Lolita

Just finished this today and I feel empty inside. I can't explain it, I'm just sad. Did I want Lo and Humbert to be together or am I a pedo now?

I wouldn't say you're a pedo, OP, but if you like women and end up wishing for the best for Humbert at the end, perhaps you'd be best served by examining your desires and considering whether you've projected them onto Humbert instead of trying to understand the character.

You're right to feel empty, this shit is a proper tragedy in the classical Greek sense. That is to say: relentlessly hopeless and intoxicating.

Lolita is, most of all, about obsession, and about how nihilistic the experience of being obsessed is. Even if you aren't a pedo, that experience of vice, of fixation, of powerlessness in the face of our desires isn't strange to any man. That's why Humbert is persuasive, not because he writes pretty words.

Not totally Veeky Forums related, but Sue Lyon in the 1962 film version was a massive massive qt.
I wanted to have her too, but that's probably what Kubrick was going for.

No, you are a spoiler.

Humbert can be a very effective narrator, even if he is evil. And part of him did genuinely love Lolita, and he did ruin her life, as he realizes at the end. I wouldn't beat myself up about it.

I guess I know why I feel so empty then? I know I'm fairly obsessive when it comes to things or even people in my life, just like had said in regards to me possibly self inserting. I do find often that in my classes that there are girls or even women that I crave affection from, even if I wouldn't particularly want a relationship with.

Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable read, and I think my emptiness may just stem from the fact that my obsessions are never realized in my own mind. Being a couple hours after reading it, I already find myself wanting to pick it up again, hoping it would give me same feeling I had whenever I put it down.

Good soundtrack too

Nabokov would've despised a reader like you. Not meant as an insult. You'll understand if you read more Nabokov in the future, especially his non-fiction and correspondence etc..

I'm somewhat surprised Lolita can have an emotionally draining impact on people. I read it in the late 90s and I didn't have any kind of emotional response to it. It's mostly just stylized literary play like Nabokov's works in general where the actual content and story are quite unimportant.

In the afterword of the German edition there is mention of Humbert being a perfume seller. Now, I definitely do not recall that being the case. He was a professor of literature and that's pretty much it?

The genius of Lolita is Nabokov makes you feel sorry for a monster.

He inherited a perfume business from his uncle, this is also the reason he goes to America.
If you can't empathize with Lolita's suffering HH has thouroughly tricked you.

Ahhh yes, right. Thank you! Do you remember the chapter?

>If you can't empathize with Lolita's suffering HH has thouroughly tricked you.
Before Humbert's 'moral apotheosis', there's no real reason to empathize with her unless you really read between the lines and work your imagination.

The uncle and his business are mentioned in chapters 2, 8 and 10, but only in one or two sentences each.
>there's no real reason to empathize with her unless you really read between the lines and work your imagination
I think Humbert's erratical nature has been established sufficiently after a couple of chapters, so you should know that you have to take everything he writes with a grain of salt. So you obviously have to read between the lines. Even chapter 1 is so pompously stylized that you immediately know what kind of a person Humbert is. If his account of the night at The Enchanted Hunters doesn't give you chills you probably didn't read very carefully. He desperately tries to cleanse Lolita's behavior (think of the emphasis on "Just dynamic. Not really taking the matter too seriously" coupled with his excessive nervousness throughout the passage) of any semblance of resistance. Think of lines like "Parody of death and silence". The whole bit is gruesome and I don't know how you can't feel sorry for Lolita who is literally being preyed on by a man who plans to rape her in her drug-induced sleep later that night.
W/r/t his moral apotheosis, I think even there we find a red herring, the obvious "absence from the crowd" bit is so obvious (Gee, I shouldn't have abducted and raped that child, huh?) that I find it hard to believe anyone could feel that way about this passage. When Humbert talks to Dolly before leaving to kill Quilty and he talks about insisting about how he loved her "pale and polluted, and big with another man's child" (i.e. devoid of her nymphet charms) is probably the only moment HH manages to induce even the slightest of sympathies in the reader.

good post that I agree with

Thanks for the answer.
Unfortunately have to go the work in a bit, but I'll get back later.

Answer me this: Did Lolita -at least somewhat- fancy Humbert?
Did she actually seduce Humbert during the night they had sex (and before)?

I know Humbert is unreliable as a narrator, but to me it always seemed the 'truth' is more layered than him being _just_ a creepy predator and Lolita being _just_ the hapless victim.

Would you mind including chapter desginations with your references?

'Parody of silence and death' (not death and silence actually) gives me a some trouble. I have the annotated Lolita and even Appel's note on the line does leave something to be desired. I have some ideas about it, but nothing comprehensive.
On my first read through it didn't give me pause though...

She was portrayed as manipulated and someone who had the need to stay in company with the resources. You can think about what one would do to own mind in that situation etc so the question whether she tried to seduce hHumbert or was succesful at it, is kinda not what you ought to ask.

>Did Lolita -at least somewhat- fancy Humbert?
I believe so, but only since he resembles Quilty. When Humbert picks her up from the camp she was definitely aware of some kind of erotic tension ("you haven't kissed me yet" Ch 27 p.112 "But we are lovers, aren't we" Ch 27 p. 114 "The word is incest" p. 119). Clues are Lolita's willingness to play in the lap scene (Ch 13), the kiss she gives him before her departure (Ch 15, p.66) and the mentions of HH's resemblance to and Lolita's predilection for Quilty (Ch 11,p. 43; p. 69, 3). Note that at The Enchanted Hunters Lolita mentions that a figure in a painting looks like Quilty (Ch. 27, p.121). Put a horny teenager who recently discovered sex in a room with somebody who looks like her crush and it may be likely that she makes a move. However, she refuses his advances (p.120), so the degree of her attraction to HH is kept ambiguous. Recall that even after their first night together HH mentions that Lo doesn't care for tenderness except for kisses on the mouth and intercourse. I don't know if this is just her nature or a sign that even her ephemereal attraction to HH is not the real thing. HH may be an unreliable narrator, but there is a difference between describing events that happened in a certain light to fit his narrative and simply making up stuff. As Humbert says he is only "a very conscientious recorder", of course we know that "conscientious" means biased.
This passing fancy in which HH is merely a substitute for Quilty (after all, Lolita tells us in the end that she would rather go back to Quilty who forced her to partake in sexual acts she found disgusting (part II Ch. 29 p. 279) does not change the fact that HH literally thought he had drugged her (Ch. 28, p.123) and only didn't rape her in her sleep because he had fed her a placebo. Of course, as points out, Lolita is made completely dependent on HH, but this happens after the first instance of intercourse.
>Parody of silence and death
Sorry about the mistake, I quoted that from memory.
I have the version annotated by Appel as well and I agree that his note on that line isn't too helpful. I find this part (i.e. HH taking Lo from the camp to the hotel) absolutely terrifying. HH portrays himself at his most nervous in this part. He is speeding, mumbles when he has to give his name at the receptionist's desk and then of course there is the passage of him drifting through the hotel and meeting Quilty, who seems to see through his disguise.

As for the parody part, I find parody always a bit disturbing, since it presents a distorted picture of reality. As Appel says, it can refer to HH's and Nabby's perspective, but whatever POV you take, poor Lolita always remains the victim. The reader knows that HH intends to have his way with her at least since Ch 27,p. 116 "knowing perfectly well, the sly tumescent devil, that by nine, when his show began, she would be dead in his arms" (there might be an earlier mention of HH's plot, but I'm a bit tired and I don't have the strength to look for it now).
Fun addendum about the Appel notes: He gives a translation, but neglects to tell us that "peine forte et dure" (Ch 17, p. 70) appears in French in another English text, Poe's (!) doppelganger (!!) story William Wilson.

This quality is why I frequent Veeky Forums

HH acquires the sleeping pills in chapter 22 (p.94) when Charlotte is still alive and plans on drugging both mother and child night after night until Lolita has to leave for boarding school. The sleeping pills are mentioned again in chapter 25 ("and then, in the velvet summer night, my broodings over the philter I had with me" "his boxful of magic ammunition" p.109) when he arranges his possession of Lo in the mystical realm of The Enchanted Hunters.
I obviously messed up when I said Quilty was a figure in a painting, he's there in the flesh, don't know what my brain did there.
I thought a bit more about the use of the word parody and it seems to me that in this moment the reader becomes aware of the contrast between HH's frantic state and the surrounding normalcy, but also the artifice used by HH and Nabokov to possess Lolita. It marks the point of collision of Humbert's fantasy with reality and the resulting loss of control. The sinister intentions creep in after the comical ordeal of dealing with the clerks. The hotel corridor is the final part of the near endless journey (Oh my Lolita, we shall never get there p. 115) and its impersonality and emptiness take on a deeper meaning for HH, who feels reality distort itself as he is the only one (apart from the author and the reader) aware of the fact that he is not the clumsy Edgar H. Humbert, but about to turn his solipsized Lo into a lifeless doll in order to possess her. There is definitely a bit of not so subtle comedy between Mr. Swine, the clown, and Mr. Humbug and it's scary because we already know that HH is not the poor stumbling and bumbling fellow he makes himself out to be. The two sentences disrupt the narrative flow and read a bit like stage directions. Of course we are aware that HH is telling his tale (in a rather grandiloquent manner), but I think these grave lines should remind you that there is another author at work. There is something sadistic in the way Nabokov constructs his tale and inserts himself into his fiction through anagrams and allusions, reminding us that he is the one pulling the strings for his (and, what is even more shocking in a sense, our) aesthetic enjoyment.

I'm back from work and don't want this to die.
I'll reply after some rest.
Thank you very much for the detailed analysis!

>Even chapter 1 is so pompously stylized that you immediately know what kind of a person Humbert is.
The kind of person Vladimir Nabokov was?

>poor Lolita always remains the victim
Of course.
I gotta be honest here. I don't think statutory rape exists in a majority of cases between two consenting parties. I'm not that interested in any moralizing angle ('look what vile Humbert did to poor Dolores! She's only _twelve_!') at least in regards to sex. Think about it, if Quilty and Humberts roles were adjusted there could've been a genuine love story. I think these are reasons that Humberts prose lulled me, I bought mostly into his view and only gradually and occasionally the misery of the situation shone through.
I _knew_ it was his lens events were shown through, but the distortion did not reflect on reality in a grand way. I still don't quite know how to (morally) judge Humbert. I read a quote from Nabokov somewhere I can't remember and find right now, in essence he said that HH was a monster who must suffer an eternity in hell but once a year he is allowed a day in the garden of eden or some such thing. I like to place special emphasis on the latter part of the statement. I just can't bring myself to fully condemn Humbert, maybe that's the best trick he pulled, the one I'm most thankful for.
Still, p. 215 is when he actually, no-doubts-about-it rapes her. If it's nothing else, it's this passage that makes him irredeemable... and yet for some reason I emphatized with both of them. His solipsistic love does not mean that what he feels or how he feels invalidates that he feels.
I don't know where to go from here, I think I've said everything.

So here's some (interesting) asides:
The German edition (haven't read it yet) actually features Nabokov's Russian post scriptum as well as his original afterword. I think this is a glari g omission in the otherwise fantastic Annotated Lolita. The German book also has a timeline at the end.
Otherwise... Appel kind of spoiled me on Quilty and in hindsight an edition that merely translates french and annotates a scant few other things would have been preferable.
Funny thing is, while I was 'spoiled' on Quilty, it was only the name and I wasn't sure what to make of it - for a good portion of the book I assumed it was an imaginary shadow of Humbert's own guilt. How naive, how ironic.

Favorite passages:
After skimming through it right now, the Taximovich encounter is pure genius(see p.30+/-).
Something else that I really, really liked:
"The tiny madman in his padded cell." p.47

> I still don't quite know how to (morally) judge Humbert.
Well, at least from the point on where he sets out to fondle his enigmatic nymphet in Humbertish we can deem him morally reprehensible in thought and later, when he turns Lolita into his personal concubine, in deed. The main reason we hesitate judging HH too harshly in the first part of the novel is that he lays his desire bare and we all can empathize with longing. Depriving Lolita of her freedom and substituting a living, feeling individual with a fantasy marionette is HH's crime and this point is stressed in the last chapter: "I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord". This seems rather obvious for a well-adjusted human being, but for an obsessed dreamer this might be a revelation. Note however that HH can't fully give Lolita up as he feels compelled to capture her in his book ("this is the only immortality we shall share", but they shall share it nonetheless).
W/r/t the age of consent matter, I think everybody has to admit that there is a point in a human's life where informed consent is impossible, the lawful age is just the result of legislative history. In their first night together Lo is obviously not aware of HH's intentions which are undeniably vile, as the reader knows. I'm not proficient enough in moral philosophy to judge a situation in which morally reprehensible intentions are present in one party, but don't become reality because of the actions and mindset of the other party.
I might look into that post scriptum. I don't really understand why you would want to read a translation of a book that you have already read in the original.
>"The tiny madman in his padded cell." p.47
Even though he usually is exuberant and hypocritical, HH is pretty funny and observant at times, there's no denying that, and the book would only be half as enjoyable if not for the narrator's and his puppet master's styles.