“I would be a knave to say,
and the reader a fool to believe, that the shock of losing Lolita cured me of
pederosis. My accursed nature could not change, no matter how my love for her
did. On playgrounds and beaches, my sullen and stealthy eye, against my will,
still sought out the flash of a nymphet's limbs, the sly tokens of Lolita's
handmaids and rosegirls. But one essential vision in me had withered: never did
I dwell now on possibilities of bliss with a little maiden, specific or
synthetic, in some out-of-the-way place; never did my fancy sink its fangs into
Lolita's sisters, far far away, in the coves of evoked islands.”
No one can directly know for sure whether or not Humbert loved
Lolita. In class we of course discussed
the morality in the work. That is
undoubtedly the ultimate question and the one that will be argued again and
again. Its doubtful anyone would firmly
say that this novel is morally decent most completely write off Humbert as a
monster. He even says so himself. Lolita is not even near an appropriate age to
be in any kind of romantic relationship
Lolita cannot simply be written off as a novel about a
twisted pedophile in pursuit of a child.
There is much more going on here.
My roommate and I had an interesting discussion attempting to decide
whether or not Humbert was a victim himself.
The backstory is presented when we discover the childhood affair between
him a girl, both 14. They immediately
fall in love and spend their days wrapped in each other’s arms, exploring the bases
of young romance. Humbert’s happiness is
cut off as his first love tragically and suddenly dies of typhus. They had apparently fooled around, but never
slept together. He never had closure, this
of course does not validate his actions, in no circumstance is a grown man ever
allowed to have intercourse with a twelve year old; but we become aware why he
is so stuck on innocent young girls. The
argument that he is in fact a victim, didn’t refer to his illness, it refers to
the way Lolita treated him from the very start.
She teases him, flirts with him, touches him and acts in a maturity
level unfathomable of a child. She is
extremely inappropriate for a girl her age and it could not work any better for
Humbert. He is in fact helpless. Just in the way that is unorthodox for a man
to be attracted to pre pubescent girls it is unordinary for a girl to flirt
with a 30 something man. I not sure the
argument is stable though. Not even a
man with morals, a man chemically should not have any desire to be with a twelve-year-old
girl. Regardless of the fact that she flirts
and plays with his heart, no matter the ability Lolita had to affect his
emotions, Humbert should refuse them. It
comes back to his past and inability to let his first love go. He has been trying to find this experience
ever since and Lolita is exactly what he was looking for. Regardless of her actions, Humbert is truly
just a victim of his condition and the tragic loss of his first love, a victim
of himself.
The question must then be asked can love based out of a
sickness, can a complete destruction of all morality in a man still be
something real? I really don’t know the answer.
I think that is a question Nabokov is aware of a puts it out there for our
own discussion. The reason this book is important
is because it pushes these boundaries and challenges what love can actual
between two people, written in the 1950’s there is still nothing quite like it
today.
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