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ЯЗЫК ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ
LOLITA - THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
Griselda Danglli (Abazaj)
(Tirana, Albania)
This article deals with the analysis of Lolita seen through the lenses of the American society and norms of today. We will see that many observations of the American way of behaving and social norms still hold true even nowadays years after this novel was written. Nabokov, on the other hand, never accepted the fact that this novel probed into the very depths of American life and that his intentions were purely aesthetic. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of pedophilia, obvious in the book, is a postmodern concern of Americans today. Special attention is paid to the famous American writer Edgar Allan Poe, as without knowledge of his life and literary works, Lolita would not be deeply understood due to the fact that many references and allusions of Poe are obvious in the novel. The issue of consumerism and materialism will be examined as the core of the American identity.
Keywords: America, postmodernism, pedophilia, Poe, excess, materialism, consumerism
Being the most problematic novel of Nabokov, Lolita managed to be published at last in France in 1955. It was rejected by five publishers in America pretending that it was a pornographic novel, not penetrating into the book and thus not finding the art existing in this outstanding novel. They surely didn’t reject it because they understood that it alludes to American society, being in this way a parody of that society. In the mid- 1950s, Lolita’s volatile subject matter- the sexual passion of a middle aged European for a twelve year old American girl- set off a flurry of scandal and debate about the novel’s alleged obscenity [Alexandrov 1995:305]. Nabokov had no intention of mocking the United States as he had denied the general idea that Lolita personified the American society as Nabokov didn’t like to moralize because art for him should be done only for art’s sake. Art for Nabokov stands above society and its main aim is to satisfy the mind and heart and not to draw lessons.
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It is widely known that no author likes to be categorized or be called a moralist but I believe that art at its best is drawn from reality and as such it serves to humanity when by being satisfied, we learn. As Nabokov is a very capricious writer, he makes fun of the reader, he plays chess with him and as such we find in his fiction many unreliable narrators and why not taking into consideration the fact that we are dealing with an “unreliable” author: a real chess game as Nabokov likes it.
After several readings of Lolita, a careful reader and critic can realize that it mirrors the American life. Today most readers of American literature would join Appel in praising the achievement of this Russian-born “European Emigre” who in Lolita “re-created America so brilliantly, and in so doing...became an American writer [Alexandrov 1995:305]. The fact that it draws the negative sides of the American society doesn’t mean that he hated America. He has admitted in Strong Opinions that in America he is happier than in any other country. He feels intellectually at home in America. It is a second home in the true sense of the word.” On the contrary, it seems like he regrets some facets of the American society. Nabokov would not have liked to label Lolita in this way but it seems like Lolita is even more than an indictment of the American life.
The American culture nowadays is full of shortcomings in moral values but again they show extreme intolerance of the people violating what is left of social norms. Pedophilia is a social concern of the Americans today. Kincaid argues that we cannot get rid of pedophilia because we have invested so much in the eroticizing of the child [Kincaid 1992:4]. Being an unreliable narrator, Humbert deceives us by making the reader side with him. Not only Lolita but even we as readers are fascinated by his use of language, his naughty humor and the way he describes his love for her: sick love but real. Heather Jones argues that “Humbert can be viewed as possessing some measure of cultural prescience, and the reader is implicated by the sympathetic attention given to Humbert’s carefully crafted confessions” [Jones 1995:35].
One has to know a lot about Poe’s life and literary works in order to understand this masterpiece. Being America’s most problematic writer, alluded so much in Lolita, makes clear the fact that Lolita satirizes the American social norms. It is known that Poe’s life has been subject to psychoanalytic theories and Nabokov, finding Freud a rival, might have liked to satirize even his theories. Having the key to human psychopathology, Freud’s psychoanalysis could not save even the famous American writer Edgar Allen Poe but make his life subject of its analysis. The ha- 8
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tred that Nabokov had for biographers who poked their nose into writer’s affairs is well-known. He didn’t like to be an object of analysis and this is one of the causes that he writes a special kind of autobiography, which is more a work of art than a merely numbering of facts and events. And as he claims: “The years are passing my dear, and presently nobody will know what you and I know” [Nabokov 1969:226]. In order to mock Freud, Nabokov makes us believe that despite the loss of Humbert’s mother, Humbert has had a happy childhood and it’s not because of her death that he likes so much nymphets and becomes a pedophile. Moreover, Humbert ironically declares that if he had gone to a psychoanalyst many years ago, this tragedy would not have happened.
There are many similarities between Poe’s life and Humbert’s life. It is known that the early death of Poe’s mother, his marriage to Virginia, his very young cousin, and the fact that the death of beautiful women was a fascinating theme for Poe. Similarly, Humbert says: “My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three...” [Nabokov 1995:10]. We know the infatuation he has for nymphets (very young girls) and even the fact that Lolita dies at childbirth in the end. If we compare these statements with the above mentioned about Poe, we will find that they are similar. On the other hand, Humbert says: “I grew a happy a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.” [Nabokov 1995:10]. We notice here the difference with Poe’s life. Again Nabokov makes clear the mockery he makes to Freud. Similarities can be found even in the way of narration. Humbert’s first person narration brings to mind the narrators of Poe’s short stories where we find the same type of narrators who are mad, alcoholic or perverse.
Marie Bonaparte says that “Poe’s fixation on a dead mother was to bar him forever from earthy love.” [Bonaparte 1949:83]. The same thing happens to Humbert as he wants time to stop and by admitting that his love was a special one, he thinks of “aurochs and angels, the secret of double pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita” [Nabokov 1995:10]. Unlike Poe’s female characters, Nabokov’s ones in this novel are more American in their way of behaving. We have Charlotte, who pays little attention to her little girl Lolita and in order to escape from her responsibilities she even sends Lolita away in a campus in order to be alone with Humbert. The excessive freedom that Americans give to their children is like a coin with two sides. 9
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It is believed that Lolita is constructed among doubles, called otherwise doppelgangers. Humbert and Quilty are the most evident in this novel. The scene of Quilty’s assassination and his dialogue with Humbert brings to mind Poe’s tale “William Wilson” and one has to know this short story in order to understand the essence of this important passage in the novel. Quilty’s death is very symbolic at the end because it acts as a kind of resolution to Humbert’s other self. Immediately after taking Quilty’s life, Humbert gets rid of the dark side of himself by repenting for robbing Lolita’s childhood: “Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play... I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side but the absence of her voice from that concord” [Nabokov 1995: 308].
Lolita is a clear example of postmodernist society. Although it was written a lot of years ago, we notice that certain issues penetrating the novel still hold true nowadays. Heather Menzies Jones states that “Lolita, with its focus on consumer goods, clearly shows how insubstantial Humbert’s words are in the face of America’s materialistic culture” [Jones 1995:9]. We see Lolita eating a lot in many passages and at the end the last image we have of her is a fat pregnant young girl. As Poe was judged for his dark romanticism, Nabokov gives us earthly women, Lolita and Charlotte, whose behavior is vulgar in many cases. We see Lolita eating hamburgers, drinking colas and gum-chewing.
Although Nabokov never accepted the fact that Lolita signified the American nightmare, we understand that he judged the Americans for being excessive consumers, being disillusioned by the beautiful but empty and meaningless adverts. Nabokov has written satirically about the very childishness of the American soul and how we must take great pains to turn our faces away from the darkness [Jones 1995:9]. Such excessive consumption has a price of course. Humbert himself is influenced by adverts full of slimy young girls and the “Bland American Charlotte frightened me” [Nabokov 1995:83]. Humbert’s disgust with Charlotte’s body is justified as the American society is “a society enamored of the future” and it will “sweep away the mother because she is the past, the state of remaining” [Jones 1995:69].
Humbert is very careful with details. He gives us a list of Lolita’s greediness: “If some cafe sign proclaimed Ice-cold Drinks, she was automatically stirred, although all drinks everywhere were ice-cold. She it 10
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was to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster.” [Nabokov 1995: 148].
Nabokov is very careful with focusing on a very important detail of Americans: the excessive use of cars. At the time when the novel was written the car was a novelty and we know the childish desire Americans have for novelties. Humbert and Lolita use Charlotte’s car in order to travel through the roads and motels of America. Ellen Pifer argues that Humbert’s painful admission- one that sheds an altogether different light on the American landscape through which he travels- that his corruption of the child constitutes a crime against pristine nature and its boundless beauty. “We had been everywhere” he says of his cross country trek with Lolita. “We had really seen nothing...” Just as Humbert’s narrative account of his life with Lolita brings recognition of the poor, bruised child he exploited so his voyage into the past brings new discovery of America. In each case, the metaphor of a terra incognita, or unknown country, attests to his former blindness. [Alexandrov 1995: 309].
Although Nabokov “takes pains to explain to his readers that Lolita is not anti-American (a charge that he said pained him more than charges about the book’s immorality)” [Jones 1995: 55] we understand that Lolita personifies America itself as she is shaped and imbued by beautiful advertisements and magazines mirroring young girls, by consuming and destroying in this way childhood, and what is the core of the society, the family itself.
Bibliography
1. Alexandrov, Vladimir E. The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, Garland Publishing, INC. New York & London, 1995. pg. 305.
2. Bonaparte, Marie. The life and works of Edgar Allan Poe: a psychoanalytic interpretation. London : Imago, 1949.
3. Jones, Heather Menzies. Nabokov’s dark American dream: Pedophilia, Poe, and Postmodernism in Lolita. University of New York, 1995, pg. 35.
4. Kincaid, James. Child-Loving: the erotic child and Victorian culture. New York : Routledge, 1992.
5. Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1973.
6. Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revised. Penguin books, 1969, pg. 226.
7. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Penguin Books, 1995, pg.10.
8. Paglia, Camille. Sexual personae: art and decadence from Neferiti to Emily Dickinson. New York : Vintage, 1991. pg.572. 11
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