While examining articles by Jorge
Wanderley ( "Arquivo/Ensaio, Criação & Crítica 15, Edusp, 1994.) on
Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning", I found an essay about Lolita ( no.6,
"Nabokov e Lolita").
His approach seemed to be new, even now (imho), in
relation to many essays I read about Lolita in the past
years.Wanderley examines Lolita from inside his own
critical evaluation of still another critic: N. Tamir-Ghez, "The
Art of Persuasion in Nabokov's Lolita", Poetics Today, Tel-Aviv, vol.1,
n. 1-2, Autumn, 1979).
In his 1994 essay he informs us that he had
been surprised with the enthusiastic reception "emigré" VN
had received in America. At the time when Nabokov published his
works the experience with "imported" authors ( he follows A.
Burgess here) was very new in America.
Wanderley questioned if Tamir-Ghez ( following a
Sartrian tradition that found ethical problems
underlying every esthetic productions) had behaved like a "moralist
critic". His answer was "No.He is an analyst of ficcional devices that succeeds
in his task, in the same measure that Nabokov succeeds in his."
He had noted before that VN, too, was not a
moralist: although VN expressed ( via Humbert Humbert) a strong plea for
HH's absolution, he allowed small facts, short sentences by Lolita,usw to
philter through his narrative and provide sufficient elements to demonstrate
that the life of a young girl was being destroyed while her
adolescent spontaneity and liberty suffered under coercion &
sexual crimes.
JW quotes T-G " Nabokov does intend us to identify with
the protagonist to a certain degree, to accept him as a human being, while at
the same time strongly to condemn his deeds", to add that these words
would equally fit into "Macbeth", a Raskolnikoff or a Mailer-narrator
( The American Dream) drama, serving to indicate the tragic dimension (
including the importance of catharsis) and its contradicting feelings
and choices.
JW studies the processes underlying the creation
of fiction ( departing from James and Booth) to identify these in VN's own
procedures qua "unreliable authors" and "contracts bt. author and reader in
fiction". He gave special importance to the
interpretations made by the reader over authorial
intentions:"Nabokov, a small mise-en-scène director
who watches from the stage-wings while he divinizes his control
over his own creatures, at the same time that he manages to
overcome the obstacles he imposed on himself." for, to Wanderly, the
actual "workers" were, at all times, the
readers.