Steve Norquist: "Clare Quilty="Clearly guilty."
Another topic that has fascinated me over the years is a question that, in my
opinion, has never been definitively answered: Is Quilty real, or just another
"invention within the invention," Humbert's doppelganger, a figment of HH's
imagination, if you will? Priscilla Meyer, among others, has noted that
"the murder of Quilty is ambiguous;" she points out the fact that John Ray, Jr.
does not even mention the murder, along with the timeline discrepancy (53 days
versus 56) indicating that it would leave no room for Humbert to go to Pavor
Manor and kill him. All this leaves open the possibility that the murder itself
is figurative in the sense of HH psychologically exorcising his own demon, Mr
"Clearly Guilty."
JM: I think this is a very good line of argumentation,
considering Quilty "as an invention within the invention" (very much like
Kinbote and Gradus) and the conclusion that Quilty's murder is figurative.
Besides psychologically "exorcizing his own demon," he could be using
other psychic defense mechanisms such as refusal, splitting,
projection.
Julian Connoly quotes from "On the Banks of Lake
Lemon. Mr Nabokov Reflects on 'Lolita' and Onegin," by Douglas M.
Davis In The National Observer (29 June 1964), p. 17: "The author believes
too many critics overlooked the change that takes place in Humbert Humbert, the
book's 'hero,' during the course of his affair with Lolita [sic]. 'I don't
think Lolita is a religious book,' he says, 'but I do think it is a moral
one. And I do think that Humbert Humbert in his last stage is a
moral man because he realizes that he loves Lolita [sic] like any woman
should be loved. But it is too late; he has destroyed her childhood. There
is certainly this kind of morality in it."
JM: I suppose that "the author" refers to Douglas M.
Davis, not to Vladimir Nabokov! This author's insistence on turning
"Lolita" into a story with a moral intention reminds me of Lionel
Trilling's essay, "The Last Lover: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita," where
he states that "Lolita is about love. Perhaps I shall be better understood
if I put the statement in this form: Lolita is not about sex, but about love."
I prefer to follow Peter Quennell's introduction to the novel in 1971
("Collin's Collector's Choice") when he concludes that Nabokov "was certainly a
benevolent humanist in the great European tradition of Rabelais and
Montaigne." for his models are far from
simple...