©Paula Bailey

Love, being possibly the most potent emotion, is one of the most peculiar aspects of life. This could be because we know almost nothing about it and all the little manifestations that fall under that umbrella term. I mean, love leads to such an array of emotions so directly that the distinction is almost inevitably skewed. This ‘Confusion of Love’ is more than present in the works of Vladimir Nabokov.

His most acclaimed and infamous work is that of Lolita, in which notorious paedophile, Humbert Humbert, falls in love with his landlady’s 13 year old daughter. The novel follows him as his love for Lolita unfolds across the roads of America; he becomes dedicated to, and later obsessed with, Lolita as they start ‘dating’. When the narrative refers to their interaction there is a freely flowing rhythm akin to one in the state of dreamy, idealised romance. Critics may argue that Nabokov was not usingLolita as a vessel for actualising love or romance, as its focus is persistently on the character of Humbert. However, the central element of Nabokov’s masterpiece is their love-affair.

Perhaps Nabokov was indeed challenging the prospect of an ideal suitor/age etc., proposing the concept that love is love and ‘c’est la vie’. Obviously, this is a controversial claim when applied to the love of a middle aged man and a young adolescent; however, the concept remained to challenge many. On one hand, I am an advocator for free will, the right to love who you like and however you like, so long as it is reciprocal and consenting. On the other, if I ever have a daughter, there is no way I am ever allowing her to go to camp. Nabokov probably wouldn’t have either, nor would he have wanted us to derive a message of morals from his tale; so it is unlikely thereby that he intended to direct a ‘right/wrong’ answer to love.

Earlier, however, in his Laughter in the Dark, he scatters love around in the debris of Albinus’s death with his words. Albinus’s love for his wife and daughter is overcome by his love for the 16 year old Margot, yet that does not mean he loves them less. One merely masks the other and he happens to choose the path in which his adolescent love shoots him. So here we have two of Nabokov’s tales of tragic love with a protagonist doomed by their love. Not only does Albinus’ love for Margot kill him, it tortures and blinds him and he misses his daughter’s funeral. The tales remind me of Oedipus Rexmore than it ever would Romeo and Juliet.

One needs merely to look at the two to know that they are connected by more than author. Nabokov painted both with signature irony and deliberately asked more questions than he answered. Neither character ever had a hope of happiness from their novels’ opening stanzas. Is that what Nabokov really thinks of love? That man is doomed from the start? That we shall never fulfil our inner desires or loves?

Mary, another one of his earlier works, suggests so. It portrays life inside the memories of a bitter man. Love bounces around his tenancy, almost never requited, never happy, and far from content. In fact, those that seemed in love appeared to be far more miserable than those out of it; Ganin’s girlfriend is almost more pitiable than he himself is. Nabokov creates a beautiful depiction of the horrors of love. His stories all suggest, Mary perhaps most of all, that if you love someone, surely it is best not to have them.

However, almost nothing could be farther from the truth. Nabokov was actually a grotesquely romantic chap. He had a thriving romance with his wife, Vera, whom he loved horribly till his dying day. In the works I have focused on, though his stories were tragic, he actually had not treated love without credit. It is abundantly apparent that our writer’s passion was not for the subjects, it was for the language, story and inanimate emotion. Thereby, Nabokov’s true love, language, allows us to see the precise glint of passionate romance he uses to decal emotions on the page. Through this, he proposes the ultimate question we all must ask: is it better to love and suffer, or suffer without love?