Issue date: 2/22/07 Section: Opinion

 

As an avid reader, I find that Russian novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, has a fairly accurate view on love. To him, love is "madness and transformation, outrage and hallucination." He illustrates this view in his novel, Lolita, where he depicts the story of a middle-aged man in love with his 14-year-old stepdaughter.

By now, most of you are probably thinking that Nabokov is a sick and twisted individual, who is just "madly in love" with the thought of deviating from the social norm. But to him, love isn't hearts and teddy bears. It isn't holding hands on a beach watching a beautiful sunset. Love isn't beautiful at all- it's dark.

This is why I envy this writer. The words he writes about "love" make you uncomfortable. He reaches into the depths of this emotion and finds the aspects that are not attractive, but real. It seems these days there are more occurrences proving the notion that love is not necessarily a beautiful thing, compared with ones that portray love as an amazing entity. 

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It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or astronaut for that matter, to deduce that love brings out the worst in people. Just like Nabokov has- expressed in many of his novels, 'love isn't what it seems.'