Re: a question
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 15 Jan 1999 11:42:13 +1100
Jim wrote:
> I'd forgotten that
> Humbert Humbert denied he was trying to return to Anabelle, but I think
> he was being a bit idiotic in that regard. Placing the Anabelle account
> at the front of the book kinda BEGS the reader to make that assumption.
Perhaps ... but I think Nabokov is far more clever than that. In every
other regard the book entices the reader to turn completely away from his
or her traditional assumptions of a pederast. In a way, the Anabelle
episode teases the reader with their assumptions: you go `ah, of course,
that's the whole reason for Humbert's problem', and Nabokov spends the rest
of the book implying `Err... not exactly' (:
> It could be that an attempt to return to A was the source of his initial
> attraction to Lo, but that his attraction developed and grew wings of its
> own over time, and became a more significant factor in Humbert's mind
> than A. ever was
Well, that's definitely true. I think what is touching is that in the end
Humbert's love appears to transcend Lo's age; to his surprise, he is still
in love with her as a ruined seventeen year old, and in an odd way he has
broken out of his problem. But in an even odder way, he can't live without
this compulsion. As Kurt Cobain once wrote: `I miss the comfort in being
sad'. : if you fall in a hole it's your job to either dig yourself out or
build a home there.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest