Lolita in Nabokov in Three Years

Feb 12, 2008 Inderjit Sanghera rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Lolita has slowly seeped into the public subconscious, it is a dirty word, with sexual and paedophilic connotations; few remember that the term comes from a book from a Russian émigré with an unpronounceable name, even those who know tendentiously associate it with imaginary sexual proclivities (and perversities) of its author, after all what kind of man writers not only one, but several stories, about an adult man’s sexual desire for a teenage girl? Not only that, but Lolita seems to sympathise Lolita has slowly seeped into the public subconscious, it is a dirty word, with sexual and paedophilic connotations; few remember that the term comes from a book from a Russian émigré with an unpronounceable name, even those who know tendentiously associate it with imaginary sexual proclivities (and perversities) of its author, after all what kind of man writers not only one, but several stories, about an adult man’s sexual desire for a teenage girl? Not only that, but Lolita seems to sympathise with the man who kidnaps and rapes a teenage girl, it imbues him with everything we associate with “goodness”: handsomeness, erudition, charm and wealth. Yet, as any good Nabokovian would know, not everything is as it seems with Lolita. Any reader who believes that Lolita is, as Nabokov himself states, an aesthetic work with no moral message, or that it is an extension of Nabokov’s sexual desires or even that it portrays the narrators actions in a positive light obviously hasn’t been paying attention. Lolita, like most of Nabokov’s other novels, is not only a beautiful work of art but it is also a novel with a strong moral and philosophical core, that many readers fail to notice this or attribute to Lolita the exact opposite message which Nabokov intended is a testament to his ability as a writer, to trick, fool and captivate us with his inexhaustible imagination and to test our abilities as readers.

The novel begins with one of the most famous opening lines in literary history; “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta. The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate, to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” The narration then takes a different turn, as the narrator begins to describe his childhood in a manner which pastiches the matter-of-fact narrative style of epistolary novels, his childhood a series of easy cliché’s and commonplace characters. Immediately we begin to see that the narrator is playing a game-he has already told us than he is a murderer and sinner, yet he lowers our guard by creating an idyllic picture of his childhood and evoking our sympathy for him by telling us about how his sexual urges are a product of a failed attempt at copulation with his young love, Annabel, their coitus interrupted by the appearance of a pair of garrulous men, “two bearded bathers, 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.” This somewhat jarring description of the ribaldorous old men introduces an element of farce to the narrator’s description and explanations for his sexual urges, not only is it Nabokov’s poking fun at what he considered ridiculous Freudian psychoanalysis it also makes us question the reliability of the narrator, which is a key theme of the book.
Yet, despite the unreliability of the narrator, how his pen swoops and soars, as Humbert himself states “you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style”, “A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own”, “She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled on in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola, the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa” And yet, these passages are descriptions of a young girl who has been kidnapped and raped by her step-father and is being surreptitiously masturbated over in the latter passage-Nabokov’s poetic prose is able to mask the horrifying nature of Humbert’s thoughts and actions and once we see pas the dazzling prose we recognise the cruelty and brutality of Humbert’s mind. Humbert may claim to see the world with psychological acuity, may be a poet, an intellectual, a genius even, yet his outlook is hopelessly myopic. Humbert, and by extension the readers, may go into ecstasy over Lolita’s unwashed hair or honey-dewed skin, he may even superficially empathise with her over mistreatment by her mother, yet he fails to care about her sobs in the night, about her feelings, dreams and desires, in ‘safely solipsizing’ Lolita he doesn’t see how he has destroyed her will, destroyed her life and spirit. Maybe that point is something of a mistake-I think Humbert is fully aware of how his actions affect Lolita (and others) he is just playing a game with the readers to make it seem like he is unaware of his brutishness and brutality thus increasing our complicity in ignoring Lolita’s pain as we are blinded by the charm, wit and artistry of the handsome narrator. Consider, for example the following passage, one of the novels most poignant, when Humbert is watching Lolita play tennis; “She preferred acting to swimming, and swimming to tennis; yet I insist that had not something within her been broken by me-not that I realized it then! she would have had on the top of her perfect form the will to win, and would have become a real girl champion…the initial tennis coaching I had inflicted on Lolita remained in my mine as oppressive and distressful memories-not only because she had been so hopelessly and irritatingly irritated by my every suggestion of mine-but because the precious symmetry of the court instead of reflecting the harmonies latent in her were was utterly jumbled by the clumsiness and lassitude of the resentful child I mistaught.” And here lies the crux of the matter-for all his solipsizing of Lolita, Humbert isn’t ever able to truly understand her emotions and feel her pain, there is a part of Lolita which will forever be beyond his reach and imagination, there is part of Lolita, mysterious, beautiful and wilful which he can never destroy, it is not for nothing that the initial inspiration for Lolita came when Nabokov read a story about a caged ape who was coaxed into drawing the bars which imprisoned him, Humbert, who simian features are constantly referenced throughout the novel, whose grandiose ‘revenge’ on Quilty descends into farce, is unable to empathise with the pain of others and so is unable to recognise the darkness of his own soul and his myopia or that he is a mere pawn in the game of another person-not Quilty as he so incredulously believes, but of Nabokov, who is using him to demonstrate that whilst we can never truly feel the pain of another person, we can imagine it and reflect on how our actions affect other people. After all, John Shade does tell Kinbote in ‘Pale Fire’ that “Pity is the password.”

I will finish by quoting what was, for Nabokov, the most important part of the novel and the one which most clearly points out Humbert’s inhumanity and his insensitivity:

"In Kasbeam a very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce faded newspaper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easelled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the moustached young ball player had been dead for the last thirty years."
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Oct 16, 2010 George rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Impossible to overstate the influence this book has had on me as a writer. One of the greatest novels in the English language.

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May 08, 2014 Publius rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nabokov, five-star-books, novels, american, re-read

Nabokov writes with the most beautiful prose style of the English language. Exceedingly impressive considering he claimed that English was only his third-best language and that he did not reside in an English-speaking country (with the exception of an undergraduate degree at Cambridge in his youth) until his early 40s. I have nothing more to say, so I will end this review with the greatest opening lines of literature:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." ...more

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Jun 23, 2014 Publius rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nabokov, five-star-books, novels, american, re-read

Alfred Appel's notes are an absolutely enchanting addition to the already great Nabokovian masterpiece that is Lolita . I found it particularly interesting that Nabokov used to deliberately sit behind little girls on buses to hear the types of words they would use like, "Wow! Looks swank." ...more

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Jun 27, 2014 Samantha Boarer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, classics

By my favourite novel in the entire world so I'm a biased reviewer. Nabokov's writing is everything. Humbert Humbert is everything even though you don't want to admit it. I will continue to re-read this throughout my life and everyone should read it at least once. ...more

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