice or renunciation. These are the stories which I wish to do."

"He was someone who acted out our psyches. He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen," Ray Bradbury once explained. "The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from."

Chaney's talents extended beyond the horror genre and stage makeup. He was also a highly skilled dancer, singer and comedian. Many who did not know Chaney were surprised by his rich baritone voice and his sharp comedic skills.

Chaney and his second wife Hazel led a discreet private life distant from the Hollywood social scene. Chaney did minimal promotional work for his films and for MGM Studios, purposefully fostering a mysterious image, and he reportedly purposely avoided the social scene in Hollywood.

In the final five years of his film career (1925-1930), Chaney worked exclusively under contract to MGM, giving some of his most memorable performances. His portrayal of a tough-as-nails marine drill instructor in Tell It to the Marines (1926), one of his favorite films, earned him the affection of the US Marine Corps, who made him their first honorary member from the motion picture industry. He also earned the respect and admiration of numerous aspiring actors, to whom he offered mentoring assistance, and between takes on film sets he was always willing to share his professional observations with the cast and crew.

Death

During the filming of Thunder in the winter of 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia. In late 1929 he was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer. This was exacerbated when artificial snow, made out of cornflakes, lodged in his throat during filming and quickly created a serious infection.[4] Despite aggressive treatment, his condition gradually worsened, and seven weeks after the release of the remake of The Unholy Three, he died of a throat hemorrhage. His death was deeply mourned by his family, the film industry and by his fans. The US Marine Corps provided a chaplain and Honor Guard for his funeral. He was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California, next to the crypt of his father. His wife Hazel was interred there upon her death in 1933. For unknown reasons, Chaney's crypt has remained unmarked.

Legacy

In 1957, Chaney was the subject of a biopic titled Man of a Thousand Faces, and was portrayed by James Cagney (above). Though much of the plot was fictional, the film was a moving tribute to Chaney and helped boost his posthumous fame. During his lifetime, Chaney had boasted he would make it difficult for biographers to portray his life, saying that "between pictures, there is no Lon Chaney."[5] This was in line with the air of mystery he purposefully fostered around his makeup and performances.

Lon Chaney has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1994, he was honored by having his image designed by noted caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, placed on a United States postage stamp. The stage theater at the Colorado Springs Civic Auditorium is named after Lon Chaney.

In 1929, Chaney built an impressive stone cabin in the remote wilderness of the eastern Sierra Nevada, near Big Pine, California, as a retreat. The cabin (designed by architect Paul Williams) still stands, and is preserved by the Inyo National Forest Service.

Chaney's son Creighton, renamed Lon Chaney, Jr. (below), became a film actor after his father's death, and is best remembered for roles in horror films, especially The Wolf Man. The Chaneys appeared on US postage stamps as the Phantom of the Opera and the Wolf Man, with the set completed by Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and The Mummy. He and his son are mentioned in the Warren Zevon song "Werewolves of London."

Many of Chaney's colleagues held him in high regard and he would often give advice and help actors who were just beginning their careers. He was also greatly respected by the film crews and studio employees with whom he worked.

Following his death, Chaney's famous makeup case was donated by his wife Hazel to the Los Angeles County Museum, where it is sometimes displayed for the public. Makeup artist and Chaney biographer Michael Blake considers Chaney's case the central artifact in the history of film makeup.

In 1978, Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS wrote a song about Lon Chaney called "Man of 1,000 Faces" for his first solo album. Simmons had been influenced by the old black and white classic horror movies growing up in New York City.

An episode of Scooby Doo Movies has a tribute to Lon Chaney as mysterious master of disguise actor "Lorne Chumley" and his butler "Otto" (as a tribute to Erich von Stroheim).

Filmography

The Honor of the Family (1912) (uncredited)
The Ways of Fate (1913)
Suspense (1913) (unconfirmed)
Shon the Piper (1913)
The Blood Red Tape of Charity (1913)
The Restless Spirit (1913) (uncredited)
Poor Jake's Demise (1913)
The Sea Urchin (1913)
The Trap (1913)
Almost an Actress (1913)
An Elephant on His Hands (1913)
Back to Life (1913)
Red Margaret, Moonshiner (1913)
Bloodhounds of the North (1913)
The Lie (1914)
The Honor of the Mounted (1914)
Remember Mary Magdalen (1914)
Discord and Harmony (1914)
The Menace to Carlotta (1914)
The Embezzler (1914)
The Lamb, the Woman, the Wolf (1914)
The End of the Feud (1914)
The Tragedy of Whispering Creek (1914)
The Unlawful Trade (1914)
Heartstrings (1914)
The Forbidden Room (1914)
The Old Cobbler (1914)
The Hopes of Blind Alley (1914)
A Ranch Romance (1914)
Her Grave Mistake (1914)
By the Sun's Rays (1914)
The Oubliette (1914)
A Miner's Romance (1914)
Her Bounty (1914)
The Higher Law (1914)
Richelieu (1914)
The Pipes o' Pan (1914)
Virtue Is Its Own Reward (1914)
Her Life's Story (1914)
Lights and Shadows (1914)
The Lion, the Lamb, the Man (1914)
A Night of Thrills (1914)
Her Escape (1914)
The Sin of Olga Brandt (1915)
The Star of the Sea (1915)
A Small Town Girl (1915)
The Measure of a Man (1915)
The Threads of Fate (1915)
When the Gods Played a Badger Game (1915)
Such Is Life (1915)
Where the Forest Ends (1915)
Outside the Gates (1915)
All for Peggy (1915)
The Desert Breed (1915)
Maid of the Mist (1915)
The Grind (1915)
The Girl of the Night (1915)
The Stool Pigeon (1915 - also directed)
For Cash (1915 - directed only)
An Idyll of the Hills (1915)
The Stronger Mind (1915)
The Oyster Dredger (1915 - also directed)
Steady Company (1915)
The Violin Maker (1915 - also directed)
The Trust (1915 - also directed)
Bound on the Wheel (1915)
Mountain Justice (1915)
Quits (1915)
The Chimney's Secret (1915 - also directed)
The Pine's Revenge (1915)
The Fascination of the Fleur de Lis (1915)
Alas and Alack (1915)
A Mother's Atonement (1915)
Lon of Lone Mountain (1915)
The Millionaire Paupers (1915)
Under a Shadow (1915)
Father and the Boys (1915)
Stronger Than Death (1915)
Dolly's Scoop (1916)
The Grip of Jealousy (1916)
Tangled Hearts (1916)
The Gilded Spider (1916)
Bobbie of the Ballet (1916)
The Grasp of Greed (1916)
The Mark of Cain (1916)
If My Country Should Call (1916)
Felix on the Job (1916)
The Place Beyond the Winds (1916)
Accusing Evidence (1916)
The Price of Silence (1916)
The Piper's Price (1917)
Hell Morgan's Girl (1917)
The Mask of Love (1917)
The Girl in the Checkered Coat (1917)
The Flashlight (1917)
A Doll's House (1917)
Fires of Rebellion (1917)
The Rescue (1917)
Pay Me! (1917)
Triumph (1917)
The Empty Gun (1917)
Anything Once (1917)
The Scarlet Car (1917)
The Grand Passion (1918)
Broadway Love (1918)
The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918)
Fast Company (1918)
A Broadway Scandal (1918)
Riddle Gawne (1918)
That Devil, Bateese (1918)
The Talk of the Town (1918)
Danger, Go Slow (1918)
The Wicked Darling (1919)
The False Faces (1919)
A Man's Country (1919)
Paid in Advance (1919)
The Miracle Man (1919)
When Bearcat Went Dry (1919)
Victory (1919)
Daredevil Jack (1920)
Treasure Island (1920)
The Gift Supreme (1920)
Nomads of the North (1920)
The Penalty (1920)
Outside the Law (1920)
For Those We Love (1921)
Bits of Life (1921)
The Ace of Hearts (1921)
The Trap (1922)
Voices of the City (1922)
Flesh and Blood (1922)
The Light in the Dark (1922)
Oliver Twist (1922)
Shadows (1922)
Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922)
A Blind Bargain (1922)
All the Brothers Were Valiant (1923)
While Paris Sleeps (1923)
The Shock (1923)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
The Next Corner (1924)
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
The Monster (1925)
The Unholy Three (1925)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Tower of Lies (1925)
The Blackbird (1926)
The Road to Mandalay (1926)
Tell It to the Marines (1926)
Mr. Wu (1927)
The Unknown (1927)
Mockery (1927)
London After Midnight (1927)
The Big City (1928)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
While the City Sleeps (1928)
West of Zanzibar (1928)
Where East is East (1929)
Thunder (1929)
The Unholy Three (1930)

References

1.^ "Lon Chaney Dies After Brave Fight. On Road to Recovery, Screen Actor Is Stricken by Hemorrhage of the Throat. Was a Master of Makeup. Son of Deaf and Dumb Parents, He Began Career as Property Boy. Excelled in Vivid Personations. Acted as Pike's Peak Guide. Made Stage Debut at 17. Appeared in Slap-Stick Comedy. Wore Straitjacket as "Hunchback." New Disguise for Each Film." New York Times. August 27, 1930. "Although he was believed to be on the road to recovery, Lon Chaney, screen actor, who had been making a valiant fight against anemia and bronchial congestion, died at 12:55."
2.^ Ancestry of Lon Chaney
3.^ "Mrs. Lon Chaney Dies. Before Her Husband Entered the Movies She Was Well Known In Vaudeville." New York Times. November 1, 1933, Wednesday.
4.^ Schickel, Richard (1962). The Stars. New York: Bonanza Books, a division of Crown Publishers, Inc.. p. 133.
5.^ RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: Anthony, Saunders and Associated Families at worldconnect.rootsweb.com

Further reading

Blake, Michael (1990). Lon Chaney: The Man Behind the Thousand Faces. New York: Vestal Press. ISBN 1-879511-09-6.
The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era by David W. Menefee. Albany: Bear Manor Media, 2007.

Lolita Published 1955

Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian and published in 1958 in New York. The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle-aged Humbert Humbert, who becomes obsessed and sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.

After its publication, Nabokov's Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl between the ages of nine and fourteen. The novel was adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne.

Lolita is included on TIME's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It is fourth on the Modern Library's 1998 list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th century.

Plot summary

Lolita is divided into two parts and 36 short chapters. It is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar born in 1910 to a Swiss father and an English mother in Paris, who is obsessed with what he refers to as "nymphets." Humbert suggests that this obsession results from the death of a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh. In 1947, Humbert moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. He rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a widow. While Charlotte tours him around the house, he meets her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (also known as Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, and L), with whom he falls in love at first sight. Humbert stays at the house only to remain with her. While he is infatuated with Lolita, a highly intelligent and articulate, albeit tempestuous teenage girl, he disdains of her preoccupation with contemporary American popular culture, such as teen movies and comic books.

While Lolita is away at summer camp, Charlotte, who has fallen in love with Humbert, tells him that he must either marry her or move out. Humbert reluctantly agrees in order to continue living near Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious of Humbert's distaste and pity for her, and his lust for Lolita, until she reads his diary. Upon learning of Humbert's true feelings and intentions, Charlotte is appalled. She makes plans to flee with Lolita, and threatens to expose Humbert's perversions. But as she runs across the street in a state of shock, she is struck and killed by a passing car.

Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, pretending that Charlotte is ill in a hospital. He does not return to Charlotte's home out of fear that the neighbors will be suspicious. Instead, he takes Lolita to a hotel, where he meets a strange man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert attempts to use sleeping pills on Lolita so that he may molest her without her knowledge, but they have little effect on her. Instead, she initiates sex. He discovers that he is not her first lover, as she had sex with a boy at summer camp. Humbert reveals to Lolita that Charlotte is actually dead; Lolita has no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms.

Lolita and Humbert drive around the country, moving from state to state and motel to motel. Humbert initially keeps the girl under control by threatening her with reform school; later he bribes her for sexual favors, though he knows that she does not reciprocate his love and shares none of his interests. The novel's first part ends after he rapes her. After a year touring North America, the two settle down in another New England town, where Lolita is enrolled in school. Humbert is very possessive and strict, forbidding Lolita to take part in after-school activities or to associate with boys; the townspeople, however, see this as the action of a loving and concerned, while old fashioned, parent.

Lolita begs to be allowed to take part in the school play; Humbert reluctantly grants his permission in exchange for more sexual favors. The play is written by Clare Quilty. He is said to have attended a rehearsal and been impressed by Lolita's acting. Just before opening night, Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument, which culminates in Lolita saying she wants to leave town and resume their travels.

As Lolita and Humbert drive westward again, Humbert gets the feeling that their car is being tailed and he becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting that Lolita is conspiring with others in order to escape. She falls ill and must convalesce in a hospital; Humbert stays in a nearby motel, without Lolita for the first time in years. One night, Lolita disappears from the hospital; the staff tell Humbert that Lolita's "uncle" checked her out. Humbert embarks upon a frantic search to find Lolita and her abductor, but eventually he gives up.

One day in 1952, Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert goes to see Lolita, giving her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals the truth: Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's and the writer of the school play, checked her out of the hospital and attempted to make her star in one of his pornographic films; when she refused, he threw her out. She worked odd jobs before meeting and marrying her husband, who knows nothing about her past.

Humbert asks Lolita to leave her husband and return to him, but she refuses, and he breaks down in tears. He leaves Lolita, and kills Quilty at his mansion, shooting him to death in an act of revenge. He then is arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well, and reveals the novel in its metafiction to be the memoirs of his life, only to be published after he and Lolita have both died.

According to the novel's fictional "Foreword," Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript. Lolita dies giving birth to a stillborn girl on Christmas Day, 1952.

Style and interpretation

The novel is a tragicomedy narrated by Humbert, who riddles the narrative with word play and his wry observations of American culture. His humor provides an effective counterpoint to the pathos of the tragic plot. The novel's flamboyant style is characterized by word play, double entendres, multilingual puns, anagrams, and coinages such as nymphet, a word that has since had a life of its own and can be found in most dictionaries, and the lesser used "faunlet." One of the novel's characters, "Vivian Darkbloom," is an anagram for author Vladimir Nabokov.

Several times, Humbert begs the reader to understand that he is not proud of his union with Lolita, but is filled with remorse. At one point, he is listening to the sounds of children playing outdoors, and is stricken with guilt at the realization that he robbed Lolita of her childhood.

Some critics have accepted Humbert's version of events at face value. In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies excused the narrator entirely, writing that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child. This is no pretty theme, but it is one with which social workers, magistrates and psychiatrists are familiar."[1]

Most writers, however, have given less credit to Humbert and more to Nabokov's powers as an ironist. For Richard Rorty, in his famous interpretation of Lolita in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Humbert is a "monster of incuriosity." Nabokov himself described Humbert as "a vain and cruel wretch" and "a hateful person" (quoted in Levine, 1967).

Martin Amis, in his essay on Stalinism, Koba the Dread, proposes that Lolita is an elaborate metaphor for the totalitarianism that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood (though Nabokov states in his Afterword that he "[detests] symbols and allegories"). Amis interprets it as a story of tyranny told from the point of view of the tyrant. "Nabokov, in all his fiction, writes with incomparable penetration about delusion and coercion, about cruelty and lies", he says. "Even Lolita, especially Lolita, is a study in tyranny."

In 2003, Iranian expatriate Azar Nafisi published the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran about a covert women's reading group. For Nafisi, the essence of the novel is Humbert's solipsism and his erasure of Lolita's independent identity. She writes: "Lolita was given to us as Humbert's creature [...] To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own [...] Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her history, that past is still given to us in glimpses."[2]

One of the novel's early champions, Lionel Trilling, warned in 1958 of the moral difficulty in interpreting a book with so eloquent and so self-deceived a narrator: "we find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents [...] we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting."

Publication and reception

Due to its subject matter, Nabokov was unable to find an American publisher for Lolita after finishing it in 1953. After four refusals, he finally resorted to Olympia Press in Paris, September 1955. Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no substantial reviews. Eventually, at the end of 1955, Graham Greene, in an interview with the (London) Times, called it one of the best novels of 1955. This statement provoked a response from the (London) Sunday Express, whose editor called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography." British Customs officers were then instructed by a panicked Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. In December 1956, the French followed suit and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita (the ban lasted for two years). Its eventual British publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson caused a scandal that contributed to the end of the political career of one of the publishers, Nigel Nicolson.[3]

By complete contrast, American officials were initially nervous, but the first American edition was issued without problems by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1958, and was a bestseller, the first book since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication. The first official translation of the book was the Danish edition, which was published in 1957.[4]

Today, it is considered by many to be one of the finest novels written in the 20th century. In 1998, it was named the fourth greatest English language novel of the 20th century by the Modern Library. Nabokov rated the book highly himself. In an interview for BBC Television in 1962 he said,

"Lolita is a special favourite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real."

Two years later, in 1964's interview for Playboy, he said,

"I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle—its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works—at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, my short stories, my book of recollections; but I cannot grudge her this. There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet."

At the same year, in the interview for Life, Nabokov was asked, "Which of your writings has pleased you most?" He answered,

"I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings."

Sources and links

Links in Nabokov's work

In 1939, Nabokov wrote a novella Volshebnik (Волшебник) that was published only posthumously in 1986 in English translation as The Enchanter. It can be seen as an early version of Lolita but with significant differences: it takes place in Central Europe, and the protagonist is unable to consummate his passion with his stepdaughter, leading to his suicide. The theme of ephebophilia was already touched on by Nabokov in his short story A Nursery Tale, written in 1926. Also, in the 1932 Laughter in the Dark, Margot Peters is sixteen and already had an affair when middle-aged Albinus is attracted to her.

In chapter three of the novel The Gift (written in Russian in 1935–1937) the similar gist of Lolita's first chapter is outlined to the protagonist Fyodor Cherdyntsev by his obnoxious landlord Shchyogolev as an idea of a novel he would write "if I only had the time": a man marries a widow only to gain access to her young daughter, who however resists all his passes. Shchyogolev says it happened "in reality" to a friend of his; it is made clear to the reader that it concerns himself and his stepdaughter Zina (fifteen at the time of marriage) who becomes the love of Fyodor's life and his child bride.

In April 1947 Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls–and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea...."[5] The work expanded into Lolita during the next eight years. Nabokov used the title A Kingdom by the Sea in his 1974 pseudo-autobiographic novel Look at the Harlequins! for a Lolita-like book written by the narrator who, in addition, travels with his teenage daughter Bel from motel to motel after the death of her mother; later, his fourth wife is Bel's look-alike and shares her birthday.

In the unfinished novel The Original of Laura, published posthumously, a character Hubert H. Hubert appears, an older man preying upon then-child protagonist, Flora. Unlike in Lolita, his advances are unsuccessful.

Allusions/references to other works

In the Foreword, there is a reference to "the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933 by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoken book"—that is, the decision in the case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, in which Woolsey ruled that James Joyce's novel was not obscene and could be sold in the United States.

Humbert Humbert's first love, Annabel Leigh, is named after the "maiden" in the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, and their young love is described in phrases borrowed from Poe's poem. Nabokov originally intended Lolita to be called The Kingdom by the Sea,[6] drawing on the rhyme with Annabel Lee that was used in the first verse of Poe's work. A passage at the end of Chapter 1 — "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns" — is also a reference to the poem. ("With a love that the winged seraphs in heaven / Coveted her and me.")

Humbert Humbert's double name recalls Poe's "William Wilson," a tale in which the main character is haunted by his doppelgänger, paralleling to the presence of Humbert's own doppelgänger, Clare Quilty. Humbert is not, however, his real name, but a chosen pseudonym.

Humbert Humbert's field of expertise is French literature (one of his jobs is writing a series of educational works that compare French writers to English writers), and as such there are several references to French literature, including the authors Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, François Rabelais, Charles Baudelaire, Prosper Mérimée, Remy Belleau, Honoré de Balzac, and Pierre de Ronsard.

In chapter 17 of Part I, Humbert quotes "to hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss" from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

In chapter 35 of Part II, Humbert's "death sentence" on Quilty parodies the rhythm and use of anaphora in T. S. Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday.

The line "I cannot get out, said the starling" from Humbert's poem is taken from a passage in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, "The Passport, the Hotel De Paris."

Possible real-life prototypes

According to Alexander Dolinin,[7] the prototype of Lolita was 11-year-old Florence Horner, kidnapped in 1948 by a 50-year-old mechanic Frank La Salle, who had caught her stealing a five-cent notebook. La Salle traveled with her over various states for 21 months and is believed to have raped her. He claimed that he was an FBI agent and threatened to “turn her in” for the theft and to send her to "a place for girls like you." The Horner case was not widely reported, but Dolinin adduces various similarities in events and descriptions.

The problem with this suggestion is that Nabokov had already used the same basic idea — that of a child molester and his victim booking into an hotel as man and daughter — in his then-unpublished 1939 work Volshebnik (Волшебник). This is not to say, however, that Nabokov could not have drawn on some details of the case in writing Lolita, and the La Salle case is mentioned explicitly in Chapter 33 of Part II:

"Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?"

Heinz von Lichberg's "Lolita"

German academic Michael Maar's book The Two Lolitas[8] describes his recent discovery of a 1916 German short story titled "Lolita" about a middle-aged man travelling abroad who takes a room as a lodger and instantly becomes obsessed with the preteen girl (also named Lolita) who lives in the same house. Maar has speculated that Nabokov may have had cryptomnesia (a "hidden memory" of the story that Nabokov was unaware of) while he was composing Lolita during the 1950s. Maar says that until 1937 Nabokov lived in the same section of Berlin as the author, Heinz von Eschwege (pen name: Heinz von Lichberg), and was most likely familiar with his work, which was widely available in Germany during Nabokov's time there.[9][10] The Philadelphia Inquirer, in the article "Lolita at 50: Did Nabokov take literary liberties?" says that, according to Maar, accusations of plagiarism should not apply and quotes him as saying: "Literature has always been a huge crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast... Nothing of what we admire in Lolita is already to be found in the tale; the former is in no way deducible from the latter." See also Jonathan Lethem in Harper's Magazine on this story.[11]

Nabokov's afterword

In 1956, Nabokov penned an afterword to Lolita ("On a Book Entitled Lolita") that was included in every subsequent edition of the book.

One of the first things Nabokov makes a point of saying is, despite John Ray Jr.'s claim in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story.

In the afterword, Nabokov wrote that "the initial shiver of inspiration" for Lolita "was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage". Neither the article nor the drawing has been recovered.

In response to an American critic who characterized Lolita as the record of Nabokov's "love affair with the romantic novel," Nabokov wrote that "the substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct."

Nabokov concluded the afterword with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English."

Russian translation

Nabokov translated Lolita into Russian; the translation was published by Phaedra in New York in 1967.

The translation includes a "Postscriptum"[12] in which Nabokov reconsiders his relationship with his native language. Referring to the afterword to the English edition, Nabokov states that only "the scientific scrupulousness led me to preserve the last paragraph of the American afterword in the Russian text..." He further explains that the "story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick."

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Lolita has been filmed twice: the first adaptation was made in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick, and starred James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and Sue Lyon as Lolita; and a second adaptation in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, and Melanie Griffith. Nabokov was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the earlier film's adapted screenplay, although little of this work reached the screen. The more recent version was given mixed reviews by critics. It was delayed for over a year because of its controversial subject matter, and was not released in Australia until 1999.

Nabokov's own version of the screenplay (dated Summer 1960 and revised December 1973) for Kubrick's film was published by McGraw-Hill in 1974.

The book was adapted into a musical in 1971 by librettist/lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer John Barry under the title Lolita, My Love. Critics were surprised at how sensitively the story was translated to the stage, but the show nonetheless closed on the road before it opened in New York.[13]

In 1982, Edward Albee adapted the book into a non-musical play. It was savaged by critics, Frank Rich notably attributing the temporary death of Albee's career to it.

In 2003, Russian director Victor Sobchak wrote a second non-musical stage adaptation, which played in England at the Lion and Unicorn Fringe Theater in London. It drops the character of Quilty and updates the story to modern England.[14]

Rodion Shchedrin adapted Lolita into a Russian language opera, which premiered in Moscow in 2006 and was published that same year. It had a much earlier performance in Sweden in 1992. It was nominated for Russia's Golden Mask award.[15]

The Boston-based composer John Harbison began an opera of Lolita, which he abandoned in the wake of the clergy child-abuse scandal that rocked Boston. Fragments of what he had done were woven into seven-minute piece "Darkbloom: Overture for an Imagined Opera". Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, is a character in Lolita.[16]

References in other media

The novel Lo's Diary by Pia Pera retells the story from Lolita's point of view, making major plot changes on the premise that Humbert's version is incorrect on many points. Lolita is characterized as being quite sadistic and manipulative.[17]

The collection Poems for Men who Dream of Lolita by Kim Morrissey takes the form of a series of poems written by Lolita herself reflecting on the events in the story, a sort of diary in poetry form. In strong contrast to Pera's novel, Morrissey portrays Lolita as an innocent, wounded soul. Morrissey had earlier done a stage adaptation of Sigmund Freud's famous Dora case.[18]

Steve Martin wrote the short story "Lolita at Fifty" (included in his collection Pure Drivel), which is a gently humorous look at how Dolores Haze's life might have turned out.

In The Police song "Don't Stand So Close to Me" about a schoolgirl's crush on her teacher, the teacher "starts to shake and cough just like the old man in that book by Nabokov."[19] The singer mispronounces Nabokov's name.

The lyrics of the song "Posters," a song by the rock band Dada about a girl who leads the (male) narrator to her room, includes the line "She asked me if I ever read Lolita."

In the 1999 film American Beauty, the lead character's name, Lester Burnham, is an anagram of "Humbert learns."

The 2001 Album Gourmandises by the French singer-songwriter Alizee featured her most successful single Moi... Lolita which reached number one in several countries in Europe and East Asia.

In Katy Perry's song 'One of the Boys', she mentions Lolita. "I studied Lolita religiously."

The 2010 song "Lolita" by Mexican singer Belinda was inspired by the story.

On their 2010 album, the band Glass Wave dedicates a song to Lolita. The lyrics are sung in her own voice.

In the Red Dwarf episode Marooned, David Lister is forced to burn books to keep warm after crashing on an Ice Planet. When asking if he can burn Lolita, Arnold Rimmer advises him to "save page sixty eight." Lister reads it, calls it "disgusting" then slips it into his jacket and burns the rest.

In the novel Pretty Little Liars, Hanna makes a silent reference when she catches a 40 year old man staring at her and Mona. She looks at him and thinks "A regular Humbert Humbert", but doesn't speak aloud because Mona wouldn't understand the literary reference and she had only read it in the first place because "Lolita looked deliciously dirty."

Further reading

Appel, Alfred Jr. (1991). The Annotated Lolita (revised ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9. One of the best guides to the complexities of Lolita. First published by McGraw-Hill in 1970. (Nabokov was able to comment on Appel's earliest annotations, creating a situation that Appel described as being like John Shade revising Charles Kinbote's comments on Shade's poem Pale Fire. Oddly enough, this is exactly the situation Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd proposed to resolve the literary complexities of Nabokov's Pale Fire.)

Levine, Peter (1967). "Lolita and Aristotle's Ethics" in Philosophy and Literature Volume 19, Number 1, April 1995, pp. 32–47.

Nabokov, Vladimir (1955). Lolita. New York: Vintage International. ISBN 0-679-72316-1. The original novel.

References

1.^ [1]Lolita's Crime: Sex Made Funny, Davies, Robertson
2.^ Nafisi, A. (2003). Reading Lolita in Tehran. Random House: New York.
3.^ Laurence W. Martin, "The Bournemouth Affair: Britain's First Primary Election", The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 4. (Nov. 1960), pp. 654–681.
4.^ List of Lolita Editions
5.^ Letter dated April 7, 1947; in Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov Wilson Letters, 1940–1971, ed. Simon Karlinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; ISBN 0-520-22080-3), p. 215
6.^ Brian Boyd on Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov Centennial, Random House, Inc.
7.^ Ben Dowell, "1940s sex kidnap inspired Lolita", The Sunday Times, September 11, 2005. Accessed on November 14, 2007.
8.^ ISBN 1-84467-038-4
9.^ On the Media, "My Sin, My Soul... Whose Lolita? ", September 16, 2005. Accessed on November 14, 2007.
10.^ Liane Hansen, "Possible Source for Nabokov's 'Lolita'", Weekend Edition Sunday, April 25, 2004. Accessed on November 14, 2007.
11.^ Jonathan Lethem, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism", Harper's Magazine, February 2007. Accessed on November 14, 2007.
12.^ "Postscript to the Russian edition of Lolita", translated by Earl D. Sampson
13.^ Broadwayworld.com Lolita, My Love
14.^ PSU.edu, Accessed March 13, 2008
15.^ Expat.ru, Accessed March 13, 2008
16.^ Daniel J. Wakin (March 24, 2005). "Wrestling With a 'Lolita' Opera and Losing". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/arts/music/24harb.html. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
17.^ Nerve.com, Accessed March 13, 2008
18.^ AOL.com, Accessed on March 13, 2008
19.^ [2]

Lizzie Borden Family Murders 1892

Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was a New England spinster who was the central figure in the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts in the United States. The murders, subsequent trial, and following trial by media became a cause célèbre. The fame of the incident has endured in American pop culture and criminology. Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted, no one else was ever arrested or tried, and she has remained notorious in American folklore. Dispute over the identity of the killer or killers continues to this day.

Over a period of years after the death of the first Mrs. Borden, life at 92 Second Street had grown unpleasant in many ways, and affection between the older and younger family members had waned considerably if any was present at all. The upstairs floor of the house was divided. The front was the territory of the Borden sisters, while the rear was for Mr. and Mrs. Borden. Meals were not always eaten together. Conflict had increased between the two daughters and their father about his decision to divide valuable property among relatives before his death. Relatives of their stepmother had been given a house, and John Morse, brother to the deceased Sarah Borden (the mother of the Borden daughters), had come to visit that week. His visit was to facilitate transfer of farm property, which included what had been a summer home for the Borden daughters. Shortly before the murders, a major argument had occurred which resulted in both sisters leaving home on extended "vacations." Lizzie Borden, however, decided to end her trip and returned early.

Lizzie was refused the purchase of prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) by local druggist Eli Bence, which she claimed was for cleaning a seal skin cloak.

Shortly before the murders, the entire household became violently ill. As Mr. Borden was not a popular man in town, Mrs. Borden feared they were being poisoned, but the family doctor diagnosed it as bad food.

During the morning of August 4, 1892, Borden's father, Andrew Jackson Borden, and her stepmother, Abby Durfee Borden, were murdered in the family home. The only other people present at the residence at the time were Lizzie and the family maid, Bridget Sullivan. Emma Borden, Lizzie's sister, was away from home. The Borden sisters' uncle, John Vinnicum Morse, brother of Andrew Borden's first wife, was visiting at the time, but was also away from the house during the time of the murders.

That day, Andrew Borden had gone into town to do his usual rounds at the bank and post office. He returned home at about 10:45 a.m. About a half-hour later, Lizzie Borden found his body (above). According to Sullivan's testimony, she was lying down in her room on the third floor of the house shortly after 11:00 a.m. when she heard Lizzie call to her, saying someone had killed her father; his body was found slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room. Andrew Borden's face was turned to the right hand side, apparently at ease as if he were asleep.

Shortly thereafter, while Lizzie Borden was being tended by neighbors and the family doctor, Sullivan discovered the body of Mrs. Borden (above) upstairs in the guest bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Borden had both been killed by blows from a hatchet, which in the case of Andrew Borden, not only crushed his skull but cleanly split his left eyeball.