Term Paper on "Power of Words"

Term Paper 7 pages (2496 words) Sources: 8 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Power of Words: Nabokov's Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov's celebrated novel Lolita is a linguistic masterpiece which ranges its author in the same line with other geniuses, such as James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon. Admittedly, Nabokov's writings are situated on the brink between modernism and postmodernism. As many critics have commented, the language of Nabokov's fiction is all the more labyrinthine since English was a foreign or a second language for the author. Thus, it is arguable that Humbert is an unreliable narrator, who attempts to deceive and entrap the reader into his own world. What from an objective point-of-view would be only the abject and repelling story of a pedophile and a murderer becomes in Nabokov's hands an enchanted tale which absorbs the reader into its swirl. Language is thus the main device the author uses to take the reader to this enchanted 'Humbertland', the narrator's fascinating and repelling mind at the same time. Humbert is at once a pedophile and an absolute artist, who manages to steal the reader's thoughts from the real world and accommodate them to an enchanted, dream-like fairyland.

The multitude of symbols and fictional devices used by the author seems to be impossible to exhaust. The first and most puzzling aspect of the tale is certainly the narrator himself, a criminal and artist at the same time who instantly casts a spell on the reader and carries him into his own world. The distinction should be made however between a simple pathological case, such as it would be interpreted by a detached and analytical reader, and the profound artistic experience offered by the tangled world of Lolita. Through Humbert's vision, everything is transformed. What the reader would generally see as the abnormal, deviating mind of a pedophile is here made into a thrilling aesthetic game. The relationship between the reader, the author and the narrator of the book is extremely important in Lolita. There is thus a great tension between the reader and the narrator of the book, as Humbert attempts to draw his reader's mind inside the book and as he insinuates his dreams and fantasies on the audience. The narration moreover focuses on itself at many points in the novel, intending, in a postmodernist vein, to conquer the limits of language and capture through it the essence of a dream. It is not by accident therefore that the novel opens up with a dreamy interjection which tears open the labyrinth of language with an unexpected thrust. Humbert significantly begins by a short invocation of his nymphet's name: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my -- . My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."(Nabokov, 3) the language games begin thus with the very opening lines of the novel, where Humbert reflects on the tonalities of Lolita's name. From the very beginning thus, the reader is attracted into a void that the narrator is desperately trying to fill with the nymphet's magical presence. Already from the different derivatives of the name Dolores Haze, Humbert forms a brief sketch of his Lolita: "She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."("Lolita," 3) the multiple names she has vary according to the way in which Humbert perceives her, all of them having a particular signification. The name 'Dolores Haze' translates already a part of Lolita's qualities as the nymphet she is in Humbert's vision. Thus, 'Dolores' is probably an allusion to pain or 'dolor', while 'Haze' tokens the misty and edgy fantasy that surrounds her. The painful mystery and dream-like state produced by the nymphet are already identifiable in her name. The story of Lolita's 'predecessor', Annabel, is another hint at the poetic ideal that is hid behind the pervert reality of Humbert's actions. The literary allusion to Poe's Annabel Lee is significant in so much as it shows the narrator as a dreamer or a poet, who merely shares his dream with the audience.

As a matter of fact, Humbert lures the reader into believing that repulsiveness he might feel when reading the story is due only to his less poignant perception as compared to that of the author. Humbert already attempts to narrow the circle and entrap the reader into his vision, by making him share his perception. Cunningly, he presents his 'theory', according to which only certain girls between the age of nine and twelve can be regarded as 'nymphets', while the other are plain, normal children. Moreover, this heightened sense of perception and the ability to distinguish a nymphet from a plain girl is given only to an artist or a madman: "You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your -- and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine..."("Lolita," 10) Through his discourse technique thus the author draws the reader into his world, attempting to impose a certain vision on him.

Not accidentally, the novel is one of quest and permanent traveling, as Humbert and his Lolita flee through the America, crossing borders and drawing their own traveling map. This only emphasizes the knightly but sinful quest at the same time that Humbert had taken up. Significantly, as Jenkins emphasizes, the Humbert's dream is at once sinful, idealistic and empty. As many hints in the novel indicate, Humbert painfully attempts to reach his unreachable, elusive dream. Also, very significantly, one of the places in the novel which constitutes a great symbol is a certain hotel called 'The Enchanted Hunters'. The name translates at once, Humbert's goals: he himself is an enchanted hunter, as he is under the spell of his dream nymphet and as he hunts her permanently from the beginning to the end of the dream. He is both hunter and hunted by his dream. Moreover, the hotel room is notably a place of parody, reflection and repetition, as Humbert emphasizes: "Parody of a hotel corridor. Parody of silence and death."("Lolita, 88) the hotel room is a trope for Humbert's lonely and empty dream. The first glimpse of the room shows the bed and its reflection in the mirror, significantly displacing reality and transforming it into simulacra: "There was a double bed, a mirror, a double bed in the mirror, a closet door with a mirror, a bathroom door ditto, a blue-dark window, a reflected bed there, the same in the closet mirror, two chairs, a glass-topped table, two bedtables, a double bed... "("Lolita," 88) the bed is obviously the symbol of the erotic passion that binds Humbert. The real bed is already 'double' and by reflection it becomes only a simulacrum. Thus, through linguistic representation, everything becomes empty and devoid of holiness. According to Jenkins, amid all these reflections and representations, there is no holy ground: "Amid the many reflections and repetitions, there is no holy ground. Such displacement allows Humbert a related conceit: with so many beds in the room, there can be no malfeasance, misbehavior, or "The word is incest,' said Lo -- and walked into the closet" (119). Nor can the hotel closet serve as a cloister for Lolita: the idea of sanctuary inside the grail castle is a false hope, as both Perceval and Lancelot discovered to their dismay."(Jenkins, 225) at the same time however, this makes the place into an enchanted ground, the world inside the 'looking glass', as seen by Lewis Carroll. The enchantment is even more potent as Humbert attempts to drug Lolita every night and satisfy his erotic desire without actually doing any harm to her body: "She was again fast asleep, my nymphet, but still I did not dare to launch upon my enchanted voyage. La Petite Dormeuse ou l'Amant Ridicule. Tomorrow I would stuff her with those earlier pills that had so thoroughly numbed her mummy."("Lolita," 97) Lolita is thus under the spell of narcotics, while Humbert is drowned into his erotic and poetic dream. His ideal becomes nothing more than an empty simulacrum since Lolita never actually consents to his will. The hotel is probably thus the most significant place where these encounters between them take place. Humbert himself observes that his romance is 'fake', only a game: "I knew, of course, it was but an innocent game on her part, a bit of backfisch foolery in imitation of some simulacrum of fake romance, and since (as the psychotherapist, as well as the rapist, will tell you) the limits and rules of such girlish games are fluid, or at least too childishly subtle for the senior partner to grasp -- "("Lolita," 84) Through language and fiction thus, the narrator carries his reader to an enchanted and infinite place in which reality and representation are always double, as mere simulacra.… READ MORE

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