Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022461, Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:33:39 -0800

Subject
Re: Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
Date
Body
I think Humbert has a moment of unsullied recognition of what Lolita
has lost because of him, and Grace is as good a word as any. Doesn't
Nabokov say that Humbert one day a year is let out of Hell, which he
otherwise richly deserves? Something like that... No, here it is more
precisely, thanks to omniscient Google: Nabokov is comparing Humbert to
Hermann (in Despair) -- "Both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a
green lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once
a year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann”

All the best
don stanley


>>> Anthony Stadlen <STADLEN@AOL.COM> 2/22/2012 7:24 AM >>>

In a message dated 22/02/2012 14:19:47 GMT Standard Time,
Rsgwynn1@CS.COM writes:


Does Humbert ultimately receive some moment of Grace? I like to think
he has, as he sits overlooking and overhearing the children near the end
of the novel. It does move in a mysterious way, its wonders to perform.

Brian Boyd has long ago pointed to Nabokov's brilliance and insight in
having Humbert seductively place this passage just where it is near the
end of his narrative. Nabokov ruthlessly exposes readers who are seduced
by the rhetoric of a child-rapist and murderer. This does not mean that
Humbert's fleeting insight had no validity, but it was fleeting, and he
did not have the integrity to act on it.

Anthony Stadlen


Anthony Stadlen
"Oakleigh"
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Email: stadlen@aol.com
Founder (in 1996) and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars: an
ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in
psychotherapy
See "Existential Psychotherapy & Inner Circle Seminars" at
http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/ for programme of future Inner
Circle Seminars and complete archive of past seminars



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