Lolita
discussion
Humbert is a paedophile. He abuses Lolita.
Michael wrote: "But anyone familiar with Poe's poem, Annabel Lee, understands that Humbert fabricated this history, stealing it from the poem, which was the last one Poe ever wrote: (quoted above)"I'm curious, why do you think that his history with the little girl was fabricated?
I mean, I understand (and share) the misgivings about the tale of Lolita's summer camp experiences being true. For me, it's mostly about the amount of Humbertian detail that he inserts into the story that doesn't sound like the few times we hear Lolita speak.
Mickey wrote: "I'm curious, why do you think that his history with the little girl was fabricated?"
Mickey, he spells it out on the first page:
"Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."
The "princedom by the sea" and other details about the girl, whom he calls Annabel Leigh, all come from Poe's poem:
Annabel Lee
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Yes, you've explained that, but this doesn't tell me why you think his story was invented. The details of the poem and how he describes the history with the girl are quite different. I don't understand how you come to the conclusion that it didn't happen.
But why do you disbelieve the precursor, the "initial girl child"? HH draws the parallels with Poe and the poem, he's not hiding anything here, so why not believe he knew a girl who died young? There's no reason to disbelieve all those details in Chapter 3. They have the ring of "reality." I especially like the two bearded bathers who interrupt the young couple. And beyond the game HH plays with us (and even more so the game being played by Nabokov) regarding Poe and Poe's poem, HH doesn't claim the angels stole his Annabel. She died of typhus. And he doesn't sleep with her corpse...why should we disbelieve this story from his childhood? What is so far-fetched here?
Sorry, crappy connection...didn't see Mickey's post for some reason.
Michael wrote: "Mickey wrote: "I'm curious, why do you think that his history with the little girl was fabricated?"
Mickey, he spells it out on the first page:
"Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did..."
Michael, thanks so much for posting these words from the opening page: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." I didn't want to read this book, had no interest. But it caught my eye for some reason, so I pulled it off the bookshelf at the library and when I got to this one sentence, in grand! Bella/Edward! style! I swooned! toward the checkout lane! Then loved every word. So, I don't know, I don't care what was fiction or nonfiction within this fiction. This is words! language! like no one has ever done before or since. Like I've said, this book could have been about anything. Doesn't matter: Nabokov simply knocked one out of the ballpark.
Mickey wrote: "Greg wrote: "And, to whoever reminded us: the name Lolita is fictional, HH makes it up."Just for the record: Humbert didn't make up or create the name Lolita. Dolores's mother nicknamed her that."
Thanks Mickey. I had forgotten all about that.
Mickey: Can you please quote the passage indicating that Mrs. Haze calls Delores "Lolita"? I believe it is Humbert's nickname for her.Now, why would HH call his lost love Annabel Leigh and mention his "princedom by the sea" unless Nabokov was signalling the reader from the start that HH is an unreliable narrator and that the novel is about literature, not what we consider "real life"?
Peter writes: "There's no reason to disbelieve all those details in Chapter 3. They have the ring of "reality."
How can you possibly distinguish "reality" from fiction in Humbert's narrative? And if he meant this particular story to be "true," why would he appropriate the name from Poe's poem, and why would Nabokov consider titling the novel "The Kingdom by the Sea"?
As Daniel Thomieres puts it in his Journal of Modern Literature article, "Cherchez La Femme: Who Really Was Annabel Leigh?":
Annabel Leigh was Humbert Humbert's innocent childhood love which he tried to recapture with the help of Dolores Haze/Lolita. At least that is what the narrator of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel, seems to tell us.
On the other hand, if we read the novel critically, we might say that the narrator does not exactly want us to be interested in narrative (and moral) problems. He wants us to accept his interpretation of his own life. Or we might say that Nabokov, who most probably did not identify with his narrator, hopes that his readers will not take what H.H. says at face value. In fact, once we start giving the situation a modicum of thought, questions start pouring in: why should that first love bear virtually the same name as Poe's Annabel Lee? Remembering that the narrator admits that Humbert Humbert is not his real name, shouldn't we infer that Annabel Leigh is not that young woman's real name? We certainly know that "Lolita" does not exist; there is only a thirteen year-old called Dolores Haze ("Dolly at school"--p. 9), whom the narrator insists on calling Lolita (or even "Lo-lee-ta"--p. 9). We could easily imagine that there is something beyond these assumed names. The name Lolita hides a bruised body and a despised intellect who cries at night; Humbert Humbert projects his lust and his cruelty into his narcissistic, mirror-like name. And so we may wonder if there is anything beyond the four syllables "Annabel Leigh."
So, should we also infer that HH is not from Europe, not born in 1910, not surrounded by illustrated books, orange trees and friendly dogs, as a child?Perhaps he isn't hairy...or he did not kill Clare Quilty? Maybe he didn't even know a girl named Dolores Haze?
Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't think it makes much sense to approach the novel that way.
Fine, call it madness. I believe a major theme of the novel is ambiguity, and the story tests the reader's tolerance for uncertainty. We are left questioning what we really know for sure, about the story and about "real life."
Michael wrote: "Mickey: Can you please quote the passage indicating that Mrs. Haze calls Delores "Lolita"? I believe it is Humbert's nickname for her."I just re-read the book this last month, and didn't see that either. I'd be curious to see a quote as well as it would put the kibosh on a theory I have regarding the use of various names by Humbert and the truth value of that section of the narrative.
She calls her daughter "Lo," I believe, but I don't think she called her "Lolita." It's been a year since I read the book...
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't think it makes much sense to approach the novel that way."There are any number of standard techniques that indicate when an unreliable narrator is being unreliable. It is, in fact, a standard literary technique of the type Nabokov was very familiar. Further, the unreliability of his narrators in a mainstay of Nabokov's work, not just Humbert. He's the master of the technique.
So, ultimately, no you cannot believe ANYTHING that Humbert says. He may not, in fact, be European. He may not be hairy. He may never have met a woman or her daughter named Haze.
I would, however, suggest that the "Foreward" functions as a guideline for what core facts of the novel are meant to be accurate and which are not. Further, I'd suggest that the first two paragraphs of Chapter 1 provide an outline for the reliability of Humbert's narrative. The second paragraph of that chapter lays it out for the reader. The range of names given to Delores Haze (Lo in the morning, Lola in slacks, Dolly at school, Delores on the dotted line and Lolita in Humbert's arms) are a scale of Humbert's madness, rationalization and lies. With "Delores" on the truthful side of the scale and "Lolita" signalling text that is derived from Humbert's insanity. Nabokov has Humbert use those names to signal the truth value of the comments that he is making.
I for one have got to believe that HH was a hairy tormented twisted man on trial for murdering Quilty. And he was good looking too, as he constantly reminded us.
Michael wrote: "Fine, call it madness. I believe a major theme of the novel is ambiguity, and the story tests the reader's tolerance for uncertainty. We are left questioning what we really know for sure, about the..."I have to agree with you Michael.
Gary wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't think it makes much sense to approach the novel that way."..."
Gary, speaking of multiple names, have you read "War and Peace"? Anyway, back to Lolita, what about a simple conclusion as such: I wouldn't believe, in the real world, anything that someone named "Humbert" would say. And someone who would admit to "Humbert Humbert"? I'd walk the other way. Fast.
Greg wrote: "Gary wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't think it makes much sense to approach the nove..."Is that a strange response? I would think and hope that I would respond to the person not the name or the status or culture. I realize you were probably being flighty with the language but a serious topic should be respected.
Greg wrote: "Gary, speaking of multiple names, have you read "War and Peace"?Many more years ago than I care to remember, and I never really got the urge to pick it up a second time.... In fact, so many that I'm not remembering which character you're referencing. Refresh my failing memory?
Greg wrote: "Anyway, back to Lolita, what about a simple conclusion as such: I wouldn't believe, in the real world, anything that someone named "Humbert" would say. And someone who would admit to "Humbert Humbert"? I'd walk the other way. Fast. "
I do think there's a code/symbolic meaning to that name, and Nabokov plays around with the double effect on a couple of occasions in the book. For instance, Humbert means "bright warrior" in German, but I suspect Nabokov was joking around with the French pronunciation a bit, which would be more like Umbair or Umber (a sickly sort of burnt brown.) So, Humbert Humbert is both bright and dark.
Plus, the name if spelled out from end to end is HUMBERTHUMBERT which all connected up could read as THUMBERTHUMBER -- a phallic reference, and directly related to at least one scene in which Humbert gropes Delores. So, in addition to all the joking around with the name that Nabokov has the character do himself ("Humburger" etc.) the name has shades that the author was playing with.
Delores' various names are also telling. Delores means "sorrows", derived from the Virgin Mary María de los Dolores, meaning "Mary of Sorrows." I have no doubt Nabokov was well aware of that, and the choice has to do with both the sorrow aspect of the character and her virginity.
To me, the most depraved chapter of Lolita isn't the murder, it's not Humbert's first sexual encounter with Delores, and it's not Charlotte's death (murder?) It's the scene after Humbert has sex with Delores in which he claims she was not a virgin at the time, having had sex with Charlie at Camp Q. I don't believe a word of that section as being "truthful" from the narrator. Rather, it's the character slandering his victim. There's a range of evidence for this reading that has to do with the prose itself, but I'd suggest the origin of Delores' name also has a symbolic relationship to the truth value of that section.
Laureen wrote;"Is that a strange response? I would think and hope that I would respond to the person not the name or the status or culture. I realize you were probably being flighty with the language but a serious topic should be respected."
We are respecting it, and discussing it -everyone is free to respond.
Laureen wrote: "Is that a strange response? I would think and hope that I would respond to the person not the name or the status or culture. I realize you were probably being flighty with the language but a serious topic should be respected. "Uh, I was being serious. Scroll back and see...I'm quite serious about this book. It's madness to decide that we can't trust anything a first-person narrator tells us. On page 1 when HH tells us to look at his tangle of thorns, we probably shouldn't believe he literally is wearing thorns. When he tells us he was born in a certain year, we should believe that...unless there is some question later in the book about him dissembling about his age. His relationship with Annabel Leigh falls somewhere in between those two extremes. The name is obviously a tip of the hat to Poe. The story? What later in the text would tip us off to this being a fabrication? Why isn't this story as capable of being true as the other stories we hear of his past? (And the entire book is a story of his past...) This anecdote about Annabel Leigh is not changing the way we perceive him; it's not an attempt to manipulate the reader (beyond the way all language manipulates). It's not (tongue-in-cheek) suggesting he's Christlike, like the thorns. It's not attempting to justify anything on his part. He loved a girl and she died. This happens...I don't have a problem buying into it. If later in the book, we discovered something to contradict or change the way we process that story, then maybe. But what would that be?
And if you don't believe anything HH says, then why do you buy into the narrative plot line regarding his treatment of Dolores Haze? This isn't Inception...and it's not Poe either: "all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream"? Naw...At some level, to be able to engage the world and characters Nabokov has created for us, we have to accept the basic narrative that HH provides us. We can question the way he presents it to us, of course. He's a liar and a manipulator. But there needs to be some reason or agenda for his lies and fabrications. We can pull apart all the rich allusions that Nabokov draws from. We can spend years on the language. But I think we have to accept the basic framework. Why shouldn't we believe he knew a young girl who died of typhoid in Corfu?
Gary wrote: "the French pronunciation a bit, which would be more like Umbair or Umber (a sickly sort of burnt brown.) So, Humbert Humbert is both bright and dark.... the name has shades that the author was playing with."Yes, and I think if you consider the French pronunciation even further, you'll hear "ombre," French for shadow, Spanish for man...Humbert Humbert is the shadow man, especially in a novel that is replete with shadows, doubles and dopplegangers.
Nabokov knows all this...French is his second language I think, and he was well versed in just about everything...including chess and butterflies. Maybe one day I'll know and understand Nabokov better, but it would take a really good professor and sadly I'm past all that in my life. Reading Nabokov is a lot like reading Joyce, when it comes to words and their associations. But for me, Nabokov is a lot more enjoyable.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "It's madness to decide that we can't trust anything a first-person narrator tells us. On page 1 when HH tells us to look at his tangle of thorns, we probably shouldn't believe he literally is wearing thorns. When he tells us he was born in a certain year, we should believe that...unless there is some question later in the book about him dissembling about his age."It's not madness. It's literature. Any first person narrative to one extent or the other is unreliable. An author worth the dots over his i's is going to know that putting a narrative into the first person perspective of the protagonist is to put that narrative voice in doubt. Authors after all, simply choose a narrative voice. Had Nabokov wanted us to take the narrative at face value, he'd have put it in the third person and made the narrative an objective, omniscient observer. Lolita is Nabokov giving us his sometimes fanciful ideas on what that insanity would be like from the POV of the narrator.
The choice is not between reading the book as some sort of exercise in literal definitions of terms. An unreliable narrator still can employ metaphors, similes and symbols. In fact, many of those things will provide the source of the unreliability. Perspective is often in the adjectives.
Humbert is a character who starts out insane and becomes progressively more insane throughout the story until he finally pens the narrative AFTER his ultimate act of insanity, gets caught and is thrown into a mental institution. The reader can't take his prose at face value from sentence 1 of chapter 1. The Foreward already tells us the circumstances under which the narrative is taking place. You should no more take Humbert's statements as truthful than one should believe the self-serving confessions of the Menendez brothers, Charles Manson or any other raving loon. The book is an exploration of Humbert's madness and the progression that takes place into paranoia, delusion through ultimately homicidal rage.
That's pretty definitively unreliable.
As I wrote above, like Cervantes' Don Quixote, I think Lolita is about literature and the ambiguity of the real and the imaginary. The entire story is fiction, is total fabrication, so does it make sense to attempt to parse the made-up sections from those that seem to have the "ring of truth"?Here is an interesting passage from Wendy Steiner's "The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art":
"The real Annabel was lost to him, and all he can do is seek out versions of her: she is the model of all subsequent objects of desire. At the same time, her prototype was Edgar Allen Poe's character (and poem) Annabel Lee, who was also lost to her beloved. Humbert Humbert's Leigh is thus not an original, and neither was Lee, who was modeled on Poe's wife, who had died young. In Lolita, these Leighs and Lees and Lo-li-tas lead us back through a vista of lost love--Beatrice, Laura, Eurydice--as Humbert's yearning pushes him forward to ever-new nymphets. Like Milton's Adam, Humbert's incompleteness drives him to replicate. But the original model is utterly elusive and its copies ephemeral: an endless egress of lost love, fleeting dreams of (female) perfection. Likewise, the artists who dream such dreams are, like Humbert Humbert, reiterations of the act of reiterating--and insincere reiterators at that, humbugs."
Petergiaquinta wrote: "I think if you consider the French pronunciation even further, you'll hear "ombre," French for shadow, Spanish for man...Humbert Humbert is the shadow man, especially in a novel that is replete with shadows, doubles and dopplegangers."Interesting. I have little doubt Nabokov did that consciously.
Karen wrote: "Maybe, but I have not been interested in reading the novel this way, I have no interest in getting a phalic reference from spelling out the name that way."
I don't think you necessarily need to read it that way, though I'm confident Nabokov wrote it that way intentionally. He was, after all, a guy who loved things like chess puzzles and word games. So, where it might be over-stating things to see an elaborate, Elizabethan code in someone like Hemingway, I don't think Nabokov was above or beyond such things. Plus, his synesthesia would have (literally) given him an eye for the words that the rest of us don't have. Where we see "Humbert Humbert" as black characters on a white background, he'd have seen it as a range of colors leaping out at him. So the "thumber" in the middle of the paired up name would have been more obvious.
When it comes to authors choosing names for their (often forgotten) meanings, I think that's something of a lost art these days. It's like choosing flowers for their symbolic meanings or the symbolism of content that appeared in <20th century painting. Where many folks would have automatically understood that naming a character Matilda (which means "woman warrior") means she's going to kick some ass in some way or another, most folks only see a name these days.
Karen probably comes from Katherine, which has a range of meanings. So, most authors would probably have used that name more as a reference to a particular historical figure rather than it's specific definitions.
But Nabokov was an aficionado of vocabulary, etymology, literature and literary history. He was well aware of what he was doing. Plus, he physically saw the world differently from the rest of us. That's got to have an effect.
I think it's easy to forget that we're discussing literary characters--fictional beings--and not actual people. And, yes, I agree with Gary that character names can carry all sorts of meanings. And I've no doubt that Nabokov put plenty of thought into naming his protagonist Humpty Dumpty. Oops, I mean Humbert Humbert.
Michael wrote: "Here is an interesting passage from Wendy Steiner's "The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art."I like that passage by Steiner: Lolita, Annabel Leigh, Annabel Lee, Beatrice, Laura, Eurydice...look at that final page of the novel and our creepy friend HH traces his impulse to immortalize himself and Lolita through art to the Renaissance and then all the way back to the cave paintings of Lascaux, the "angels and aurochs" of that final page.
Wendy Steiner says some interesting things in Venus in Furs, too: "Lolita presents itself as both a paradigmatic love story and the story of art, and it takes off specifically from Edgar Allan Poe's claim that the most poetic of subjects is the death of a beautiful woman."
Poe says that in the "Philosophy of Composition," an essay that's worthwhile reading if you want to see some of Poe's ideas that may relate to what we've been discussing about the language in Lolita. Nabokov has been influenced by Poe, especially in the way Poe purposefully selects language for "effect." Nabokov does something similar. His language, through his hairy, nasty mouthpiece HH, is absolutely beautiful. HH isn't just vainly wishing for immortality on that final page there...like the speakers of Spenser's and Shakespeare's sonnets, he's achieved it for himself and his beloved. And that's a beautiful thing, as well as funny and unsettling at the same time.
And I like how we're talking about the craft and the beauty of this book's art without getting bogged down in the typical screeching too often connected to this thread's title.
Reappropriation can also be a beautiful thing, lololo...
Laureen wrote: "Greg wrote: "Gary wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't think it makes much sense to appr..."Laureen, my apologies. This is a tough and challenging discussion to follow for me, but what a great intellectual exercise! I absolutely admit my comments might sound "flightly" but I'm just doing my best to keep up! I meant no disrespect to anyone.
Gary wrote: "Greg wrote: "Gary, speaking of multiple names, have you read "War and Peace"?Many more years ago than I care to remember, and I never really got the urge to pick it up a second time.... In fact,..."
"ThumberThumber". Interesting! I'm reading Joyce's "Ulysses" (all the time, I keep it in the car or in my luggage) and both Joyce and Nabokov play with words and names. And surely Nabokov had read Joyce's work. As a side note, I just noticed yesterday that Proust's remembrance of his childhood bedroom reflects, on at least two levels, Joyce's recollection of a bedroom in "A Portrait..."
Or, the other way around, since Proust published "Swann" in 1913, Joyce completed "Portrait" in 1914. Whose to say? We are discussing it, that's the thing.
Greg wrote: "Laureen wrote: "Greg wrote: "Gary wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't think it makes mu..."Oh Greg, I am with you. I was merely trying to understand your comments. I have been reading, with interest, this thread for a long time. Either
Nabokov is too clever by half or he wrote a simple story for the reader to ponder over, enjoy, and take from it what they will. I'm inclined to think we are all over-thinking this great writer. Genius can be found in simplicity I think.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "And I like how we're talking about the craft and the beauty of this book's art without getting bogged down in the typical screeching too often connected to this thread's title."
Yes, because the content of Lolita is so controversial, it's easy to lose sight of the exquisite art and craft of the novel, possibly unsurpassed in the 20th century.
It's fascinating how deliberate Poe was in his approach to composition. Many authors first outline, but Poe does far more than that.
I'm much more of an adherent to the late E.L. Doctorow, who once said that, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
I found these passages from Poe to be especially interesting:
"Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation — and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones."
"Now, never losing sight of the object supremeness, or perfection, at all points, I asked myself — “Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death — was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious — “When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”
The essay was published in 1846, when Poe's wife, Virginia, was quite ill with tuberculosis. She died the following year, a loss from which Poe is said to have never recovered.
I'm not sure what to make of it, but I find it intriguing that Nabokov was obsessed with two writers--Poe and Lewis Carroll--who, as adults, fell in love with children.
This quote from Shmoop.com reinforces my belief that HH fabricates his story about Annabel Leigh:"What makes him the pervert that he is? That's a tough one because Humbert denies us any clear response to that burning question and instead makes a mockery out of the assumption that a neat explanation is even possible. One of his biggest targets of derision is psychology and especially Freudian psychoanalysis, which assumes that one's problems as an adult could be explained by analyzing one's childhood – particularly one's childhood sexuality. Humbert both embraces and ridicules the notion that his pedophilia can be explained by the loss of his childhood love, Annabel Leigh. On the brink of making love, the two thirteen-year-olds are interrupted. Thus, according to psychoanalysis, he is always trying to relive that moment, always trying to follow through on the incomplete sexual act. (Nabokov himself professed a hatred of Freudianism)."
I think that Nabokov was ridiculing psychoanalytic theory by having HH present this neat little back story to explain away his sexual proclivities, and Nabokov signals the reader that it's a ploy by referring so heavily to Poe's Annabel Lee.
"Word fun in Nabokov's Lolita" by David K. Israel:"If you're a fan of word play, you probably already know how much fun Nabokov had penning Lolita. There's hardly a page in the novel that doesn't make good use of a pun, play on words, or other cool lit-device. There are also dozens upon dozens of allusions to Poe, Joyce, Flaubert, Shakespeare, Keats, Melville, and on and on. It is, by this writer's way of thinking, one of the busiest novels written in recent history, if you're into reading between the lines. Here are some of my favorite examples.
1. VIVIAN DARKBLOOM
Let's start with perhaps the most famous, Vivian Darkbloom, the mistress of antagonist Clare Quilty. Ms. Darkbloom's name is a simple anagram of Vladimir Nabokov.
2. EDGAR
There are a lot of references to Edgar Allan Poe throughout the novel. This is partly due to the fact that Poe was the master of word play, and partly to the fact that Poe married his 13-year-old cousin. One of the more obvious references is when H.H. checks into his first motel with Lolita (who, don't forget, is only 12 in the novel), and signs in as Dr. Edgar H. Humbert.
3. BLANCHE SCHWARZMANN
In the novel's foreword, penned by the fictitious John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., (to give "˜authenticity' to the confessional style of the novel), a certain psychologist named Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann is quoted (to give even more "˜validity' to that which is already clearly fake). Blanche is, of course, white in French. And schwarz is black in German, so her name is actually Dr. White Blackman. Nabokov believed that Freudian psychologists, like Dr. Schwarzmann, see everything in black and white.
4. DOUBLE DS
Nabokov loves to have fun with phonetics and double consonants throughout the novel. Humbert Humbert is just one in a long succession, including Gaston Godin, Mesmer Mesmer and Harold D. Doublename. This word play applies to the names of the places and towns Lolita and H.H. visit along the road, too. Places like Hazy Hills, Kumfy Kabins, Hobby House, Raspberry Room, Pierre Point, and many more.
5. PARDON MY FRENCH
Nabokov's mother tongue was Russian, of course, as he was born in Saint Petersburg in 1899. His first books were written in Russian, and, later, French (he eventually wound up in Paris in the late 1930s before moving to the US). These facts make Lolita, and all the word play, all the more amazing, because it was written not in Russian or French, but English. Still, his fluency in Russian and French play a small part in the novel. For instance, there is a man in the novel referred to as the "˜White Russian ex-colonel' who lives and works in Paris. When he speaks, he speaks in French, and says, "J'ai demannde pardonne" If you know your French, you know that the White Russian's grammar is wrong. It should, of course, be Je, not J'ai. And demannde and pardonne both have extra N's. Why? Because this is how a Russian would pronounce French, emphasizing that consonant.
6. PO BOX
When Nabokov creates a name or even a thing in Lolita, he always makes sure to have fun with the words. For instance, H.H. has his mail forwarded to a couple different post boxes. The first is called P.O. Wace (that would be POW, of course, or the prison H.H. has created for himself); the second is called P.O. Elphinstone, another reference to old Edgar Allan."
Laureen wrote: "Greg wrote: "Laureen wrote: "Greg wrote: "Gary wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Your way is madness...it calls into question anything in the text of a novel with a first-person narrator. I don't thin..."Lauren, agreed, genius can be found in simplicity. It's been said that what's left out is more important than what's left in. Nabokov feels like a far more accessible writer than Joyce, they both played with language, so one could argue that Nabokov is "simpler" than Joyce, Hemingway even "simpler" than Nabokov, etc. I do not have a literary education or background, so these are thoughts of a person who just reads a lot for love of reading.
Michael wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "And I like how we're talking about the craft and the beauty of this book's art without getting bogged down in the typical screeching too often connected to this thread's titl..."Micheal, have you read Nabokov's "Laughter in the Dark"? It's 'Lolita-light' similar in story but originally written in Russian. Very little word play. One must wonder, though, if "Lolita" hadn't been about this particular subject, would it have stayed in the spotlight this long? Sex sells. I'm thinking "Valley of the Dolls" to "Grey," neither had to have been written very well.
No, Greg, I'm not familiar with that novel and will certainly look it up. I agree with you that the novel became notorious due to the lurid nature of its subject matter, but I think Lolita's continued popularity has more to do with its artistic merits.
To all, about word play in "Lolita." In "Ulysses" Joyce gives us 'Dolores shedolores'. Then, discussing a death, we read : 'Dolor, O he doloroes! The voice... called to dolorous prayer.' Then shortly thereafter: 'pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard.' Then 'Ben Dollard' and 'Big Beneben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben. Rrr," Joyce finally irritated at his own ongoing wordplay? And about character's lies: Richie is "Coming out with a whopper now...Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory." It's so easy to read that last line as "But what a good memory" but that doesn't get Joyce's point across. Joyce continues with speculations on who is lying, and it seems it's pretty much everyone. My point is that Nabokov does the same thing, word play with names, and tells us, imo, Humbert may believe his own lies. All this, again, from someone who just loves to read.
Michael wrote: ""Word fun in Nabokov's Lolita" by David K. Israel:"If you're a fan of word play, you probably already know how much fun Nabokov had penning Lolita. There's hardly a page in the novel that doesn't..."
Micheal, have you read "Clockwork Orange"? Lots of the slang is based on Russian language. "Horrorshow" is actually a pronunciation of a Russian word, but I forget it's meaning.
Michael wrote;"4. DOUBLE DS
Nabokov loves to have fun with phonetics and double consonants throughout the novel. Humbert Humbert is just one in a long succession, including Gaston Godin, Mesmer Mesmer and Harold D. Doublename. This word play applies to the names of the places and towns Lolita and H.H. visit along the road, too. Places like Hazy Hills, Kumfy Kabins, Hobby House, Raspberry Room, Pierre Point, and many more"
I liked these the best- just because they so funny to read in this book. I have trouble with some of the allusions you mention, just because of my lack of Shakespeare and Melville familiarity. A good and thorough listing Michael!
Does anyone who is lurking on this thread love John Steinbeck? He was my first love, discounting Dr. Seuss, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, and Madeleine L'Engle. East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men are masterful, but the one I keep coming back to? The sequel to Cannery Roy, Sweet Thursday. Perhaps leaving aside Dostoevsky, Nabokov, and Carroll, I can't say I've come across a better story.
Michael wrote: "Does anyone who is lurking on this thread love John Steinbeck? He was my first love, discounting Dr. Seuss, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, and Madeleine L'Engle. East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and Of..."
I like Steinbeck very much, and I started reading him about age 12. I have never heard of Sweet Thursday. I read Grapes of Wrath a few years ago, so powerful.
Michael wrote: "Does anyone who is lurking on this thread love John Steinbeck?"I can't say I love Steinbeck. I don't dislike him in any way, and I have appreciated his prose, but with a couple of exceptions (Cannery Row stands out) I'm content with a single reading of his work, and I think I've pretty well exhausted his oeuvre.
Curious: Why do you ask in particular in this thread?
Sorry. Posted by evil twin brother.
Michael wrote: "Sorry. Posted by evil twin brother."Lol. A Steinbeck comparison to Nabokov. Is there one?
From an essay by James Parker in the NY Times Book Review, titled: Why read books considered obscene?"So then — finding myself, as it were, on one of its imaginative nodes — I had to reread “Lolita.” Wow. Is it appropriate to say that I was ravished by it? Probably not. But I was. Hilarity, complicity, enchantment, guilt, bafflement, horror; the terrible suspicion that Humbert’s observational power, the fabulous delicacy of his perceptual equipment, is demonically linked to his sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl; that there is a corruption in the act of writing itself. . . . In Humbert (and from the first word to the last we are in Humbert, inside his mind) we come close to real obscenity — cruelly playful, unmercifully dedicated to its own gratification."
That's a particularly elegant way of summing up the theme. Thanks for the citation/quote, Michael.
You're most welcome, Gary.And hooray for Banned Books Week (Sept. 27- Oct. 3) which is sponsored by the American Library Association.
Famous novels that were banned include: Candide (1759), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), The Metamorphosis (1915), Ulysses (1922), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), Brave New World (1932), Tropic of Cancer (1934), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Animal Farm (1945), The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Lolita (1955), Things Fall Apart (1958), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), The Satanic Verses (1988), American Psycho (1991), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), The Kite Runner (2004), and many others up through the present.
Karen wrote: "Lol. A Steinbeck comparison to Nabokov. Is there one?"I can only dig up one connection, Karen.
Nabokov had a great deal of difficulty publishing Lolita, which he completed in 1953. It was rejected by several of the large American publishers and finally published by a small French press known mainly for pornography. The novel was soon banned both in France and the UK.
From Wikipedia:"Despite initial trepidation, there was no official response in the U.S., and the first American edition was issued by G. P. Putnam's Sons in August 1958. The book was into a third printing within days and became the first since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks."
Lolita went on to become one of two bestselling novels of 1959, outsold only by Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. Nabokov was critical of that novel, finding it filled with nostalgia for stereotypes of the Revolution. "Compared to Pasternak," he told a reporter, "Mr. Steinbeck is a genius." A backhanded compliment, I'm afraid, but he was known for liking very few authors.
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Just for the record: Humbert didn't make up or create the name Lolita. Dolores's mother nicknamed her that.