Here, Nabokov does more than write about a self-contained world of horror in a beautiful way. He also presents a curious way in which the human mind can experience that world of horror. One of the things that always bothered me most was how my awful recollections could come back to me in exquisite wrapping: how I could recall overripe apples thumping to the ground in the night, a shooting star, or Bach being played on the piano in an adjacent room. In attempting to make sense of what happened to me, I seized on those moments as “evidence” of the fact that I “liked” what had occurred. If I could focus on the loveliness of Prelude No. 1 in C Major as something disgusting and illegal was going on, wasn’t I just reveling in that which was disgusting and illegal? I punished myself for a way of thinking that, reading Lolita, was revealed to me as a survival tactic. I realized, for the first time, that there was nothing wrong or strange with how I had been coping, by stepping out of the horror and into the beauty that was running parallel to it.
One problem of telling a story, any story, real or imagined, is the problem of angles. Is there a correct one? And does anyone have the right to marvel at the one that shows the glistening, freshly raped Lolita with her vacant eyes? Before Nabokov, I never really noticed how the world doesn’t bend to the horror of our individual experiences, it just carries on being the world. I would chew away at myself, because I couldn’t divorce something sickening from something that was still very much life, into which light shone occasionally, even when it was only neon. Lolita is a reminder that beauty neither de-claws nor lulls evil, it just exists, and might as well be accepted since it isn’t going anywhere.
Humbert’s terrifying, self-justifying brilliance is a relief in its own right, because it’s hard to admit that you tried to save yourself and failed. But it helps to realize what you were up against. How could have Lolita, no matter how smart-mouthed and full of bravado, outwitted Humbert? How could I have outwitted He Who Spectacularly Betrayed? The illusion that I could have done a thing to save myself — and hence was guilty, since I obviously hadn’t tried hard enough — was impossible to maintain after contemplating the merciless talent of a person like Humbert, how easily he got the girl where he wanted her to be, how effortlessly he rationalized his actions, how magnificently he described his odyssey and tied it up with a pretty bow.
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I think something we all admire about Lolita is how terrifyingly beautiful (or beautifully terrifying?) the book is. I haven't read it in a few years but I do remember a sort of rosy glow draped over the whole thing, infusing every word, even as so many horrific events transpired (I think the newer film captured this atmosphere well by using a light, softening filter and choosing actors with subtle but lovely features). But the idea of beauty running parallel to horror is compelling, as if beauty does not infuse horror but exists somewhere at its edge: something into which you can step and bask in spite of the horror. In that case I might use the word "peripheral," or even "orbiting" (the image conceived is of a bright, crisp apple with a dark spot near the center: you may consume the surrounding beauty despite the rot, which can be isolated but not ignored? Something like that?). Or maybe even "centripetal": as if the beauty of the world is in motion, surrounds the core of the horrible event and attempts to penetrate it. But "parallel"? I'm imagining a stretch of treacherously gnarled woodland and a moonlit stream running through it: step from the dangerous dark into the stream, wade your mind in the water. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that word choice. Of course this has more to do with the way an individual mind regards and conceptualizes abstractions such as beauty (and horror) than anything, and how the individual mind attempts to render them palpable; it's incredibly personal. Regardless I think it's illuminating to hear an abuse survivor talk about Lolita as a book that saved her -- that helped her handle the complexity of her unique situation -- because one would typically expect such a book to further traumatize, given that in many ways it asks readers to empathize with a child rapist. Still: in the end, empathy does not negate what's happened; Nabokov never asks us to forgive or excuse Humbert's actions, nor does he implicate Lolita as the "little whore," and those are important distinctions to make. It is culture that has turned the terms "Lolita" and "nymphet" into condemnatory ones that appeal to rape apologists and misogynists.
Anyway. Here is a quote from a 1964 interview with Nabokov from Playboy I particularly love, as it explains the generation of the various names given to our heroine:
For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny -- 1 mean, a small German hare.
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