Re: a question

blah b b blah (jrovira@juno.com)
Fri, 15 Jan 1999 17:44:45 -0500 (EST) 

Yeah, see, here I'd have to vehemently distinguish between Nabokov's
voice and Humbert's.  Remember that _Lolita_ is Humbert Humbert speaking,
it's Nabokov acting in a very literary way like he's someone else.  The
identification of the narrative with Nabokov would then be like
identifying Leonardo DiCaprio with Romeo.

So what does this tell us about Nabokov's intent?  That he is showing us
the limitations of Humbert's perspective by having him deny something so
obvious, or that he's trying to violate our expectations at every turn? 
Maybe both.  At present, in this case, I'm leaning toward the former.

Jim  

On Fri, 15 Jan 1999 11:42:13 +1100 Camille Scaysbrook
<verona_beach@geocities.com> writes:
>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
>

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