Lolita Quotes

4 consequences for the ethical positions. Because on the level of narration where Humbert narrates his story, Humbert the narrator is able to retrospectively comment on Humbert the character’s behavior. These instances of the narrating-I re-thinking the actions of the experiencing-I4 are expressed both directly and a little more indirectly. Humbert the narrator directly addresses Humbert the character when he says “As I look back at those seasick murals…I can only explain my behavior then by the mechanism of that dream vacuum wherein revolves a deranged mind; but at the time, it all seemed quite simple and inevitable to me” (Nabokov 122). And then there are instances of more indirect moral contemplations, as in the famous Davenport scene where
However I think there are indications too that weaken this interpretation of the novel. Even though he eventually fails to solipsisize Lolita into his possession (i.e. her escape, her growing up etc.), which undermines his artistic narcissism and pursuit of his own aesthetic bliss, he still continues in the second part to textualize his love to her.
Without his nymphet, he instead begins to create a literary love story and continues to possessively refer to her as “My Carmen” (244, 278, 280) – and to nymphic “my Lolita” (309), which is both the first and last word of the novel. Similarly, as he meets Lolita for the last time he asks her to “Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after” (278), invoking images of the fairy tale. I think this contradicts the assumption that Humbert progresses towards the authorial norm – and it indicates as well that the tension between Humbert and his audience remains complex.
Anne Kathrine Enevoldsen 13-05-15
Elective 3: How to Read Nabokov
6
But although we might not be able to reach any conclusion as to whether Humbert
I think the use of both bonding and estranging unreliability point to the constant play that goes on in the novel; on the one hand, Nabokov asks us to sympathize with Humbert – and on the other hand, he seems to ask us to distance ourselves from him. Beautiful language and brutal behavior exist simultaneously in the novel - but I do not think that the beauty of the language serves
Anne Kathrine Enevoldsen 13-05-15
Elective 3: How to Read Nabokov
7
to completely undermine the ethical dimension. Because while Humbert’s aesthetic obsession may be his powerful tool, it is also what reveals his faults. Nabokov certainly insists on the pleasure of
“aesthetic bliss” in literature, but he also distances himself from Humbert and his subject matter and invites the reader to look beyond Humbert’s prose. He does this through estranging and bonding unreliability, by undermining Humbert’s narration and by insisting on the limitations of the artist in relation to the world. So while Humbert and his audience may continue to quarrel after the novel has reached its end, and though the novel does not quite offer an overt moral message, I do not believe it can be said to be entirely un-ethical and neither can Nabokov be said to be a morally
empty