[Here arranged in a sequence, with the permission of the authors, is an exchange of friendly disagreements, both off-List and submitted to the List, on the question of Humbert's innocence.  -- SES]

 

 

1.  Carolyn Kunin:

Dear Anthony,

Thanks for the perspicacious critique! 

But seriously, there is some evidence for this possibility. Please recall that both Jansy and I are in a speculative mood.

I did find the dates that more than suggest the possibility of Humbert's biological paternity. Lolita was born on January 1, 1947 and the photo that Humbert shows the Farlow's of a pre-Haze Charlotte was taken in April of 1934. Jean does the math and concludes that Humbert is "Dolly's real father."

Now this may be of no significance to you, but it intrigues me.
Carolyn

ps to Mr Stadlen:

So interesting -- the Wikipedia article onLolita mentions at least one critic, the Canadian author Robertson Davies (of whom I am particularly fond),  who ab initio did not "buy" Humbert's confessions at all:  In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies excused the narrator entirely, writing that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child. This is no pretty theme, but it is one with which social workers, magistrates and psychiatrists are familiar."  Robertson's essay, "Lolita's Crime: Sex Made Funny" has been republishedin Lolita: un royaume au-dela des mers by Christine Raguet-Bouvart.*

Now that I think of it, it is quite astonishing that lo these many years we have all taken Humbert at face value. Is there any other Nabokov narrator of whom this can be said? 

*googleable

2.  Anthony Standlen: 

I wanted to make the point that the ideas of Humbert's "innocence" and of his being Lolita's biological father are so clearly ideas that Nabokov shows Humbert as calculating his readers and, for instance, Jean Farlow will fall for, that to take them seriously is a kind of ungrounded speculation -- in effect, falling for what is clearly presented as Humbert's seduction -- in which, simply, anything goes and contradictions don't count.

 

 

3.  Jansy Mello:

For my part, Anthony Stadlen's indignation was formulated in the same vein as a Frank Muir classic (from his collection of anedoctes and quotations in "An irreverent companion to social history"...) and I instantly remembered that Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" was entirely filmed in England and considered by some critics as "a dark comedy."*

Nevertheless, I'm dead serious when I take into account Carolyn's conjectures about Humbert Humbert having made up his nymphetic adventures during his stay in a psychiatric prison ward. If I remember it right, V.Nabokov was never very enthusiastic about the hypothesis that his former short novel, "The Enchanter," could be considered his Ur-Lolita. I have no doubt that its anonymous character ("Arthur"?) is a true scheming pedophile.  Humbert Humbert, though, may share with him only in that kind of "sham" rape as we find in the davenport scene (disgusting and violent as it is). So, whereas "Arthur" moves on to act in the "real world", HH would be only inhabiting the tragic web of his perverse fantasy world. Why not consider this hypothesis as a possibility?

 

btw:I forgot to specify that when I dreamed of casting Stanley Tucci as Humbert, I was considering him as a delusional "innocent" (I was curious about how this talented actor would cope with this challenge). Charming Colin Firth, though, might not correspond to Quilty's role as a Sellers kind of comedian (he is truer to the "famous playwright" type that would jilt Lolita after using her, not to all the other Quilty masks that HH makes him wear...) . . 

4.  Carolyn Kunin:

 

6.  Jansy Mello: