Waiting for a Title

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Waiting for a Title

Who is Nabokov, What is Humbert? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of, or at least that's what they are supposed to be made of. After reading Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, written almost a half a century ago, one must wonder what he was thinking as he penned the book. Nabokov tells us in his essay, "On a Book Entitled Lolita," that his sole purpose in writing such a controversial novel, had "no purpose other than to get rid of that book"(Brink 311). Nabokov's not-so-clear explanation leads many minds to wonder about the "true meaning" of Lolita. One of the most often asked questions, is, of course, Nabokov's personal sexual preference: was he a pedophile? It seems unimaginable that a person could write the tale of such an incredible obsession and that, that obsession could be pure fiction: "The patterns of Lolita have psychological as well as aesthetic significance, and Humbert's language is more than a virtuoso display of effects: it is a strong but delicate instrument that registers the slightest, as well as the wildest, occillations of Humbert's distressed mind and heart"(Pifer 110). One example of Humbert's obsession with Lolita can be found on page 65 in The Annotated Lolita: I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita. She would be thirteen on January 1. In two years or so she would cease being a nymphet and would turn into a "young girl," and then into a "college girl"--that horror of horrors. The word "forever" referred only to my own passion, to the eternal Lolita as reflected in my blood. The Lolita whose iliac crests had not yet flared, the Lolita that today I could touch and smell and hear and see, the Lolita of strident voice and the rich brown hair--of the bangs and the swirls at the sides and the curls at the back, and the sticky hot neck, and the vulgar vocabulary--"revolting," "super," "luscious," "goon," "drip"--that Lolita, my Lolita, poor Catullus would lose forever. So how could I afford not to see her for two months of summer insomnias? Two whole months out of the two years of her remaining nymphage." For any reader, among the main issues of Lolita are representations of incest, child-molestation, obsession, and pedophilia. This essay will examine relevant details in Nabokov's biography and attempt to discover the connection between Humbert Humbert and Nabokov.

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