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Re: Lolita as satire (1958 review from National Review)
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‘He that will be a flat dichotomist/ And seen in nothing but epitomes . . ‘ Marlowe. Massacre at Paris
Dear List,
re Brian Walter’s ‘the inexhaustibly complex and tantalizing question of the morality of Lolita (not to mention of Nabokov's work as a whole)’
I am with him. But I hope that a needless dichotomy is not looming between Nabokov corrector of contemporary mores, and Nabokov depraved and salacious writer. Is there agreement on the following (all either explicit or implicit, I think, in what Brian Walter wrote)?
a) ‘Lolita’ imaginatively charts an obsession * but not for social or psychological purposes. Nabokov is a ‘poietes’.
b) Nabokov loves the challenge of entering (but not advocating the adoption of) the mentality of one in the grip of this obsession. It was a brave thing to do.
c) Humbert must sound like someone one could like, be amused by, or the fiction will not work. The reader is challenged by this, and alarm sets in.
d) Nabokov does not hate the whole modern scene (We know he loved silly B-films, and could laugh at/with and enjoy Americana.)
e) He (I mean the narrator) remarks that there have been and still are whole cultures where what Humbert does is normal, and yet he (I mean the author) wants the reader to divine that the practice is *just wrong*, according to an absolute that it would be impossible to frame coherently. ‘Belief in childhood’ a categorical imperative?
f) Nabokov’s own ethics (good) shine through Humbert’s narrative (self-deluded). But love and lust are not so simple to distinguish. It is not the case that Humbert’s feelings should be simply abhorred: yet ‘tout comprendre’ is *not* ‘tout perdonner’.
Please add g, h, and so on.
Penny McCarthy
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Dear List,
re Brian Walter’s ‘the inexhaustibly complex and tantalizing question of the morality of Lolita (not to mention of Nabokov's work as a whole)’
I am with him. But I hope that a needless dichotomy is not looming between Nabokov corrector of contemporary mores, and Nabokov depraved and salacious writer. Is there agreement on the following (all either explicit or implicit, I think, in what Brian Walter wrote)?
a) ‘Lolita’ imaginatively charts an obsession * but not for social or psychological purposes. Nabokov is a ‘poietes’.
b) Nabokov loves the challenge of entering (but not advocating the adoption of) the mentality of one in the grip of this obsession. It was a brave thing to do.
c) Humbert must sound like someone one could like, be amused by, or the fiction will not work. The reader is challenged by this, and alarm sets in.
d) Nabokov does not hate the whole modern scene (We know he loved silly B-films, and could laugh at/with and enjoy Americana.)
e) He (I mean the narrator) remarks that there have been and still are whole cultures where what Humbert does is normal, and yet he (I mean the author) wants the reader to divine that the practice is *just wrong*, according to an absolute that it would be impossible to frame coherently. ‘Belief in childhood’ a categorical imperative?
f) Nabokov’s own ethics (good) shine through Humbert’s narrative (self-deluded). But love and lust are not so simple to distinguish. It is not the case that Humbert’s feelings should be simply abhorred: yet ‘tout comprendre’ is *not* ‘tout perdonner’.
Please add g, h, and so on.
Penny McCarthy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm