Suspended between Lolita and Lucidity
Sorry for the late post! I wasn’t quite to the end of part two last night and wanted to finish it before writing.
First of all, wow! I have so much respect for Nabokov as an author! He has total mastery over language, mood, and his audience. I know there is no “real” author present, but I felt as though the work had total control over my responses.
After last week’s discussion, my rather ambivalent opinion of H.H. changed as I noticed that the novel was getting darker. In Part II, I found myself more and more upset by Humbert’s controlling, paranoid, and violent behavior. I felt more sympathetic to Dolores because I was able to separate Lolita from Lo, something that, as Professor Quinby said, is important for getting a more rounded perspective of what was “really” happening.
I was really struck by the way Humbert’s mental decline was demonstrated in a lack of cohesion within the text. In Part I there was only one chapter that I characterized as something like a skip in a record. As Part II became more and more emotional and unclear for Humbert, there were more and more apparent skips. I found him less trustworthy as a narrator because I noticed that there were too many incongruities in his accounts.
I can’t exactly say what I didn’t believe him about, but I felt really suspicious of his account after Lolita was gone. He seemed unable to explain anything with much lucidity. In fact, I really struggled to understand where he was or what was happening much at all after Chapter 25. He explained things chronologically as he had done in Part I, but with the overuse of names (people, hotels, cities, streets) I was overwhelmed with details to the point that I couldn’t make much sense of the book. In this confusion I was completely amazed at Nabokov’s total control. As a writer, I found it incredible that he so carefully and concisely created a sense of total chaos and confusion.
One “skip” in particular caught my attention. When Humbert describes waking up from a drunken evening with Rita to find unknown men in their hotel room, “I slipped on a pair of candy-striped drawers” (314). This is a tiny, tiny detail, but I immediately remembered the candy-striped furniture in the first hotel he stayed at with Lolita. At this moment I felt that I couldn’t trust any of Humbert’s account at all. At the same time though, I can’t really say what I think happened. Was Lolita a figment of his imagination? Certainly in one sense or another she was, but whether or not Dolores Haze made it as far as Humbert recalls seems uncertain. Everything in the story seems to start to repeat itself. He does go back through all of the places he visited with Lolita, which called into question the accuracy of his memory.
From the beginning we were told that he wanted to construct the ideal memory of Lolita and he seems absolutely obsessed with illusion. He speaks of his “pre-dolorian past:”
“I used to recollect, with anguished amusement, the times in my trustful, pre-dolorian past, when I would be missled by a jewel-bright window opposite wherein my lurking eye, the ever alert periscope of my shameful vice, would make out from afar a half-naked nymphet stilled in the act of combing her Alice-in-Wonderland hair. There was the firey phantasm of perfection which made my wild delight also perfect, just because the vision was out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by awareness of an appended taboo; indeed, it may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised — the great rosegray never-to-be-had” (319).
This passage points to the overwhelming sense, at least for me, of suspension. Throughout Part II I felt I was suspended somewhere in a dark and murky memory that was still somewhat rooted in reality, but floating farther and farther away from it. Even by describing the nymphet’s hair as “Alice-in-Wonderland hair” there is obvious reference to the fact that this is not quite reality. In one of my reading notes I mentioned that I was reminded of those movies (The Wizard of Oz, Labyrinth, Alice-in-Wonderland) where the main character’s perspective is all we see and just as the film ends they wake up to find no time had passed at all and all the elements of their adventure could be found in their bedroom.
I don’t know exactly what point I can make about Lolita right now as I am still sorting it out in my mind. I don’t feel confident enough to say that I know what happened, who H.H. or Lolita really are or what emotional response I have. Right now, Nabokov has me masterfully suspended in the dark, cloudy mind of Humbert Humbert.
Tags: Humbert Humbert, Identity, Illusion, Lolita, Memory, Nabokov
