Lolita
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Humbert Humbert - a metaphor or just really annoying
Jelanie
Dec 09, 2016 10:51AM
How do you think the name Humbert Humbert contributed or took away from the story? Does the name of a character change how you view a book?
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I have a theory that Humbert Humbert is a kind of looping puzzle. The character is "Humbert Humbert" rather than "Bert Humbert" or "Bart Hummer" or something because it turns his name into a endless, symbolic presentation of his character. That is, if you picture the name on a kind of möbius strip repeating itself over and over then you might start to be able to pick out what Nabokov (a synesthete) himself saw in the name.
HumbertHumberTHUMBerthumberTHUMBERthumberTHUMBER... Thumber... thumber... thumber...
Symbolically, this is both light-hearted and related to his perversity. Humbert Humbert is, literally (or letterally, if you will) "all thumbs." He's really awkward behind this thin veneer of his self-conception. He thinks of himself as "Humbert Humbert" European scholar and fantasist, but he's really just an endless, inelegant thumb of a person.
On the darker side, it also relates to his perversity. If you give Lolita a careful reading, you'll find that Humbert's thumb is both a symbolic phallus (a noun) and a verb (to touch with the thumb) playing a particular role during the sex scenes, and especially at least one scene in which Humbert gropes Delores relatively early in the novel.
I hope you're Eng. Lit. teacher likes that interpretation. ;-)
HumbertHumberTHUMBerthumberTHUMBERthumberTHUMBER... Thumber... thumber... thumber...
Symbolically, this is both light-hearted and related to his perversity. Humbert Humbert is, literally (or letterally, if you will) "all thumbs." He's really awkward behind this thin veneer of his self-conception. He thinks of himself as "Humbert Humbert" European scholar and fantasist, but he's really just an endless, inelegant thumb of a person.
On the darker side, it also relates to his perversity. If you give Lolita a careful reading, you'll find that Humbert's thumb is both a symbolic phallus (a noun) and a verb (to touch with the thumb) playing a particular role during the sex scenes, and especially at least one scene in which Humbert gropes Delores relatively early in the novel.
I hope you're Eng. Lit. teacher likes that interpretation. ;-)
I think the name is meant to make Humbert seem ridiculous, adding some dark comedy.
Humbert etymologically means “famous warrior”. It is at least three times in the novel made reference to his kind of Celtic looks. Nabokov associates him to Tristram, a Celtic Knight of the (Celtic) Arthurian Legend who is a symbol of eternal and fatal love (remember "Tristram and Iseult"?). Notice how Tristram is referenced several times in this novel, directly (e.g. Ilse Tristramson) and indirectly.
If you want more infos about this specific point, you can go in this subpart of this website.
There is a chain of Arthurian legend references throughout the novel (e.g. the town of Wace (Robert Wace was a middle-ages author who was the first to mention the King Arthur's legend and to name Excalibur, the sword of the king), Cavall (a hound of King Arthur), Briceland (for Brocéliande, an enchanted forest in the Celtic land of Brittany mentionned by Wace as the location of the tomb of Merlin), etc...).
The names of the friends of Quilty (B. Mead, Fay Page and Vivian Darkbloom) also all points to a major character of the Arthurian Legend, the Lady of the Lake.
As Nabokov said in interviews in the 60s, he devised Lolita as a riddle and of course Humbert Humbert is part of it. A major part of it.
If you want more infos about this specific point, you can go in this subpart of this website.
There is a chain of Arthurian legend references throughout the novel (e.g. the town of Wace (Robert Wace was a middle-ages author who was the first to mention the King Arthur's legend and to name Excalibur, the sword of the king), Cavall (a hound of King Arthur), Briceland (for Brocéliande, an enchanted forest in the Celtic land of Brittany mentionned by Wace as the location of the tomb of Merlin), etc...).
The names of the friends of Quilty (B. Mead, Fay Page and Vivian Darkbloom) also all points to a major character of the Arthurian Legend, the Lady of the Lake.
As Nabokov said in interviews in the 60s, he devised Lolita as a riddle and of course Humbert Humbert is part of it. A major part of it.
The doubled name is also a reference to Poe's story "William Wilson", which features a bad man being pursued by his good doppelganger.
That's sort of akin to the bad H.H. being pursued by his (not quite as bad?) doppelganger Quilty. Nabokov plays around with doppelgangers and doubles a lot in the book.
There's also a pun with the French pronunciation of Humbert sounding like "ombre", meaning "shadow" - which is something he refers to Quilty as several times.
That's sort of akin to the bad H.H. being pursued by his (not quite as bad?) doppelganger Quilty. Nabokov plays around with doppelgangers and doubles a lot in the book.
There's also a pun with the French pronunciation of Humbert sounding like "ombre", meaning "shadow" - which is something he refers to Quilty as several times.
