Carolyn writes: "But what I think is the most important question raised has so far not been addressed by the List, to wit, is Humbert a reliable narrator, which those who condemn him must accept at least to some degree, and if so, can someone please give me another example from Nabokov's oeuvre?"

David P. responds: Ah, Carolyn, you have brought us to the paradox that gives my students hives. To be sure HH is unreliable to some degree. This leads us to ask, well, if the unreliable HH says such and such, what really happened? One answer to this question is, simply, nothing happened, because Lolita is a fiction. If we were speaking of another novel, this would be glib. But in the case of a novel that is presented to us as written in the first person by the protagonist (with the exception of John Ray Jr.'s preface) this statement acquires a certain narratological reality. If the novel were narrated in the third person, or by a first-person participant other than HH, we would at least have a way of triangulating a fictional reality that could be used as a reference point for the reliability of any given character's perception or representation of events. But as you and others have suggested, Lolita makes available a plausible interpretation in which the fictional HH has made everything or almost everything up. In this case, as is fitting for a first-person narration, we are invited to consider the possibility that HH's subjective consciousness is the only reality. 

I won't belabor this point by enumerating the ontological variants that arise from different interpretative choices we make about where we draw the lines between the striations of fictional reality. (For example, what status do we assign J.R. Jr.'s preface? Doesn't his reduplicative name remind us suspiciously of Humbert's self-inflicted one?) No, I will belabor it in another way. My point is, once you start questioning HH's reliability, you have to make a choice about where to stop. My own sense is that VN has included the possibility of several plausible variations, among which it is impossible to choose definitively. The limiting variants are: (1) VN has written a novel and everything in it is made up; and (2) HH and JR are describing the events of an ontologically consistent fictional world, although one or both may be deluded about that world and/or lying. I think that both of these "interpretations" (the quotes honor the impoverish status of variant (1)). But I don't thing that every possibility in between is plausible. For example, I find it hard to construct a plausible variant in which HH confesses to raping Dolores (although he doesn't phrase it quite that way; Dolores does) in order to expiate the lesser sin of being an absent father. Where exactly could we consistently draw a line such that the rape would fall on the made-up side of it and HH's proposed paternity would fall on the true side? And what would be the psychological motivation for this particular variant of confabulation? The variant that has HH existing in some existing fictional world that I find most plausible is that he has indeed taken advantage of Dolores (it is, at least, statutory rape) and has used his narrative to displace his own moral wretchedness onto Quilty. (I do find intriguing the idea that HH has invented a great deal about the famous Q, perhaps prompted by his encounter with Ivor.) 

Finally, I think that any interpretation has to honor the very clear (to my mind) signposts that VN has planted to show where HH's interpretation of an event privileges certain details over others. Exhibit A (if you'll pardon my putting it that way) is HH's narration of the first sexual penetration. Dolores describes intercourse as a game for kids. She is incredulous when HH says he never played that game when he was a kid. "It was she who seduced me." His disingenuousness in this instance could not be more damning, in my view. It also indicates precisely where the reader should locate the fault line between Humbert's narration and the events he narrates.

Oh, please forgive the length, dear reader, of what I hope has not been too incoherent a ramble!

Cheers,
David P.



 * * * * * * * * * *
David Powelstock
Assoc. Prof. of Russian and Comparative Literature
Director, Master of Arts in Comparative Humanities
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA 02453


On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@att.net> wrote:
Dear Jansy and the List,

The concept of original sin post-dates Judaism. We are currently reading Genesis (another pair of murderous twins have just been born) and it seems to me that disobedience only (i.e. not hubris) is closer to what Adam and Eve did and for which they were punished with mortality. 

In regards to Humbert's guilt or innocence, I personally lean toward innocence partly because there has been no trial, and except in Wonderland, the trial usually precedes the verdict. But what I think is the most important question raised has so far not been addressed by the List, to wit, is Humbert a reliable narrator, which those who condemn him must accept at least to some degree, and if so, can someone please give me another example from Nabokov's oeuvre?

That is the real question.

Carolyn

p.s. I am a very lackadaisical Nabokovian and have not read most of the novels, so this is a serious, not a rhetorical, question.

From: Jansy Mello <jansy.nabokv-L@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sunday, November 3, 2013 3:03 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] An Exchange on Humbert's Innocence

A. Stadlen's arguments about HH and Humpty Dumpty humoristically indicate that  "Humbert's fall, like Humpty's, like Finnegan's, is the Fall of Mankind. But the Fall is a Christian notion. Judaism does not have Original Sin [    ] "Lolita" may have no moral in tow, but this is because it itself is the pilot not the piloted, being moral through and through, the paradigmatic moral and negative-theological discourse of our age. Disprove that! It's a possible hypothesis.." However, part of his assertions seem to mingle informations derived from common-sense reality and established dogmas, with those that are purely fictional (a very Nabokovian trait) - like the philosophical implications related to "the Fall." (I always thought that biblical Adam's and Eve's disobedience and hybris, later imaged in Lucifer's fall, were related to the theory of the Original Sin and were still valid for Christians and for Jews.) 
 
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to bring up an instance from "Pale Fire" (CK's note to line 549) in which we find Shade and Nabokov discussing sin, in the context of "obsolete terminology." 
shade: All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
kinbote: Is it fair to base objections upon obsolete terminology?
shade: All religions are based upon obsolete terminology.
kinbote: What we term Original Sin can never grow obsolete.
shade: I know nothing about that. In fact when I was small I thought it meant Cain killing Abel. Personally, I am with the old snuff-takers: L’homme est né bon.
kinbote: Yet disobeying the Divine Will is a fundamental definition of Sin.
shade: I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.
kinbote: Tut-tut. Do you also deny that there are sins?
shade: I can name only two: murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain.
 
 
Nowadays words like "honor" and "dignity" like "sin" seem to be losing their former impact. Would they be obsolete, too, in John Shade's eyes? (V.Nabokov, elsewhere,* mentions "a norm," not sin or morality).
 
I agree with A.Stadlen's and J.Aisenberg's ideas, following J.A's quotes from "Lolita,"about HH having made up the information concerning the paternity of Lolita. (there are many other discrepancies in the plot related to it).  
..................................................................................................................................................
* For Nabokov “a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss” (Lolita, Afterword, page 314), described as "a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness) is the norm


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Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive

All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.