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EDITOR'S NOTE: Another in the series of abstracts of papers presneted at
the Conference "Discourse & Ideology in Nabokov Prose" held at Texas Tech
in April 1995.
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"Towards an Erotics of Reading; Desire and Disclosure in LOLITA"
by Dawn Eidelman
In addressing the issues of desire and disclosure in LOLITA, I
will examine the reader's role with regard to desire (for the end) and
culpability (implication in the text or conspiracy.) Narratives both tell
of desire (in our case the desire of Humbert Humbert to disclose the
titilating and delectable details of his forbidden love for the
insidiously charming nymphet) and arouse and make use of desire as a
dynamic of signification.
Peter Brooks links narrative desire to Freud's notion of Eros in
_Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative_ (1985). Desire,
like Eros, constitutes a force including sexual desire but larger and
more polymorphous. Brooks defines narrative desire as desire for closure
and completion. The play of desire in time compels the reader to turn
pages and strive toward narrative ends. This desire for closure or
consumation extends itself to Humbert's love for Lo as well.
Narrative desire compels the reader to implicate himself into the
text. Steve G. Kellman explains in _Loving Reading; Erotics of the Text_
(1985) that reading, like love, aims at dissolving personal boundaries.
As the reader implicates himself through his close connection with the
text, desire assumes a dimension of shared culpability, rendering the act
of reading a far from innocent process. Humbert's desire to disclose his
tale stems from his need to implicate his listeners in a tainting secret
with which he cannot live alone. If the reader has truly engaged himself,
he has assumed the role offered by the text, mentally pronouncing "I" in
reference to Humbert Humbert, perpetuating the intersubjective and
reversible pattern of dialogue. In Clarence Broawn's words, "Reading
Nabokov is using, for a time, his central nervous system. We cease to be
ourselves and become the person he supplies." Competent readers
conspire. In place of a love that is public and sacramental, Nabokov
embraces one in LOLITA that is private and illicit. This private or
illicit connect referes to the conspiratorial aspect of narrative desire.
In examining the manner in which HH seduces the reader to
implicate himself in the text, I shall also discuss features of Wolfgang
Iser's reader response theory outlined in _The Act of Reading: A Theory
of Aesthetic Response_. Nabokov himself acknowledged the imperative for
real readers to engage themselves in a text:
Literature, real literature must not be gulped down
like some potion which may be good for the heart or
good for the brain... Literature must be taken and broken into
bits, pulled apart, squashed...and only then, its rare
flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and
crushed parts will come together again in your mind
and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have
contributed something of your own blood.(LRL)
In this study of LOLITA, I shall examine the manner in which Nabokov's
Humbert challenges his reader to implicate himself in the text and
thereby contribute something of his own blood.
the Conference "Discourse & Ideology in Nabokov Prose" held at Texas Tech
in April 1995.
---------------------------------
"Towards an Erotics of Reading; Desire and Disclosure in LOLITA"
by Dawn Eidelman
In addressing the issues of desire and disclosure in LOLITA, I
will examine the reader's role with regard to desire (for the end) and
culpability (implication in the text or conspiracy.) Narratives both tell
of desire (in our case the desire of Humbert Humbert to disclose the
titilating and delectable details of his forbidden love for the
insidiously charming nymphet) and arouse and make use of desire as a
dynamic of signification.
Peter Brooks links narrative desire to Freud's notion of Eros in
_Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative_ (1985). Desire,
like Eros, constitutes a force including sexual desire but larger and
more polymorphous. Brooks defines narrative desire as desire for closure
and completion. The play of desire in time compels the reader to turn
pages and strive toward narrative ends. This desire for closure or
consumation extends itself to Humbert's love for Lo as well.
Narrative desire compels the reader to implicate himself into the
text. Steve G. Kellman explains in _Loving Reading; Erotics of the Text_
(1985) that reading, like love, aims at dissolving personal boundaries.
As the reader implicates himself through his close connection with the
text, desire assumes a dimension of shared culpability, rendering the act
of reading a far from innocent process. Humbert's desire to disclose his
tale stems from his need to implicate his listeners in a tainting secret
with which he cannot live alone. If the reader has truly engaged himself,
he has assumed the role offered by the text, mentally pronouncing "I" in
reference to Humbert Humbert, perpetuating the intersubjective and
reversible pattern of dialogue. In Clarence Broawn's words, "Reading
Nabokov is using, for a time, his central nervous system. We cease to be
ourselves and become the person he supplies." Competent readers
conspire. In place of a love that is public and sacramental, Nabokov
embraces one in LOLITA that is private and illicit. This private or
illicit connect referes to the conspiratorial aspect of narrative desire.
In examining the manner in which HH seduces the reader to
implicate himself in the text, I shall also discuss features of Wolfgang
Iser's reader response theory outlined in _The Act of Reading: A Theory
of Aesthetic Response_. Nabokov himself acknowledged the imperative for
real readers to engage themselves in a text:
Literature, real literature must not be gulped down
like some potion which may be good for the heart or
good for the brain... Literature must be taken and broken into
bits, pulled apart, squashed...and only then, its rare
flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and
crushed parts will come together again in your mind
and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have
contributed something of your own blood.(LRL)
In this study of LOLITA, I shall examine the manner in which Nabokov's
Humbert challenges his reader to implicate himself in the text and
thereby contribute something of his own blood.