Subject
[NABOKOV-L] [THOUGHTS] Social Perversion and Preambulations
From
Date
Body
After watching Kieslowski's Dekalog ( film IV: Honor Father and Mother) things finally settled in my mind concerning Nabokov's novel, "Lolita."
If its title had only been one of the two offered by "Humbert Humbert" (and Nabokov, when he explains why he chose the name for his pedophile in an interview, facilitates the reader's confusion bt. "Author", his impersonations and John Ray Jr's preface*...), excluding a direct and exclusive reference to "Lolita," or if the book-covers and advertising enticements held Humbert's face, instead of Lolita's glasses, saddle-shoes or parts of her lithe body, perhaps its central theme (the inner world of a pedophile) could be more easily grasped, spoiling the world-wide success of his confessions. "Lolitahood" is our culture's sickness... The success of "Lolita," in fact, serves to demonstrate how perverse our culture is, how the magic words of a writer of genius and the nymphic world he conjures remains a source of stimulation and aesthetic bliss. Nabokov's book is a treaty about perversion, focusing on two kinds of its expressions as found in pedophilia ( Humbert's pathetic sexual immaturity and Quilty's artsy pornographic movies and Pavor Manor's orgies).
The novel's first lines are:
" 'Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,' such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates."
I have no heart to read again Alberto Moravia's short-stories and his novel, "Desideria," to find some of the specific instances that connect Moravia's work and Nabokov's "Lolita", "Ada" (Van's initiation in sex frequenting a shop with real and artificial roses on display), or his short-story featuring a satanic Frau Monde.
I remember that one of Moravia's paragraphs described a devilish witch and a young girl's hairless cleft ( perhaps the witch was such a young girl in disguise). Moravia's focus is clearly set on the more generalized perversion of our Western world and not, as in "Lolita," on the workings of a pervert's fantasies and strange cumplicities.
........................................................................................................
* - Not only an authorial extra-literary comment reappears in John Ray's Jr coinage of his patient's name, but Jr.Jr's vocabulary seems to partake of the quirks of his charge, as in the invention of the verb: "preambulates." Experts could opine? As I see it intuitively, the meaning of "amble", of leisurely "divagations" will probably not extend to transforming it into the verbal "ambulation."
In the internet I found: PREAMBULATE - Intransitive verb: To walk before.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) ... first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1594. Etymology: Preambulate \Pre*am"bu*late\, intransitive verb. [Latin expression praeambulare. See Preamble.]. (Websters 1913)
PREAMBLE: noun : an introductory statement; preface; introduction.; the introductory part of a statute, deed, or the like, stating the reasons and intent of what follows; a preliminary or introductory fact or circumstance. Origin: 1350-1400; ME < ML praeambulum, n. use of neut. of LL praeambulus walking before. See pre-, amble -Related forms: preambled, adjective -Synonyms: 1. opening, beginning; foreword, prologue, prelude.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
If its title had only been one of the two offered by "Humbert Humbert" (and Nabokov, when he explains why he chose the name for his pedophile in an interview, facilitates the reader's confusion bt. "Author", his impersonations and John Ray Jr's preface*...), excluding a direct and exclusive reference to "Lolita," or if the book-covers and advertising enticements held Humbert's face, instead of Lolita's glasses, saddle-shoes or parts of her lithe body, perhaps its central theme (the inner world of a pedophile) could be more easily grasped, spoiling the world-wide success of his confessions. "Lolitahood" is our culture's sickness... The success of "Lolita," in fact, serves to demonstrate how perverse our culture is, how the magic words of a writer of genius and the nymphic world he conjures remains a source of stimulation and aesthetic bliss. Nabokov's book is a treaty about perversion, focusing on two kinds of its expressions as found in pedophilia ( Humbert's pathetic sexual immaturity and Quilty's artsy pornographic movies and Pavor Manor's orgies).
The novel's first lines are:
" 'Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,' such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates."
I have no heart to read again Alberto Moravia's short-stories and his novel, "Desideria," to find some of the specific instances that connect Moravia's work and Nabokov's "Lolita", "Ada" (Van's initiation in sex frequenting a shop with real and artificial roses on display), or his short-story featuring a satanic Frau Monde.
I remember that one of Moravia's paragraphs described a devilish witch and a young girl's hairless cleft ( perhaps the witch was such a young girl in disguise). Moravia's focus is clearly set on the more generalized perversion of our Western world and not, as in "Lolita," on the workings of a pervert's fantasies and strange cumplicities.
........................................................................................................
* - Not only an authorial extra-literary comment reappears in John Ray's Jr coinage of his patient's name, but Jr.Jr's vocabulary seems to partake of the quirks of his charge, as in the invention of the verb: "preambulates." Experts could opine? As I see it intuitively, the meaning of "amble", of leisurely "divagations" will probably not extend to transforming it into the verbal "ambulation."
In the internet I found: PREAMBULATE - Intransitive verb: To walk before.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) ... first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1594. Etymology: Preambulate \Pre*am"bu*late\, intransitive verb. [Latin expression praeambulare. See Preamble.]. (Websters 1913)
PREAMBLE: noun : an introductory statement; preface; introduction.; the introductory part of a statute, deed, or the like, stating the reasons and intent of what follows; a preliminary or introductory fact or circumstance. Origin: 1350-1400; ME < ML praeambulum, n. use of neut. of LL praeambulus walking before. See pre-, amble -Related forms: preambled, adjective -Synonyms: 1. opening, beginning; foreword, prologue, prelude.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/