A. Stadlen [to JM: Flabby, helpless old man? I always
thought Humbert was in his forties]
Humbert was 36 or 37 when he met the
12-year-old Lolita. He is not even the "middle-aged" man he is usually said, by
careless readers, to be. Their ages are almost the same as those of Herr K. and
Dora in Freud's case study.
JM: You mean
that Lolita and HH had the same difference in age as the
one bt. Freud's famous "Herr K and Dora", I suppose? Recently,
once gain but now in Brazil, there was an article about a fabulously
rich doctor in Bahia state who bought virgins from poor
parents to deflower them ( two thousand virgins, give or take one). He had
more than twenty children out of wedlock, two of them later to become their
lovers, as also the children they bore incestuously ( we'd get a
father that is grandfather, uncle, cousin or brother at the same
time, or something in that line).
Like one of HH's wildest dreams of engendering a litter of
Lolitas (one of the most shocking parts of "Lolita", as I see it).
His name was Antonio Luciano Brandão and, in an interview, he compared his
incestuous yearnings to what can be found in the animal kingdom: "Birds
have no father, only a mother".