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[SIGHTING] Nabokov on the dotted line
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The magazine "Literatura", n.41, February 2012 published an eight-page article about "Lolita" with the title "Nabokov On The Dotted Line." Since the text is in Portuguese and the reproduction isn't clear, I'll be posting only p.14-15 and 18-19.
The author (Julia Garcia) reports a sighting of her own, mentioning an episode of "Law and Order:Special Victims Unit" in which the victim is named Richard F. Schiller and the character is involved with a minor. She also refers to a refrain from the English group "The Police."
Julia Garcia mentions that it's Humbert Humbert's particular use of the English language (she doesn't mention, then, his "fancy prose style," but states that his confessions are written in "a style specially created for Humbert Humbert by Nabokov") the reason why readers become enamoured with the novel. She also explains about Wayne C. Booth's 1961 coinage of the expression "Unreliable narrator" and how it is applicable both to Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and to Machado de Assis's Bentinho is his novel "Dom Casmurro". She not only mentions the invention of the word "nymphet" in English, but also HH's concept about "Nympholepsy."
One of the elements J.Garcia loosely mentions along her text had only reached my conscious awareness very recently: namely, HH's conclusion that his little girl "had nowhere to go." This particular aspect of Lolita's helplessness ("hilflösigkeit', "desamparo") mysteriously evaded me. Although I knew that she'd lived the normal routine of a young American girl, who had a widowed mother who zealously kept her father's ashes in a jar, living in a comfortable neighborhood in a nice house with a garden, who attended school and went away to summer-camps, who had friends, went to picnics and parties... I didn't fully register the manner by which this routine was disrupted almost in the blinking of an eye, how her entire life collapsed not only because HH raped and abducted her,* but by how he took away her material belongings, identity tokens, rightful inheritance and a permanent address, i.e: her "home" and a go at "citizenship."
Long before HH met her he was already perversely fond of orphaned girls (with matted eyelids...) over whom he could easily exert his (puny pervert's)power.
Lolita had become an exile, not only in America but also in life. However, most of the time I was busy being disgusted at HH's pedophilia and how he "solipsized her" (instead of how he "exiled" her, absolutely, and pushed her towards the margins of social life), his elaborate vocabulary and compulsive sex.
Lolita could be sorry for a "squashed squirrel" but, unlike Pnin, HH's incipient guilt feelings merely prompted in him fresh avenues for exerting his brand of pedophilia, levaing no "shadows behind his heart" (at least, apparently so).
..........................................................................................................
* - Lolita: 1. "all widower Humbert had to do, wanted to do, or would do, was to give this wan-looking though sun-colored little orphan au yeux battus ... a sound education, a healthy and happy girlhood, a clean home, nice girl-friends of her age among whom ...I might find, perhaps, a pretty little Mägdlein for Herr Doktor Humbert alone. But "in a wink," as the Germans say, the angelic line of conduct was erased, and I overtook my prey (time moves ahead of our fancies!), and she was my Lolita again." 2. "Cold spiders of panic crawled down my back. This was an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning. Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark ...somewhere at the bottom of that dark turmoil I felt the writhing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for that miserable nymphet...In other words, poor Humbert Humbert was dreadfully unhappy...It was she, however, who broke the silence: "Oh, a squashed squirrel," she said. "What a shame." //"Yes, isn't it?" (eager, hopeful Hum)." 3.A minor female, who allows a person over twenty-one to know her carnally, involves her victim into statutory rape, or second-degree sodomy, depending on the technique; and the maximum penalty is ten years. So, I go to jail. Okay. I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? Well, you are luckier. You become the ward of the Department of Public Welfare - which I am afraid sounds a little bleak...."
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The author (Julia Garcia) reports a sighting of her own, mentioning an episode of "Law and Order:Special Victims Unit" in which the victim is named Richard F. Schiller and the character is involved with a minor. She also refers to a refrain from the English group "The Police."
Julia Garcia mentions that it's Humbert Humbert's particular use of the English language (she doesn't mention, then, his "fancy prose style," but states that his confessions are written in "a style specially created for Humbert Humbert by Nabokov") the reason why readers become enamoured with the novel. She also explains about Wayne C. Booth's 1961 coinage of the expression "Unreliable narrator" and how it is applicable both to Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and to Machado de Assis's Bentinho is his novel "Dom Casmurro". She not only mentions the invention of the word "nymphet" in English, but also HH's concept about "Nympholepsy."
One of the elements J.Garcia loosely mentions along her text had only reached my conscious awareness very recently: namely, HH's conclusion that his little girl "had nowhere to go." This particular aspect of Lolita's helplessness ("hilflösigkeit', "desamparo") mysteriously evaded me. Although I knew that she'd lived the normal routine of a young American girl, who had a widowed mother who zealously kept her father's ashes in a jar, living in a comfortable neighborhood in a nice house with a garden, who attended school and went away to summer-camps, who had friends, went to picnics and parties... I didn't fully register the manner by which this routine was disrupted almost in the blinking of an eye, how her entire life collapsed not only because HH raped and abducted her,* but by how he took away her material belongings, identity tokens, rightful inheritance and a permanent address, i.e: her "home" and a go at "citizenship."
Long before HH met her he was already perversely fond of orphaned girls (with matted eyelids...) over whom he could easily exert his (puny pervert's)power.
Lolita had become an exile, not only in America but also in life. However, most of the time I was busy being disgusted at HH's pedophilia and how he "solipsized her" (instead of how he "exiled" her, absolutely, and pushed her towards the margins of social life), his elaborate vocabulary and compulsive sex.
Lolita could be sorry for a "squashed squirrel" but, unlike Pnin, HH's incipient guilt feelings merely prompted in him fresh avenues for exerting his brand of pedophilia, levaing no "shadows behind his heart" (at least, apparently so).
..........................................................................................................
* - Lolita: 1. "all widower Humbert had to do, wanted to do, or would do, was to give this wan-looking though sun-colored little orphan au yeux battus ... a sound education, a healthy and happy girlhood, a clean home, nice girl-friends of her age among whom ...I might find, perhaps, a pretty little Mägdlein for Herr Doktor Humbert alone. But "in a wink," as the Germans say, the angelic line of conduct was erased, and I overtook my prey (time moves ahead of our fancies!), and she was my Lolita again." 2. "Cold spiders of panic crawled down my back. This was an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning. Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark ...somewhere at the bottom of that dark turmoil I felt the writhing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for that miserable nymphet...In other words, poor Humbert Humbert was dreadfully unhappy...It was she, however, who broke the silence: "Oh, a squashed squirrel," she said. "What a shame." //"Yes, isn't it?" (eager, hopeful Hum)." 3.A minor female, who allows a person over twenty-one to know her carnally, involves her victim into statutory rape, or second-degree sodomy, depending on the technique; and the maximum penalty is ten years. So, I go to jail. Okay. I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? Well, you are luckier. You become the ward of the Department of Public Welfare - which I am afraid sounds a little bleak...."
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
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