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Fw: Humbert's pedophilia on film
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:46:40 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum Dear List and Sandy, Andrew, Anthony ...
There were so many postings on the theme of Humbert's pedophilia on film that I
find a certain difficulty to answer Andrew Brown´s very careful recent posting
( specifically, his answer to me)
He wrote: John Ray Jr´s preface is, in my view, Nabokov performing -- and
simultaneously mocking -- the convention of having a "professional" from the
legal, ethical, or medical community, tack a moral onto any text that might
cause worries for a publisher.
Answering comment: I agree with you, but I´d like to add that it also serves to
"frame" ( doubly, it seems) HH´s memoirs, as if this contour could promote a
certain critical distance in the reader from the dangers of HH´s
seductiveness.
And yet, it only adds one more trick to his sourcerer´s bag.
I haven´t yet read the entire article by George Ferger on " Who´s Who in the
Sublimelight", Nabokov Studies,8,2004 ( where he discusses Ray´s preface in
connection with Quilty & HH) but I found there a reminder of VN´s very
interesting remarks, which I shall reproduce in part:
"After doing my impersonation of suave John Ray(...) any comments coming stright
from me may strike one - may strike me, in fact - as an impersonation of
Vladimir Nabokov talking about his own book".
I have the impression that what has prompted me to contribute to this discussion
about how to present pedohpilia on film was the realization that a special
"framing" was indeed necessary to create some doubt in the general spectator or
give at least an inkling about HH´s "monstrous compulsion" that arose from
another angle which was not exclusively HH´s own.
AB: I was not discussing HH´s guilt or his moral responsibilty towards Lolita.
I wished to comment only on what I believe were certain pragmatic film-making
choices made by Kubrick and Lyne. Neither film shows Humbert Humbert behind
bars (...) I'm not sure that I can accept Humbert Humbert as expecting
clemency from any imaginary jury. He has no remorse for killing Quilty(...) As
HH says, these notes are written not to save his head, but to save his soul.
More importantly, he has made the condition that no one will read this text
while Lolita is alive (...) I don't see HH expecting a "healing process." He
regrets stealing his victim's childhood. But he will never reject his obsession
with nymphets (...) HH was able to feel, at last, an abject, tender love for
his captive. And he instantly set out to commit murder in the first degree.
comments: I must have included you in my too hasty and general comment about
what I understood as an excessive preoccupation with HH´s moral responsibilies
concerning Lolita while leaving aside the fact that he was behind bars because
of his murder of Quilty. Please, excuse me for that.
In my opinion there were various different moods in HH´s memoirs and I sometimes
detected an exculpatory delusion that the description of his love for Lolita
would soften the accusation against him.
As you wrote, he could "feel a tender love for his captive" - at times.
I don´t believe he was writing either to save his head or his soul but for his
own pleasure. There were oscillations in his mood which I understood as a
result of his various conflicting emotions ( "good" and "bad"?).
I didn´t mean that he expected a "healing process".
I know that something that looks like an intensification of madness appears in
the psychotic process which actually means an attempt at "healing":there is an
effort to recreate a reality ( through chiefly artistic, albeit delusional
attempts) in order to re-establish some kind of "world" to inhabit.
In this context it is important to remember that VN once wrote that one of his
first inspirations about this novel started in relation to a drawing made by an
ape in Le Jardin des Plantes: the animal drew his own bars.
Actually, HH not only wrote his memoirs to serve as "his own bars" but his
entire life was an expression of the imprisionment caused by compulsive acts
and fantasies or of the lack of liberty that results from living under a
delusion.
Jansy
.......................................................................................
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum /// From: A.S.
I think Sandy Drescher, Kellie Dawson and Andrew Brown all go a long way to
answering my question about why the "Lolita" films censor out HH's psychiatric
(as opposed to sentimental psychoanalytic) status.
Thank you.
Anthony Stadlen
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum /// From: A.B.
Anthony,
I did not address this in my note on Monday because I it is probably a small
point. I have avoided the word "censored" to describe Kubrick's and Lyne's
decisions, because I think this word connotes interference on the part of
other powers over the filmmakers' choices. I don't think a repressive
censorship was exercised over either artist. I believe they reached their
decisions on their own. Sorry if this is just a matter of word choice with no
other significance.
Jansy,
I agree strongly that the isue of HH's legal guilt is scanted entirely in
Lolita, but for good reason. Nabokov often said he was not a writer of "big
idea" books. He loved the particular detail and had no use for "general ideas"
such legalisms or "social guilt." The "beautiful literary revery" is the
novel's essense. John Ray Jr´s preface is, in my view, Nabokov performing --
and simultaneously mocking -- the convention of having a "professional" from
the legal, ethical, or medical community, tack a moral onto any text that might
cause worries for a publisher. Hitchcock's Psycho, for example, has a similar
tacked-on ending which, to me, becomes funnier with each passing year.
In my comments, yesterday (Monday) I was not discussing HH´s guilt or his moral
responsibilty towards Lolita. I wished to comment only on what I believe were
certain pragmatic film-making choices made by Kubrick and Lyne. Neither film
shows Humbert Humbert behind bars. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think it's
clear in either movie that the story is the postumously released memoir of a
criminal.
To address a point that seems to have been made in earlier posts that I've
missed (my apologies), I'm not sure that I can accept Humbert Humbert as
expecting clemency from any imaginary jury. He has no remorse for killing
Quilty, and feels the charge itself should be dropped. As HH says, these notes
are written not to save his head, but to save his soul. More importantly, he
has made the condition that no one will read this text while Lolita is
alive.Even though these notes may be used in "hermetic sessions," I don't see
HH expecting a "healing process." He regrets stealing his victim's childhood.
But he will never reject his obsession with nymphets. And rather than see his
love
for Lolita mitigating the crime of murder, it would seem that the humanity she
ultimately engendered in him, a degree of motional depth that might have
cleansed him of the (lifelong pattern of) violence, failed completely. HH was
able to feel, at last, an abject, tender love for his captive. And he instantly
set out to commit murder in the first degree.
As poetic and as "fancy" as we can count on a murderer's style to be, HH is,
from first to last, a selfish and evil brute. He shares the sensibility of
Hitler's favorite architect, Albert Speer. A civilized, well-read,
talented,artistic Nazi who knew, from first to last, that his leader's
objective was the foulest genocide that a genocide-intoxicated century ever
vomited up.
Sandy,
As indicated in a previous paragraph, I do not at all think that, for Lolita,
Nabokov decided to abandon his lifelong disapproval of the the general idea.
So, his view of America could not be less "panoramic." It's a brilliant jewel
box of individual images, from gas station signs, to neon shadows in puddles,to
candid shots of the different types of male and female motor court managers,the
different types of hitchhikers... Specifics. Thousands of specifics. But not a
"panoramic" view. Anymore than VN's examination and cataloging of individual
lepidopteral genitalia was panoramic.
Consequently, I cannot find Nabokov "examining a liberal American tendency to
"explain" evil - to find that psychology or history mitigated moral repugnance,
as with Bolshevism or Psychoanalysis."
But I may be badly misunderstanding something here. Especially since I cannot
find a way to classify Bolshevism and Psychoanalysis together.
"Not only on film, but in the text as well, it is important that the
viewer/reader become at least somewhat seduced by the attractive, urbane
European. For when that happens, a degree of complicity can be brought home in
the final hill-top scene."
I'm going to have to forego accepting any degree of complicity with HH. I don't
think that this was VN's intention. But I will try to review posts I've missed
over the past couple weeks, in which I've been drawn away from the List in
order to do other writing, and I certainly apologize for what may look like
willful stupidity on my part for having mangled anyone's ideas.
Andrew Brown
Something I forgot to add.
It's interesting how our having only HH's word for the events of Lolita is
similar in a way to our having only Charle's Kinbote's word for so much of Pale
Fire. When we think of how much different a filmed Lolita might be if a director
and writer chose to use all that Kubrick and Lyne neglected, think how different
our filmed Pale Fires might be if one was Shadean, and the other Kinbotean. Or,
more fascinating still, a Pale Fire told largely from the POV of Sybil and
Hazel.
----- End forwarded message -----