Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0016209, Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:27:29 -0500

Subject
Re: QUERY: Lolita's subjectivity and America
Date
Body
Hi Matt,

I think this is the line from your original post that I differ with

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.

It is not just Humbert but rather Nabokov who gives us a hidden but
quite vivid portrait of Dolores Haze. With every successive reading of
the book, increasingly more of her character is revealed and again not
just in the narrative but in interweavings of language and theme, so
that now I feel she stands on her own and I DO know who the actual
(fictional) Dolores Haze is or at least as well as I know who the
fictional HH is. I don't think we glimpse her for a moment; she seems
ever present to me. Nabokov was able to accomplish all this without
providing direct access to her inner life but pointing to it in many
subtle ways. Is the pang of sorrow that you speak of perhaps because we
know so much about her rather than that we know so little?

---Suellen







________________________________

From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
Behalf Of Matthew Roth
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:54 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Lolita's subjectivity and America



Suellen,

I don't disagree with your thoughts below. The very fact--as Vera
pointed out--that Dolores seems daily to be in tears (or on the verge of
them) is enough--along with the other details you mention--to help us
see that there is another girl beneath Humbert's mannequin. My response
was to the question of whether we are able to access her subjectivity.
It seems to me that the pang of sorrow that throbs through the book is
largely produced by the realization that there is a Dolores in there
whom we will never be able to reach. We glimpse her for a moment, but
she is gone, replaced, before we can save her.



Best,

Matt


>>> On 4/15/2008 at 12:21 PM, in message
<63566160FBD1BE43873B5A100A4222DF047597C1@mailbe17.email.Vanderbilt.edu>
, "Stringer-Hye, Suellen" <suellen.stringer-hye@VANDERBILT.EDU> wrote:

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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