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Re: QUERY: Lolita's subjectivity and America
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SS-H: I respectfully disagree with this conclusion. While it is true that Humbert's first person narrative does create an illusory Lolita, the intricate patternings and images underlying that prose, reveal quite a bit about Dolores Haze, her real relationship with her mother, the loss of her brother and father, her teenage dreams and her adult difficulties. This seems to me Nabokov's extraordinary achievement in Lolita--- and one that is often overlooked. S.Stringer-Hye
Suellen,
Thank you for expressing your "disagreement" about a trend of conclusions that solipsises Lolita.
Whenever I re-read the lines I just selected to post on HH's "my Lolita" confessions ( to contrast them with the "other") I'm moved to tears, over and over. VN's tenderness and pain speaks there,through HH, and his private "dolores", his humanity.
And we can also reach out, through him, to every tortured Lolita child, feeling each and everyone, one by one.
There is also his shattering discovery about past dreams and present predicaments, of which I repeat only one line:
through the musk and the mud, through the dirt and the death, oh God, oh God. And what is most singular is that she, this Lolita, my Lolita, has individualized the writer's ancient lust, so that above and over everything there is - Lolita.
Jansy
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Suellen,
Thank you for expressing your "disagreement" about a trend of conclusions that solipsises Lolita.
Whenever I re-read the lines I just selected to post on HH's "my Lolita" confessions ( to contrast them with the "other") I'm moved to tears, over and over. VN's tenderness and pain speaks there,through HH, and his private "dolores", his humanity.
And we can also reach out, through him, to every tortured Lolita child, feeling each and everyone, one by one.
There is also his shattering discovery about past dreams and present predicaments, of which I repeat only one line:
through the musk and the mud, through the dirt and the death, oh God, oh God. And what is most singular is that she, this Lolita, my Lolita, has individualized the writer's ancient lust, so that above and over everything there is - Lolita.
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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