Jansy: you still miss the point that there’s no evidence that VN (or VN via HH) was making any connection between the two Charlottes via phonetic wordplay on Haze/Hayes. READERS have certainly imputed to VN such a deliberate connection based on such slender suppositions as “VN the voracious reader must have seen the literature on whore-mongress C Hayes — although rare, it was known to be on sale at book stalls along the Seine — QED!” And then, with typical LitCrit illogic, comes the assertion “Of course VN knew about Madame C Hayes, or why else would he have named Lo’s mum C Haze?” This is the sort of false “proof by assertion” that starts by assuming that which needs to be proved. Until we have more evidence, it’s fruitlessly premature to strongly opinionate on whether the mooted Hayes/Haze wordplay is childish/cruel/demeaning, brilliantly justified, or so damned cunningly Nabokovian/Humbertian, or whatever.
Jansy may have inadvertently offered an alternative theory for Lo’s mum’s name. She writes at one point of HAZE/HAYS. The latter spelling opens wonderful and convincing allusions to the HAYS Hollywood movie-morality “production” code. What could be more relevant to Charlotte Haze’s persona than this stifling, conventional list of puritanical dos and don’ts (mainly don’ts)? Key Hays proscriptions include:
The sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld. "Pictures shall not imply that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing." Adultery and illicit sex, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified and were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option. (from Wiki)
We can have NO DOUBT that VN was familiar with this Code! But the CLINCHERs for wannabe allusionists are (i) the early campaigns for film censorship were led by a Martin J QUIGLEY (the link with Guilty/Quilty is too obvious to be worth mentioning) (ii) Hays himself sported the initials WHH (William Harrison HAYS). The HH cannot be mere coincidence.
This plausible link retains some of the “HH contempt for his wife” that Tim and Jansy find in the Haze/Hayes hypothesis, but is surely less cruel and childish!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 06/01/2009 07:18, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Opinions are often simple exercises to shift perspectives when we examine a theory. However, it may happen that one is only expressing emotions, such as one's displeasure with bad or facile puns in literature.
When we express a personal taste instead of an intelligent argument (de gustibus non disputandum), we reveal a "personal fact". My opinion about Hayes=Haze is not an intelligent argument, see?
Independently of attributing an intention to Humbert's "character", qua Haze/Hays, or to his creator VN, such an imputation ( a curious word in this context) strikes me as false or gross, as not being typical of Nabokov. Besides, perverse monstrous HH is not capable of every type of sin, his "contempt for the Haze character" stops short from his shooting her, but he does stop.
I cannot agree, with SKB, that "I shouldn't harbor a theory" about HH's confessions - written in an insane asylum. Are HH's references to Quilty, to the police or to the winged members of the jury, in Lolita, to be read outside the fictional universe of the novel?
Nevertheless, I do agree that Lolita's plot relies on the "reality" of HH's exploitation of his young step-child and, therefore, that the supposition that HH "only dreamed of bedding his fantasies" completely alters the efficacy and poignancy (plus a hundred adjectives more) of VN's novel.
I entertained this conjecture because, outside the literary field, this kind of delusion sometimes takes place.
I think it is important that we remember that, in the novel, HH tried and failed to avoid acting out his fantasies with Lolita as, for example, under the protection of a "crystal sleep" - but that HH was perfectly aware that his tactics were almost as harmful and perverse as when he actually raped her.
I also think that many of his "confessions" are delusional.
Jansy
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Tim Henderson: ...don't you think the 'childish and cruel' wordplay is really part of HH's character, part of his contempt for the Haze character? His own name is a self-constructed pseudonym, isn't it, despite the fact that he puts it into "real" dialogue....?