Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024753, Mon, 4 Nov 2013 12:07:30 -0800

Subject
Re: the Real Question regarding Humbert's Innocence
Date
Body
Dear Anthony,

So it would seem that two important principles are at loggerheads here. One assumes the narrative is reliable until proven otherwise, as you so appropriately put it, and the accused is innocent until proven Quilty, shall we say? A rawther Nabokovian jest perhaps?

Carolyn


________________________________
From: Anthony Stadlen <STADLEN@AOL.COM>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sunday, November 3, 2013 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] the Real Question regarding Humbert's Innocence



Dear Carolyn, Jansy and the List,
 
I am glad that Carolyn recognises the validity of my assertion that Judaism
does not have Original Sin, which is an invention of Paul and Augustine.
 
I have certainly raised the question of Humbert's unreliable narration, for
example with his miscalculation of 56 days when it should be 52 near the end of
the book, and with his placing of the sound of children's voices on the
hillside (no doubt a "true" episode in itself) as a ploy (as Brian Boyd has
also pointed out). But just as with, say, "Signs and Symbols" or Despair or Pale Fire, so with Lolita the good
re-reader is going to have to reach some kind of working hypothesis as to which
parts of the curate's egg of the narration are more or less reliable and which
are not. And there has to be some kind of logic to this. Otherwise anything
goes, and it all stops being interesting, because it has lost the artistic and
moral tension between reliable and unreliable. Surely, the justification for
imputing unreliability is that the story becomes vague, shifting and
contradictory -- exactly the same logic as with a witness in court. One assumes
the narrative is reliable until proven otherwise. If one starts by assuming
total unreliability, then anything may mean anything, and one may attribute
any meaning whatever without any discipline for checking one's
attribution.
 
Anthony
 
 
Anthony
Stadlen
"Oakleigh"
2A Alexandra Avenue
GB - London N22
7XE
Tel.: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857
For Existential Psychotherapy and
Inner Circle Seminars see:
http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/


 
In a message dated 03/11/2013 22:37:41 GMT Standard Time,
chaiselongue@ATT.NET writes:
Dear Jansy and the List,
>
>
>The concept of original sin post-dates Judaism. We are currently reading Genesis (another pair of murderous twins have just been born) and it seems to me that disobedience only (i.e. not hubris) is closer to what Adam and Eve did and for which they were punished with mortality. 
>
>
>In regards to Humbert's guilt or innocence, I personally lean toward innocence partly because there has been no trial, and except in Wonderland, the trial usually precedes the verdict. But what I think is the most important question raised has so far not been addressed by the List, to wit, is Humbert a reliable narrator, which those who condemn him must accept at least to some degree, and if so, can someone please give me another example from Nabokov's oeuvre?
>
>
>That is the real question.
>
>
>Carolyn
>
>
>p.s. I am a very lackadaisical Nabokovian and have not read most of the novels, so this is a serious, not a rhetorical, question.
>
>
>
>________________________________
> From: Jansy Mello <jansy.nabokv-L@AETERN.US>
>To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>Sent: Sunday, November 3, 2013 3:03 AM
>Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] An Exchange on Humbert's Innocence
>
>
>
>
>A. Stadlen's arguments about HH and Humpty Dumpty humoristically indicate that  "Humbert's fall, like Humpty's, like Finnegan's, is the Fall of Mankind. But the Fall is a Christian notion. Judaism does not have Original Sin [    ] "Lolita" may have no moral in tow, but this is because it itself is the pilot not the piloted, being moral through and through, the paradigmatic moral and negative-theological discourse of our age. Disprove that! It's a possible hypothesis.." However, part of his assertions seem to mingle informations derived from common-sense reality and established dogmas, with those that are purely fictional (a very Nabokovian trait) - like the philosophical implications related to "the Fall." (I always thought that biblical Adam's and Eve's disobedience and hybris, later imaged in Lucifer's fall, were related to the theory of the Original Sin and were still valid for Christians and for Jews.) 

>Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to bring up an instance from "Pale Fire" (CK's note to line 549) in which we find Shade and Nabokov discussing sin, in the context of "obsolete terminology." 
>shade: All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
>kinbote: Is it fair to base objections upon obsolete terminology?
>shade: All religions are based upon obsolete terminology.
>kinbote: What we term Original Sin can never grow obsolete.
>shade: I know nothing about that. In fact when I was small I thought it meant Cain killing Abel. Personally, I am with the old snuff-takers: L’homme est né bon.
>kinbote: Yet disobeying the Divine Will is a fundamental definition of Sin.
>shade: I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.
>kinbote: Tut-tut. Do you also deny that there are sins?
>shade: I can name only two: murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain.


>Nowadays words like "honor" and "dignity" like "sin" seem to be losing their former impact. Would they be obsolete, too, in John Shade's eyes? (V.Nabokov, elsewhere,* mentions "a norm," not sin or morality).

>I agree with A.Stadlen's and J.Aisenberg's ideas, following J.A's quotes from "Lolita,"about HH having made up the information concerning the paternity of Lolita. (there are many other discrepancies in the plot related to it).  
>
>..................................................................................................................................................
>* For Nabokov “a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss” (Lolita, Afterword, page 314), described as "a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness) is the norm
>Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
>All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
>
>
>Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
> All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.

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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com

Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/







Attachment