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94
Vladimir Nabokov
and discrete when it comes to depicting the mechanics of physical
passion. Lolita is full of colorful, even lurid, prose, but none of it is
devoted to describing acts of lust. Even Humbert Humbert observes,
immediately after the first time he and Dolores make love, “I am
not concerned with so-called ‘sex’ at all. Anybody can imagine those
elements of animality” (Lolita 136). Clearly, Lolita is not a book about
sex; it is a book about a man who is sexually obsessed. This leads to
a second, worthwhile, query: Is Vladimir Nabokov a pervert, a pedophile,
a sex maniac, or what?
This is a simple question, but one that opens the door to an
important set of issues in literary study. It is easy to forget that sometimes
readers, particularly relatively inexperienced readers, habitually
confuse the narrative voice with the authorial perspective. (This is
perhaps one reason such readers tend to refer to the author, and often
the characters, of literary works as “they,” as in “What do they mean
at the end of Hamlet by calling him a ‘sweet prince’?”) The difference
between the narrative mask and the authorial consciousness seems so
obvious to more experienced readers that we often forget how crucial
the discovery of that gap is to literary understanding. Lolita is an ideal
book to teach, or reinforce, that lesson. Initially, the novel’s narrative
voice is beguiling and seems to be presenting a strong legalistic case
justifying Humbert’s lust for Dolores. Because Humbert is trying so
hard, with such intellectual heavy artillery, to suggest that his thoughts
and actions are not evil, it can be easy at first to imagine that his
creator is making that case.
This confusion can be amplified by the fact that in some aspects
of their lives, Humbert Humbert and Vladimir Nabokov seem
similar: both are European and cosmopolitan, living in a more simple,
suburban America. Both have been college teachers. Both are multilingual,
and both are enormously widely read. But a second look at the
biographies of the fictional hero, and his real creator, make it very clear
that they are wholly different people. Humbert is from Switzerland,
Nabokov from Russia. The former’s parents were the proprietors of a
resort hotel, the latter’s were intellectual Russian aristocrats. Humbert
Humbert comes to America because he has inherited a business
from his uncle; Vladimir Nabokov came in flight from Nazis who
were overrunning Europe in 1940. Humbert entered into marriage
only to be near the child daughter of his short-lived wife; Nabokov
married Vera Slonin in 1925, they had a son Dmitri, and remained