JM:
Dear Hafid and List,
It’s a pity that you like many others, return to
Nabokov’s Freud without letting the theme (psychoanalysis, unconscious) breathe
and grow. Is it fundamental to refer to a “Freudian vaseline” to criticize Lyne?
Since I cannot speak as literary critic or writer and, probably, even as a
reader I'll be unable to avoid departing from a Freudian practice,
you render me mute (perhaps that’s the whole point?)
For me (a Freudian), HH’s sentence, as regards Lolita
having been “safely solipsized”, is not ambiguous at all. It indicates that he
hasn’t touched her in an illicit way. His orgasm was achieved by his ghostly
fantasizings while in contact with her indifferent, apple munching, totally clad
body. Only later on did he defile her, that is, he ignored her “innocence as a
child” by acting out his fantasies on her corporeal being. This situation is
more clearly represented in his other novel, “The Enchanter.”
I forgot to mention that, considering HH’s project to
expiate his guilt towards Lolita for as long as he lived, placing himself at the
mercy of a jury (and facetiously incriminating himself more and more while
arguing his case – and we must always remember that he was only charged for
having murdered Quilty), he might have killed Quilty exactly because he needed
to be judged as a criminal. In this case Nabokov, by killing HH from a coronary
thrombosis before his earthly trial, has not been at all merciful (has he
condemned unconverted HH directly to a Christian hell, or only to a void?),
although your point about his employ of a dramatic and artistic solution is
held. And yet I don’t see why the readers are left with a moral
dilemma.
The “safely solipsized” theme may be considered without a recourse to psychoanalysis when we read Rilke’s arguments, after he worked over Maurice Maeterlink's ideas, and his poetic drama “The White Princess.” Rilke was working on “words” that were unrelated to action and space, creating a suspended world in which “Zeit ist Raum” (hear “Zeit ist Traum”): words were “useless” in the ordinary world of human praxis. I know that Nabokov mentioned Maeterlinck in "Lolita." but I don't think he ever explicitly referenced Rainier M. Rilke, although the developments related to "Zeit is Raum" ("Time is Space") can be found in "Ada, or Ardor", Ch. Four, through Van's philosophical musings.
Best,
Jansy