Subject
Re: QUERY: Lolita's subjectivity and America
Date
Body
I respectfully disagree with this conclusion. While it is true that
Humbert's first person narrative does create an illusory Lolita, the
intricate patternings and images underlying that prose, reveal quite a
bit about Dolores Haze, her real relationship with her mother, the loss
of her brother and father, her teenage dreams and her adult
difficulties. This seems to me Nabokov's extraordinary achievement in
Lolita--- and one that is often overlooked.
Suellen Stringer-Hye
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
Behalf Of Matthew Roth
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:22 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Lolita's subjectivity and America
Barrie asked: "What are the best writings, if any, on what it's like to
be Lolita, or how someone becomes Lolita? Whose imagination imagines
what Lolita is really like -- her subjectivity?"
MR: Most of the criticism I have encountered focuses on Humbert's
"solipsizing" of Lolita. She has no subjectivity that we can access,
since the Lolita we are given is, as Humbert says, "not she, but my own
creation, another, fanciful Lolita--perhaps, more real than Lolita;
overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no
will, no consciousness--indeed, no life of her own" (62 AnL). Leland de
la Durantaye, in his excellent, very readable book Style is Matter: The
Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov, does a great job unpacking all of the
repercussions (for Humbert and for us) of this deeply flawed imaginative
act. As he puts it, Humbert "can only 'enjoy in peace' his vicious
circle of paradise if the real little girl he is do desperately
mistreating does not too violently interpose herself--and so he decides
to 'firmly ignore' her in favor of the 'phantasm' first formed on this
fateful Sunday [the davenport scene]" ( 72-73). I do not think it is
possible to know or to guess who the actual (fictional) Dolores Haze
might be, though we know that she is not the girl Humbert gives himself
and, by extension, us.
Matt Roth
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Humbert's first person narrative does create an illusory Lolita, the
intricate patternings and images underlying that prose, reveal quite a
bit about Dolores Haze, her real relationship with her mother, the loss
of her brother and father, her teenage dreams and her adult
difficulties. This seems to me Nabokov's extraordinary achievement in
Lolita--- and one that is often overlooked.
Suellen Stringer-Hye
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
Behalf Of Matthew Roth
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:22 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Lolita's subjectivity and America
Barrie asked: "What are the best writings, if any, on what it's like to
be Lolita, or how someone becomes Lolita? Whose imagination imagines
what Lolita is really like -- her subjectivity?"
MR: Most of the criticism I have encountered focuses on Humbert's
"solipsizing" of Lolita. She has no subjectivity that we can access,
since the Lolita we are given is, as Humbert says, "not she, but my own
creation, another, fanciful Lolita--perhaps, more real than Lolita;
overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no
will, no consciousness--indeed, no life of her own" (62 AnL). Leland de
la Durantaye, in his excellent, very readable book Style is Matter: The
Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov, does a great job unpacking all of the
repercussions (for Humbert and for us) of this deeply flawed imaginative
act. As he puts it, Humbert "can only 'enjoy in peace' his vicious
circle of paradise if the real little girl he is do desperately
mistreating does not too violently interpose herself--and so he decides
to 'firmly ignore' her in favor of the 'phantasm' first formed on this
fateful Sunday [the davenport scene]" ( 72-73). I do not think it is
possible to know or to guess who the actual (fictional) Dolores Haze
might be, though we know that she is not the girl Humbert gives himself
and, by extension, us.
Matt Roth
Search the Nabokv-L archive with Google
<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en>
Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
both co-editors.
Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm