In a message dated 21/03/2012 01:12:13 GMT Standard Time, jansy@AETERN.US
writes:
Anthony Stadlen: "...That at least one level of
Nabokov's book should be making fun of Freud by treating sexual abuse of a
young girl as a disguised symbol of enchanted butterfly-hunting, rather than
the reverse, struck me as immediately plausible [ ]Diana
Butler saw Humbert's guilt -- in so far as he felt it -- at having
destroyed Lolita's childhood as symbolising Nabokov's guilt at taking the life
of his 'little butterfly'."
JM: I couldn't get your
point
I'm not sure what you couldn't get. Perhaps my "rather than the
reverse" is ambiguous?
"My" point -- or rather, Diana Butler's -- was her hypothesis that
Nabokov simply reverses "Freudian" symbolism.
Butler's "Nabokov"'s "Freud" would presumably interpret a
manifest narrative "man hunts, catches, and
impales butterfly" as a way of concealing and revealing
the latent narrative "man hunts, seduces,
and rapes girl".
Butler's "Nabokov" allegedly invites us to interpret
his manifest narrative "man hunts, seduces, and rapes
girl" as a way of concealing and revealing the latent
narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales
butterfly".
Anthony Stadlen