Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov

Lolita, written by the Russian-English author Vladimir Nabakov, is considered one of the best novels ever.  It has been in various “best novels” lists. It was seeing it  in many such lists, that made me pick it up many years ago – and I eventually read it, recently. Written on a subject considered taboo, the narrator, Humbert Humbert’s wry humour, subtle descriptions of sex with his obsessive nymphets’ - using ironically  the most decorous language imaginable, certainly makes for a treat for the lover of literature. It was a slow read for me, as I went through, grinning at the wry humour at times, shocked at the disclosures at others, the rigmarole of justifications at times of his actions, at certain others. Here is one  excerpt; the first of which is his identification of one of his precious nymphets:

“You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.”

I am sure this excerpt is enough to ignite in those who love the finely written word, of what the reader may expect within these pages.

Here is another excerpt which hints at what the narrator may have been up to, unknown to his fantasized , in a chance encounter. The sheer finesse with which “the dirty” is narrated, is amazing.

 "I felt proud of myself. I had stolen the honey of a spasm without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done. The conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady's new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact."

If one analyses the characters created and presented in this work, although all of them are presented from the point of view of Humbert,  with his impression of them serving as a modulator, the reader gets the impression that the man is a fair judge of characters. But then he has to be, given how closely his observes, as the example of his identification of a nymphet quoted above  prove. For example here’s how he sees Jean, a character of little consequence in the book:

“She was very tall, wore either slacks with sandals or billowing skirts with ballet slippers, drank any strong liquor in any amount, had had two miscarriages, wrote stories about animals, painted, as the reader knows, lakescapes, was already nursing the cancer that was to kill her at thirty-three, and was hopelessly unattractive to me.”

The way he describes his wife, a union of opportunity is further proof of this.

The narrator successfully paints himself most absurd , at times most incompetent ( i.e. the finale of the book, where he has his revenge, and how difficult it was to achieve it, even when his target was a sitting duck ) and the intellectual depth he immerses to justify his orientation – yet, the guilt raising its head every now and again, at which times the narrator almost implores the readers to look at his case his with just eyes, with a little flexibility – maybe more than a little – thrown in for good measure.

This is, to a certain degree a road trip novel, and to a larger level it deals with the psychological makeup of how a pedophile would go about reaching towards his goals. The fact that the man in question is an intellectual, and describes the details of his conquest, his loss, his revenge  and his fall without an iota of crudity, and from start to end is narrated in a language of such exquisite finesse, which I felt was almost beyond a non-native speaker of the language, makes this an all important book in many fronts. The main point is the taboo subject no doubt – but this book has much, much more to offer than that controversial subject.