''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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LOLITA
LAUGHTER IN
THE DARK
There seems to exist no relation at all between the
early novel The Eye and the much later Lolita. However,
a relation can be established if one recalls one of
the conclusions that emerged from The Eye. That novel
ends on a note of despair. It is the first novel (before
Pnin and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight) to
illustrate and dramatize the fact that people tend to
see other persons not as these really are, but that
their impressions of others are qualified and determined
by their own characteristics, preoccupations or
wishes. As a consequence they see, judge, react to,
hate or get attached to, not real persons but persons
of their own invention, "phantoms" that have no existence
outside the minds of their inventors. The result
is the impossibility of genuine contact and communication,
isolation, loneliness and unhappiness. This
is what eventually determines the relationship of
Humbert Humbert, who insists on seeing in Lolita a
nymphet instead of a little girl, and Lolita, who
comes to regard Humbert as a pervert and a dirty old
man.
This looks rather like a commonplace of literature.
However, it has emerged from The Eye that with Nabokov
this theme is intimately connected with his central
concern, namely his quest for "true reality". Humbert's
obsession, too, can be seen in this context, for it is
his yearning for something truly real, for some pure,