"Lolita" and "Speak, Memory" are brought together in an article
that was published in
The author informs, in her abstract,
that "Although the novel Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, owes its reputation to
the nymphet, the way it presents the pervert’s profile is also remarkable.
Humbert Humbert is a character built up on paradoxes. If, on one hand, he is
briefly defined as a pervert, on the other, he never corresponds to the
caricatures of a sex maniac; in fact, these stereotypes are deeply discussed
along the whole narrative. First, by the identification of the pervert to a
child, which gains a special meaning when we remember that the novel was written
while the author was composing an autobiography, with emphasis on his childhood.
In fact, both books play with past and present in particular ways that allow
child and adult to interchange their roles. To accomplish this approach,
Nabokov’s witty plays on words end [up by creating] a peculiar language for
perversion."
Here are several excerpts which I
did my best to reproduce in English:
"Eliane Moraes mentions the exchange
between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson (April 7, 1947) where he
informs his friend that he is "writing two things
now
The two protagonists, one of them being
a definitely ficcional character, are engaged in coming to terms with
their past. Inspite of the great differences between them,
their writings take as a point of departure their childhood
reminiscences. Between the candid child that the Russian writer had been and the
lascivious nymphet he conceived, there are more affinities than
initially meet the eye. A possible key is suggested by Nabokov himself, in
a chapter in "Speak, Memory" when he describes his seventeen-year old passion in
Humbert Humbert is a paradoxical
character and he never totally behaves like any common pedophile. Every
stereotype is put in check by him. Hs novel may surprise the readers by the
economy with which all physical sensations of a character are presented.
HH's body seems to remain like a ghost that makes fugitive appearances and,
usually, in situations that are not erotic at all. The body of the pervert,
in Lolita, is seldom "sexualized". Instead, what HH describes
are intense anxieties allied to somatic complaints. "If a violin string can ache, then I was that string,"
he notes. When at last he is sitting at the
edge of Lolita's bed, he mentions that, for "instance (I almost wrote "frinstance"), I had no place to
rest my head, and a fit of heartburn (they call those fries "French," grand
Dieu!) was added to my discomfort. Also in
the shortest chapter (ch.26) he complains:"This daily headache in the opaque air of this tombal jail is
disturbing, but I must persevere. Have written more than a hundred pages and not
got anywhere yet. My calendar is getting confused. That must have been around
August 15, 1947. Don't think I can go on. Heart, head — everything. Lolita,
Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat
till the page is full, printer." His bodily discomfort overpowers the
descriptions of physical pleasure." It's a story that doesn't
develop or evolve, it arrives nowhere, rotating in a circular time
when everything recurs and is repeated, while its protagonist remains
paralyzed.In this way the narrator's prison, his jail, presents a strong image
of his internal prision, his perversion. Humbert is a jailed man, in body,
sould, hear, heart...everyting. What prison would retains Nabokov's character in
the same place, both in body and soul? A possible answer could be: his
childhood. The pedophile is someone who cannot rid himself of his childhood,
just like Humbert Humbert.. He must remains in search of his lost childhood
love.. He cannot overcome his initial naiveté: " I, on
my part, was as naïve as only a pervert can be." This unexpected
association between the pervert and the naif recalls once again the child in
him. He cannot make time move but is fixated in an original time that emprisons
his body and his mind. Nabokov inverts in a magic twist the conventional
significations to indicate that in the novel the child is no longer Lolita, but
Humbert himself, as a pervert. It's even Lolita who seduces poor frail
However, HH's prison is not only a jail, like the monkey's,
in Le Jardin des Plantes. To explore its internal extensions the author
resorts to linguistic manoeuvers, using words in different languages to promote
the amplification of their meanings: As in: "I pressed the bell button, it
vibrated through my whole system. Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne. From what
depth this re-nonsense? Woof, said the dog. A rush and a shuffle, and woosh-woof
went the door."
Playing with a possible linguistic duplicity, the
author can now expand his limits and frontiers to reveal his phantasmatic
dimensions. Even Humbert Humbert's name brings in the Spanish
"hombre" (man) and the French "ombre" (shade) to transform the character
into both a man and his shadow. It's in this kind
of chiaroscuro that Nabokov engenders an erotic language
which keeps overt sexuality in a state of suspension. Like the pervert's
who notes that: "really these are irrelevant matters;
I am not concerned with so-called "sex" at all. Anybody can imagine those
elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the
perilous magic of nymphets." Nabokov's language is not a commonplace
English altough he explains that, unlike his Russian, it's devoid of
all accessories: "My private tragedy, which
cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my
natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a
second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses — the baffling
mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions —
which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend
the heritage in his own way."
Lolita brings to us an artificial,
imaginary, syncretic language. The writer uses this instrument as a toy, feeling
free, like a child, to explore it as an instrument that'll translated his most
arcaic erotic experiences when the first words perforated the silence of
infancy. Childhood, sex, language - it is as difficult to
associate HH's perversion and the life of the little Vladimir.as it is hard
to dismiss the parallels that arise betwen the lines of Lolita and
Speak, Memory. The ostensive difference between the characters has a
special background that, however obscure and distant, allows an approach
beteween the two texts. Various scholars link HH's fascination with
nymphets to a brief chapter (Ch.7) in Speak, Memory, related to family
vacations in Biarritz,the building of sandcastles and the encounter with
Colette, VN's "primordial child" whom he can remember in great detail: her
greenish eyes, her freckles,the brown curls, the delicate wrist, a wound in the
arm, the frail neck, long leg, taut skin, the ticklish ears and a kiss, even
though the girl has disappeared in the shadows of the landscape, binding him to
that strand of iridiscence he couldn't place. A similar landscape as the one
chosen for Lolita's working title: "The Kingdom by the
Sea." and HH's experience with Annabel Leigh in mythical