RSGwynn: "If one accepts that CQ may be merely a figment of HH's imagination, why not go whole hog and assume that all of the events of the novel... are part of the delusion?...If we believe that his narration is no more than an inventive trope, a mere literary conceit orchestrated by VN, then the whole novel dissolves into the irrelevance of a madman's fantasy life and an author's playing tricks on us that we have failed to comprehend."

JM: I confess that, quite often, I start to imagine that all the adventures HH describes in the novel are part of his delusion, because so many of its episodes are hard to believe. Take Quilty's unrelenting persecution of twelve year-old Lolita. It's not "in character"* when we hear the ennumeration of his "bussinesses" from Dolores Schiller, and from himself, while he offers HH a list of "treats" while bargaining for his life. The false names he plants all over, his "stage car" modifications, smack of exageration... 

 
I don't remember if it's in the novel proper, or in an interview, that Nabokov explains that Lolita was really a common, almost plain, little girl, metamorphosed by HH's fancy. If I'm not mistaken, this statement comes close to another author's complaint about Emma Bovary's insignificance, and what a waste it was to place such a trite character in a masterpiece like Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Consequently, what would Clare Quilty have seen in this girl to be able to lavish on her such an ammount of time and money? She was precious to HH and he jealously supposed that she'd be equally precious to everybody else. Was she so important in dissolute Quilty's world? 

 

In two or three interviews in "Strong Opinions" Nabokov mentions that "Lolita" was a composition (like a chess problem?) that caused him a special thrill, and this is something that comes close to what you called "an inventive trope" ( I'll try to locate these sentences and copy them here, in the near future). Sometimes I manage to suspend my disbelief because, in the midst of inventions and distortions, there are moments that seem to be extremely real, even hauntingly so. The crucial instance, for me,  is related to his lines about how tormented he feels, in "his beard and his putrefaction" (I quote from memory) and that there's no one who can pardon and undo the damage he inflicted on a little girl. So, without taking every word that I find in HH's confession on its face value, I'm still engaged in the argument that many events in the novel must be considered from its character's delusional perspective.

I have no certainties, though, and my "negative capabilities" are stretched to their limits. 

Fran Assa writes that "what he (HH) does in fantasy is not the same as what is done in practice" and here I must disagree with her.  In "The Enchanter" the seducer is permanently trying to achieve his sexual pleasure without the child's knowledge (as I think also happens in the davenport-apple scene in "Lolita"). In the Ur-novel "Arthur's" concrete sexual intrusion isn't consummated and his more daring attempt leads to his death. (the scene in "The Enchanted Hunters" seems to proceed from this point onwards, it gains its pace from that which was left interrupted in "The Enchanter" (are the words enchanted hunters and the enchanter, in these two novels, only a coincidence?).

 

For me, HH's perversion in "Lolita" makes him transpose his lurid fantasies into act and I think that a Lolita of sorts existed, that there was an almost unforgettable Annabel, that HH married Charlotte Haze, that she was devastated after she read his diary, that there was a playwright named Quilty etc.  But, again, I cannot be sure of many other "facts" and I need strong (not slippery) textual evidence that will point in one way or another to finally settle down with one version of the story. Your arguments are very instructive because I feel challenged to examine a lot of things more rationally but without avoiding what my heart has to say, too .  

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*Fran Assa, I agree with you that it is not "simply a matter of opinion what traits are in HH's character.  An author attempts to create a believable character.  If the reader is jarred into thinking that the character has just stepped out of character, the author has tripped up." My point is that you hadn't offered arguments in support of your view about HH's character.  After all, he isn't a typícal pedophile and his behavior is creatively unexpected (perverts tend to be stereotypal). Actually, this is something that you suggested today when you wrote: "Since HH reacted with compassion, it seems he was created less a pedophile and more as a person in love with the particular person. Thus it seems HH is not a pedophile at all, in the psychological sense, even though he had sexual relations with this twelve year old.  What he does in fantasy is not the same as what is done in practice. Perhaps he's not a pedophile but rather obsessive.")