RE: "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
Herbert Herbert's narration may be considered from the psychiatrist's armchair. If you wish to put your finger on the pathology in Mr. Herbert's case, Mr. Herbert readily helps you. He is perfectly qualified to diagnose himself and plays no games with you like he had with the psychiatrists he visited. However, to seek a diagnosis is to miss the thrust of the novel.
Mr. Herbert writes of Lolita, not of himself. His affection is contextual, not plot. She is the protagonist. He writes for love of her to honor her, to engrave her name in history, to speak to her from afar and later from beyond the grave. The story is her story - as he knew it, that is as a love story of his love for her.
Think of all the greatest maxims about love that you can. Love is blind. The heart does not choose who it loves. Love knows no law. Love can make no transgression. Love attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses. Nabokov presents a love so scandalous, even abhorrent and in such scintillatingly suggestive description, that the reader is on the edge of his tolerance. He feels the tension in Mr. Herbert's heart between the truth of these maxims, morality and the ethics of his culture (and the reader's own).
Could Herbert Herbert help loving whomsoever he loves? It is never wrong to love. And yet ... Lolita, Dolores, Dolly, Sweet Lolita, the nymphette. Can he ever be forgiven? No one can ever be sorry for having loved, but he feels remorse...
Thats the question: Did he really love her? I rather agree that he wants what Lolita embodies, the endearing innocence of the child. He behaves more like a predator even though he claims to be the victim. The fascinating part is they both, herbert herbert and lolita thrive on manipulating the other. Once they get what they thought they wanted or needed they lose the interest.
Oh but he did love her! Truly. Without a doubt. But did he know how to love? And was his love requited? It was not. He did not learn to love until the end after he had lost her.
Yes, he mourned his loss, but isn't that something you also do when you lose a possession? He tortures himself over her, tries to satisfy her needs, but does he really care about her? Can he even care about her? She will age, she will change, will he love her then? Isn't growing with another person and standing by her side through changes is what love is about? Otherwise its a fling, a passion, a need to be satisfied.
Posted using Partiko Android
All you say would be right if we were speaking, not of Herbert, but of a typical perverted neophyte in love. Herbert loves Lolita still when she outgrows the ripe, tender age of nymphetude. He cares that she was mistreated, that she receives a proper education, that she lives happily with her husband. By the very end his fixation with Lolita metamorphoses into what is recognizably - and touchingly so - love. The question I asked myself was "was it really love before then?" I think yes in a sense, but an unhealthy, ugly 'love.'