Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ is an immensely pleasurable, captivating, and moving novel. I spent a few days reading chunks of the novel, completely gripped, often inhaling in shock or guffawing at Nabokov’s zingers and witticism or shaking my head at its scenes of pitiable sadness. Then, as I approach the conclusion of the novel, I was sad to be ending it.
Nabokov confronts us, the readers, with a disturbing taboo and pushes the boundaries of storytelling. This novel canvasses the uneasy relationship between a middle-aged man and an underage girl through poetic introspection, and an aureate and mellifluous writing style. The middle-aged HH suffers from an overpowering, oppressive agony. Ever since a failed amorous dalliance with a prepubescent girl named Annabel in his distant childhood, he has become fixated on what he calls “nymphets”. Various affairs with actual, what HH calls, “terrestrial women”, and even getting married, scarcely subjugates these urges.
And so, Humbert - in a boarding house trying to finish writing a book - discovers his landlady’s 12-year-old daughter as his veritable apotheosis of nymphet lust and his licentious urges. Her name is Dolores Haze but she conforms to various sobriquets: Dolly, Lo, Lola … and of course, Lolita. This girl will satiate his fantasies … but will Lolita be willing … and how can HH conceal it from her mother and the family? … and, so our protagonist charts various pathways, and has to confront the ultimate tragedy of his decisions.
Prose
For me, I like to think of myself as a logophile; and so, when reading Nabokov, I got to almost luxuriate in the elegant nuances and complexities of the language. What is immediately apparent is the sheer superlative command that Nabokov wields vis-à-vis the English language, and its richness to better express HH’s views. I often found the prose so beautiful that I would re-read paragraphs, and always agog at his amazing feats, implications and insinuations. A certain clarity and subtlety is amplified by Nabokov’s use of demanding but accurate vocabulary. I was very often looking-up new words in the dictionary; and wondering why Nabokov used that exotic word over a more prosaic alternative; and sometimes there wasn’t an adequate alternative. Send me to the dictionary any day to roll a new word around my palate; with a voyeuristic etymological inquiry to its roots (often attesting to a striking discord between the word’s origin and its temporal incarnations). Language isn’t just communication - its an intellectual sensibility, and with Nabokov it is pleasure. HH makes a point of saying:
“not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here.”
HH describing his first and initial prototypic love, Annabel, in the most ornate embroidery:
“All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh.”
On a park bench, as HH reads a book, his mouth-watering prose is imbued with the inherent violation of taboos:
“Once a perfect little beauty in a tartan frock, with a clatter put her heavily armed foot near me upon the bench to dip her slim bare arms into me and tighten the strap of her roller skate, and I dissolved in the sun, with my book for fig leaf, as her auburn ringlets fell all over her skinned knee, and the shadow of leaves I shared pulsated and melted on her radiant limb next to my chameleonic cheek.”
The book is filled with first-class one-liners:
“... and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in all possible detail the enigmatic nymphet I would coach in French and fondle in Humbertish.”
“Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!”
“McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down - possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in my veins”
As regards Lolita, her very presence is a source of near spiritual ecstasy:
“Silently, the seventh-grader enjoyed her green-red-blue comics. She was the loveliest nymphet green-red-blue Priap himself could think up. As I looked on, through prismatic layers of light, dry-lipped, focusing my lust and rocking slightly under my newspaper, I felt that my perception of her, if properly concentrated upon, might be sufficient to have me attain a beggar’s bliss ...”
“All the while I was acutely aware of L.’s nearness and as I spoke I gestured in the merciful dark and took advantage of those invisible gestures of mine to touch her hand, her shoulder and a ballerina of wool and gauze which she played with and kept sticking into my lap; and finally, when I had completely enmeshed my glowing darling in this weave of ethereal caresses, I dared stroke her bare leg along the gooseberry fuzz of her shin, and I chuckled at my own jokes, and trembled, and concealed my tremors, and once or twice felt with my rapid lips the warmth of her hair as I treated her to a quick nuzzling, humorous aside and caressed her plaything.”
Another example, HH is entranced even by her walking:
“Why does the way she walks—a child, mind you, a mere child!—excite me so abominably? Analyze it. A faint suggestion of turned in toes. A kind of wiggly looseness below the knee prolonged to the end of each footfall. The ghost of a drag. Very infantile, infinitely meretricious.”
After finishing ‘Lolita’, I read his essay/lecture on “Good Readers and Good Writers“. In short, he thinks we should separate the fictional world from the real world; “the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense—which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance.” He says we shouldn’t focus on ‘identifying with the character’ (because they exist in the fictive world) and avoid importing our preconceptions onto a book. Very interesting thoughts. They key to good writing is detail (“one should notice and fondle details”) and style - i.e. literary gymnastics are more important than telling a good yarn. I quite like this.
The subject matter
I think approaching this book requires an open mind and a readiness to grapple with uncomfortable themes. Reading comments online, it seems people thought that the book’s eroticism was ‘celebrating’ or normalising paedophilic ‘love’. This is completely wrong. Firstly, Humbert is an unhinged maniac, and self-consciously so. He is completely, utterly, and totally obsessed with Lolita which is certified by his paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations. Nabokov’s linguistic prowess shines throughout the narrative with eloquent prose and exquisite attention to detail. So much so that Nabokov’s paedophile archetype is presented so consummately and accurately that, to me, it was only ever mildly uncomfortable - nothing is ever too abrasive.
But, I think its a testament to the author’s consummate ability to crawl inside the workings of insanity, self-serving narcissism and self-justification. Humbert even fantasises about having children and even grandchildren with Lolita so that he could ravish them too! On the other hand, Humbert is also shown in his saddening reality of ‘dealing’ with a child. For example, Lolita’s sporadic tantrums and chastising of HH, her flirting with other boys, her indifference to Humbert’s efforts to show some affection etc. Nabokov thus weaves a deeper and more textured narrative than at first sight.
Ultimately, for me, I think Nabokov serves a scathing reproach to the idea of paedophilia as a legitimate love. When reading this novel, I was often overcome be the overwhelming sadness in the reality of both characters. In various vignettes, Humbert frolics with little Lolita - even at the back of a parkland; and there is nothing sadder than a full-grown adult reduced to having to cavort with a little child. To the extent that Nabokov can ‘explain’ what the paedophile finds sexually beautiful in the nymphet - in the way they ‘love’ a certain child; it is Nabokov’s talent to make us sympathise with the self-recognised paedophile.
This is definitely a book worthy of re-reading (and hopefully another review). As Nabokov observed: “curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader”.
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