Subject
[NABOKOV] Lolita: Quilty and HH
From
Date
Body
Both movies, Kubrick's and Lyne's, present a fateful encounter bt. Quilty and HH from the start.
VN's script indicates it and probably this important choice, unlike what is told in the novel, has been followed by the two different directors. In this way we automatically assume that there is an independent lecturer, play-wright Quilty, brother to an ivory dentist, who has enjoyed Charlotte Haze's favors, who has enough time and money to follow HH in order to steal his unique (to his eyes) Lolita, and lay the trails for a paper-chase...
What strikes me, now, is that by having the confrontation bt. Q and HH from the very first and HH's arrest, Quilty's real existence becomes unquestionable. This is not so clear in the novel. We have HH's "Confessions" prefaced by John Ray Jr. and that's all.
We have a secondary information that HH was arrested because he murdered Quilty. He was not jailed because he seduced a minor. All these informations derive from HH's confessions which alternate moments of sanity and dellusional constructions addressed to an imaginary jury.
Lolita has been studied very thoroughly so there is nothing new left to be asked and which has not been commented and explained elsewhere. While going thru VN's Lolita screen-script today and retaining a lingering echo of Pale Fire, I could not avoid thinking about the other fateful encounter in which Shade is murdered by Gradus while Kinbote watches ( to explain "Pale Fire's" supposedly missing last line.)
In a way we could consider the novel "Pale Fire" as resulting from Kinbote's "Confessions" while imprisioned in his Cedarn cave-cell.
(How about that for a kriptomnesiac shock?)
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
VN's script indicates it and probably this important choice, unlike what is told in the novel, has been followed by the two different directors. In this way we automatically assume that there is an independent lecturer, play-wright Quilty, brother to an ivory dentist, who has enjoyed Charlotte Haze's favors, who has enough time and money to follow HH in order to steal his unique (to his eyes) Lolita, and lay the trails for a paper-chase...
What strikes me, now, is that by having the confrontation bt. Q and HH from the very first and HH's arrest, Quilty's real existence becomes unquestionable. This is not so clear in the novel. We have HH's "Confessions" prefaced by John Ray Jr. and that's all.
We have a secondary information that HH was arrested because he murdered Quilty. He was not jailed because he seduced a minor. All these informations derive from HH's confessions which alternate moments of sanity and dellusional constructions addressed to an imaginary jury.
Lolita has been studied very thoroughly so there is nothing new left to be asked and which has not been commented and explained elsewhere. While going thru VN's Lolita screen-script today and retaining a lingering echo of Pale Fire, I could not avoid thinking about the other fateful encounter in which Shade is murdered by Gradus while Kinbote watches ( to explain "Pale Fire's" supposedly missing last line.)
In a way we could consider the novel "Pale Fire" as resulting from Kinbote's "Confessions" while imprisioned in his Cedarn cave-cell.
(How about that for a kriptomnesiac shock?)
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