What Humbert Humbert lusts after is deplorable.
But what about his relationship to his object of desires? After Humbert's divorce, and hospitalization, he joins "an expedition into the arctic Canada."[pg33]
"We lived in a prefabricated timber cabins amid a Pre-Cambrian world of granite. We had heaps of supplies -- the Reader's Digest, an ice cream mixer, chemical toilets, paper caps for Christmas. My health improved wonderfully in spite or because of all the fantastic blankness and boredom...I felt curiously aloof from my own self. No temptations maddened me."[pg33]
Absent that which he desires, Humbert is a stranger to himself. it speaks to how central a role desire, and the pursuit of that desire is, to his identity. He's taken jobs, a wife, and traveled across the world, pursuing his desire (nymphets).
Where have our desires led us?
What would happen to you if your desires were somehow removed from you?
Is his relationship to desire weird? Or is distinctly, painfully, part of what it means to be human?
Department of Reader Insight: Hazelgrouse says, "We all relate to HH better than we'd like to, and this doesn't mean we're closet nymphetophiles."
3 comments:
Good observation. His desire is his identity; listen to how he writes off practically his whole life in between the conquests of his two nymphets
(here HH describes his first glimpse of Lolita, in relation to Annabel) "...my Lolita was to eclipse completely her prototype. All I want to stress is that my discovery of her was a fatal consequence of that 'princedom by the sea" in my past. Everything in between the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and false rudiments of joy...." and shortly before this he says "The twenty-five years I had lived since then tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished."
Another interesting thing to note is how opposed he is at first to the lodging situation ("But there was no question of my settling there..."), which he's only pretending to consider out of "old-world politeness", since after all his original plans had fallen through. Then he sees Lolita.
Next chapter, he casually says in passing "A few days before I moved into the Haze house..". In a heartbeat he's willing to put up in this shabby and inconvenient living situation to be around this 11/12 year old girl. Desire.
Lolita's like, my favorite book ever.
I think that the emphasis you're placing on the offense you take at the subject matter-- every blog post has contained your judgment of it-- is sorta gypping you out of the finer points of the experience.
It's less "deplorable" and whatnot when you realize that it's like any other addiction; the thoughts, the preoccupation, are a proxy, a holdover from childhood trauma and later failure to socialize in a healthy way. The preoccupation, ironically, has very little to do with Lolita herself-- the author drives this home by making the girl as concretely repulsive in personality, demeanor and behavior as possible. The end of the book is rather different, but I'm not sure if you've finished it yet.
Even though it sounds harsh, I'm going to say "grow up" (in the most respectful way possible, of course). If you keep focusing on how repulsed you are, you'll miss all the good stuff; losing all the finer brushstrokes for the single largest is a sort of juvenile way to look at a book, weighty metaphor and conclusion aside. If you really hate the concept so much, you shouldn't have started with Lolita-- er, well, you should have probably chosen another author.
Or are you terrified that you might be able to relate to HH better than you'd like to? What if you quit being grossed out and got turned on-- could you deal with it?
Good point SVGL...the repulsion must remain in the background...and after not too long, it becomes more of fact than felt. As to being "turned on", I wouldn't go that far necessarily, but HH's agony is certainly with you. The way he relates these first weeks living with Lolita is beautiful, point blance; some may reject this because of fear that it's associated with the subject matter. We all relate to HH better than we'd like to, and this doesn't mean we're closet nymphetophiles...just that Nab is, um, an effing genius.
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