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
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:
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:22
AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY:
Lolita's subjectivity and
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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All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
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Search the Nabokv-L archive with Google
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
both co-editors.