JM: Not every reader agrees that Humbert Humbert is
sincere when he describes how repentant he feels for
having recklessly destroyed a young girl's life. However, he isn't
always intent on promoting his vice, reliving it pleasurably by his
confession nor evoking the compassion of his imagined jurors We
may also find in him the need to achieve redemption through art ("I am thinking of aurochs and angels...the refuge of art. And this
is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.") and this is
much more real than the simple "key" Leslie Chambers finds in
Nabokov's "Light-heartedness and a tendency to fairytale."*
btw: I hope the List-participants noticed the coincidence that presented
itself after I came across Dr. Johnson's sentence about the road to hell.
One of his forerunners was the eminent Dr.John Ray, a scientist who has
nothing in common with "Lolita's" psychiatrist, John
Ray Jr !
........................................................................
* - Another quote is strikingly genuine, but here
H.H despairs of "redemption": "I was unable to
transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might
find, ... nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted
upon her...I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and
very local palliative of articulate art." Perhaps even in the first
quote (above) HH despairs of the spiritually
transformative powers of art?
However, contrary to Chambers's "key" proposition - but perhaps
present in what she recognizes as an "additional spin", ie,
his gift of seeing everything symbolically - [
http://www.slowtravelberlin.com/2011/01/03/nabokov-in-berlin/ ], Nabokov
is often deadly serious in his compassion for
certain devastating human failings and in his regret. He is
not merely, as she seems to indicate, trying to aestheticize
evil.
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.