Lolita
Encyclopedia
Lolita is a novel
by Vladimir Nabokov
, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator
, middle-aged literature professor Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after she becomes his stepdaughter. His private nickname for Dolores is Lolita.
The book is also notable for its writing style. The narrative is highly subjective as Humbert draws on his fragmented memories, employing a sophisticated prose style, while attempting to gain the reader's sympathy through his sincerity and melancholy, although near the end of the story Humbert refers to himself as a "maniac" who "deprived" Dolores "of her childhood", and he shortly thereafter states "the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest
" in which they were involved.
After its publication, Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious girl. The novel was adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick
in 1962
, and again in 1997
by Adrian Lyne
. It has also been adapted several times for stage and has been the subject of two operas, two ballets, and an acclaimed but failed Broadway musical.
Lolita is included on Times list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005
. It is fourth on the Modern Library
's 1998 list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th century. It also made the World Library's list of one of The 100 Best Books of All Time
.
mother in Paris, who is obsessed with young girls, whom he refers to as "nymphets". Humbert suggests that this obsession results from the death of a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh (a deliberate play by Nabokov on the poem "Annabel Lee
", by Humbert's favorite poet Edgar Allan Poe
, which also involves a dead girl and her left behind lover). After an unsuccessful marriage to a Polish doctor's adult daughter, Valeria, Humbert moves to Ramsdale, a small New England
town, in 1947 to write. He rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a widow. While Charlotte tours him around the house, he meets her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (also known as Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo and L), with whom—partially due to her uncanny resemblance to Annabel—he immediately becomes infatuated. Humbert stays at the house only to remain near her. While he is obsessed with Lolita, he disdains her crassness and preoccupation with contemporary American popular culture, such as teen movies and comic books.
While Lolita is away at summer camp, Charlotte, who has fallen in love with Humbert, tells him that he must either marry her or move out. Humbert agrees to marry Charlotte in order to continue living near Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her, as well as his lust for Lolita, until she reads his diary. Upon learning of Humbert's true feelings and intentions, Charlotte plans to flee with Lolita and threatens to expose Humbert as a "detestable, abominable, criminal fraud." Fate intervenes on Humbert's behalf, however; as she runs across the street in a state of shock, Charlotte is struck and killed by a passing car.
Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, pretending that Charlotte is ill at an invented hospital. Rather than return to Charlotte's home (out of fear that the neighbors will be suspicious), he takes Lolita to a hotel. Humbert gives her sleeping pills (which he names Vitamin X) and leaves in their room, telling her to go to bed. As he waits for the pills to work, he wanders through the hotel and meets a man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert excuses himself from the strange conversation and returns to the room. There, he attempts to molest Lolita (climbing into her bed as there were no spare cots available at the hotel), but the sedative is too mild, his "security...a sham one." Instead, she initiates sex the next morning. He discovers that he is not her first lover, as she had relations with a female tent-mate the previous summer, and had sex with a boy at Camp Q. Later, Humbert reveals to Lolita that Charlotte is actually dead; Lolita now has no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms for she has "absolutely nowhere else to go." Further to this, Humbert points out that if he was to go to jail, Lolita would probably end up in care.
Lolita and Humbert drive around the country, moving from state to state and motel to motel. He sees the necessity of maintaining a common base of guilt to keep their relations secret and wants denial to become second nature for Lolita; he tells her if he is arrested, she will "become a ward of the Department of Public Welfare," losing all her clothes and presents. Later he bribes her for sexual favors, though he knows that she does not reciprocate his love and shares none of his interests. After a year touring North America, the two settle down in another New England
town, where Lolita is enrolled in Beardsley School for girls. Humbert is very possessive and strict, forbidding Lolita to take part in after-school activities or to associate with boys; most of the townspeople, however, see this as the action of a loving and concerned, while old-fashioned parent.
Lolita begs to be allowed to take part in the school play; Humbert reluctantly grants his permission in exchange for more sexual favors. The play is written by Clare Quilty. He is said to have attended a rehearsal and been impressed by Lolita's acting. Just before opening night, Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument; Lolita runs away while Humbert assures the neighbors everything is fine. He searches frantically until he finds her exiting a phone booth. She is in a bright, pleasant mood, saying she tried to reach him at home and that a "great decision has been made." They go to buy drinks and Lolita tells Humbert she doesn't care about the play, rather, wants to leave town and resume their travels.
As Lolita and Humbert drive westward again, Humbert gets the feeling that their car is being tailed and he becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting that Lolita is conspiring with others in order to escape. She falls ill and must convalesce in a hospital; Humbert stays in a nearby motel, without Lolita for the first time in years. One night, Lolita disappears from the hospital; the staff tell Humbert that Lolita's "uncle" checked her out. Humbert embarks upon a frantic search to find Lolita and her abductor, but eventually he gives up. During this time, Humbert has a two year relationship (ending in 1952) with an adult named Rita, who he describes as a "kind, good sport." She "solemnly approve[s]" of his search for Lolita. Rita figuratively dies when Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant and in desperate need of money. Humbert goes to see Lolita, giving her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals the truth: Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's and the writer of the school play, checked her out of the hospital and attempted to make her star in one of his pornographic films; when she refused, he threw her out. She worked odd jobs before meeting and marrying her husband, who knows nothing about her past. Humbert asks Lolita to leave her husband, Dick, and live with him, to which she refuses. He gives her a large sum of money anyway, which secures her future. As he leaves she smiles and shouts good bye in a "sweet, American" way.
Humbert finds Quilty at his mansion; he intends to kill him, but first wants him to understand why he must die; he took advantage of a sinner (Humbert), he took advantage of a disadvantage. Eventually, Humbert shoots him several times (throughout which Quilty is bargaining for his life in a witty, though bizarre, manner). Once Quilty has died, Humbert exits the house. Shortly after, he is arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well, and reveals the novel in its metafiction
to be the memoirs of his life, only to be published after he and Lolita have both died.
According to the novel's fictional "Foreword", Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis
upon finishing his manuscript. Lolita dies giving birth to a stillborn
girl on Christmas Day, 1952.
' reference work The Book of Ages. A survey of books for Women's Studies courses describes it as a "tongue-in-cheek erotic novel". Books focused on the history of erotic literature such as Michael Perkins' The Secret Record: Modern Erotic Literature also so classify Lolita.
More cautious classifications have included a "novel with erotic motifs" or one of "a number of works of classical erotic literature and art, and to novels that contain elements of eroticism, like ... Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover"
However, this classification has been disputed. Malcolm Bradbury writes "at first famous as an erotic novel, Lolita soon won its way as a literary one—a late modernist distillation of the whole crucial mythology." Samuel Schuman says that Nabokov "is a surrealist, linked to Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Kafka. Lolita is characterized by irony and sarcasm. It is not an erotic novel"
Lance Olsen writes "The first 13 chapters of the text, culminating with the oft-cited scene of Lo unwittingly stretching her legs across Humbert’s excited lap [...] are the only chapters suggestive of the erotic." Nabokov himself observes in the novel's afterword that a few readers were "misled. [by the opening of the book]...into assuming this was going to be a lewd book...[expecting] the rising succession of erotic scenes; when these stopped, the readers stopped, too, and felt bored."
narrated by Humbert, who riddles the narrative with word play
and his wry observations of American culture. His humor provides an effective counterpoint to the pathos
of the tragic
plot. The novel's flamboyant style is characterized by double entendre
s, multilingual pun
s, anagram
s, and coinages such as nymphet, a word that has since had a life of its own and can be found in most dictionaries, and the lesser used "faunlet." One of the novel's characters, "Vivian Darkbloom," is an anagram of the author's name.
Several times, Humbert begs the reader to understand that he is not proud of his rape of Lolita, but is filled with remorse. At one point he listens to the sounds of children playing outdoors, and is stricken with guilt at the realization that he robbed Lolita of her childhood. When he is reunited with the adult Lolita, he realizes that he still loves her even if she no longer is the nymphet of his dreams.
Some critics have accepted Humbert's version of events at face value. In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies
excused the narrator entirely, writing that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child. This is no pretty theme, but it is one with which social workers, magistrates and psychiatrists are familiar."
Most writers, however, have given less credit to Humbert and more to Nabokov's powers as an ironist. For Richard Rorty
, in his interpretation of Lolita in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
, Humbert is a "monster of incuriosity." Nabokov himself described Humbert as "a vain and cruel wretch" and "a hateful person."
In his essay on Stalinism
"Koba the Dread," Martin Amis
proposes that Lolita is an elaborate metaphor
for the totalitarianism
that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood (though Nabokov states in his afterword that he "[detests] symbols and allegories
"). Amis interprets it as a story of tyranny told from the point of view of the tyrant
. "Nabokov, in all his fiction, writes with incomparable penetration about delusion and coercion, about cruelty and lies," he says. "Even Lolita, especially Lolita, is a study in tyranny."
In 2003 Iranian expatriate Azar Nafisi
published the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran
about a covert women's reading group. For Nafisi, the essence of the novel is Humbert's solipsism
and his erasure of Lolita's independent identity
. She writes: "Lolita was given to us as Humbert's creature [...] To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own [...] Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her history, that past is still given to us in glimpses."
One of the novel's early champions, Lionel Trilling
, warned in 1958 of the moral difficulty in interpreting a book with so eloquent and so self-deceived a narrator: "we find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents [...] we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting."
, Simon & Schuster
, New Directions, Farrar, Straus
, and Doubleday. After these refusals and warnings, he finally resorted to publication in France. Via his translator Doussia Ergaz, it reached Maurice Girodias
of Olympia Press
, "three quarters of [whose] list was pornographic trash". Underinformed about Olympia, overlooking hints of Girodias's approval of the conduct of a protagonist Girodias presumed was based on the author, and despite warnings from Morris Bishop
, his friend at Cornell
, Nabokov signed a contract with Olympia Press for publication of the book, to come out under his own name.
Lolita was published in September 1955, as a pair of green paperbacks "swarming with typographical errors". Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no substantial reviews. Eventually, at the very end of 1955, Graham Greene
, in the (London) Sunday Times
, called it one of the three best books of 1955. This statement provoked a response from the (London) Sunday Express, whose editor John Gordon
called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography." British Customs
officers were then instructed by a panicked Home Office
to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. In December 1956, France
followed suit, and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita (the ban lasted for two years). Its eventual British publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
caused a scandal that contributed to the end of the political career of one of the publishers, Nigel Nicolson
.
The novel then appeared in Danish and Dutch translations (two editions of a Swedish translation were withdrawn at the author's request).
Despite initial trepidation, there was no official response in the U.S., and the first American edition was issued by G.P. Putnam's Sons in August, 1958. The book was into a third printing within days and became the first since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks.
The novel continues to generate controversy today as modern society has become increasingly aware of the lasting damage created by child sexual abuse
. In 2008, an entire book was published on the best ways to teach the novel in a college classroom given that "its particular mix of narrative strategies, ornate allusive prose, and troublesome subject matter complicates its presentation to students" In this book one author urges teachers to note that Lolita's suffering is noted in the book even if the main focus is on Humbert. Many critics describe Humbert as a rapist
, notably Azar Nafisi
in her bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, though in a survey of critics David Larmour notes that other interpreters of the novel have been reluctant to use that term. Near the end of the novel, Humbert accuses himself of rape- however, after noting this Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd tries to let Humbert off the hook on the grounds that Dolores was not a virgin and seduced Humbert in the morning of their hotel stay although sex had been suggested by Humbert earlier. This perspective is vigorously disputed by Peter Rabinowitz in his essay "Lolita: Solipsized or Sodomized?".
Today, Lolita is considered by many to be one of the finest novels written in the 20th century. In 1998, it came fourth in a list by the Modern Library
of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century.
, Volshebnik (Волшебник), that was published only posthumously in 1986 in English translation as The Enchanter
. It bears many similarities to Lolita, but also has significant differences: It takes place in Central Europe
, and the protagonist is unable to consummate his passion with his stepdaughter, leading to his suicide
. The theme of ephebophilia
was already touched on by Nabokov in his short story "A Nursery Tale
", written in 1926. Also, in the 1932 Laughter in the Dark, Margot Peters is 16 and already had an affair when middle-aged Albinus becomes attracted to her.
In chapter three of the novel The Gift (written in Russian in 1935–1937) the similar gist of Lolitas first chapter is outlined to the protagonist, Fyodor Cherdyntsev, by his obnoxious landlord Shchyogolev as an idea of a novel he would write "if I only had the time": A man marries a widow only to gain access to her young daughter, who resists all his passes. Shchyogolev says it happened "in reality" to a friend of his; it is made clear to the reader that it concerns himself and his stepdaughter Zina (15 at the time of marriage) who becomes the love of Fyodor's life and his child bride.
In April 1947, Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson
: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea...." The work expanded into Lolita during the next eight years. Nabokov used the title A Kingdom by the Sea in his 1974 pseudo-autobiographical novel Look at the Harlequins!
for a Lolita-like book written by the narrator who, in addition, travels with his teenage daughter Bel from motel to motel after the death of her mother; later, his fourth wife is Bel's look-alike and shares her birthday.
In Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire
, the titular poem by fictional John Shade mentions Hurricane Lolita coming up the American east coast in 1958, and narrator Charles Kinbote (in the commentary later in the book) notes it, questioning why anyone would have chosen an obscure Spanish nickname for a hurricane. There were no hurricanes named Lolita that year
, but that is the year that Lolita the novel was published in North America.
The unfinished novel The Original of Laura
, published posthumously, features the character Hubert H. Hubert, an older man preying upon then-child protagonist, Flora. In contrast to in Lolita, his advances are unsuccessful.
.
Humbert Humbert's first love, Annabel Leigh, is named after the "maiden" in the poem "Annabel Lee
" by Poe; this poem is alluded to many times in the novel, and its lines are borrowed to describe Humbert's love. A passage in chapter 11 reuses
verbatim Poe's phrase ...by the side of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride. In the opening of the novel, the phrase Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied, is a pastiche
of two passages of the poem, the winged seraphs of heaven (line 11), and The angels, not half so happy in heaven, went envying her and me (lines 21–2). Nabokov originally intended Lolita to be called The Kingdom by the Sea
, drawing on the rhyme with Annabel Lee that was used in the first verse of Poe's work. A variant of this line is reprise
d in the opening of chapter one, which reads ...had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea.
Humbert Humbert's double name recalls Poe's "William Wilson
", a tale in which the main character is haunted by his doppelgänger
, paralleling to the presence of Humbert's own doppelgänger, Clare Quilty. Humbert is not, however, his real name, but a chosen pseudonym
.
Chapter 27 contains a parody
of Joyce
's stream of consciousness.
Humbert Humbert's field of expertise is French literature
(one of his jobs is writing a series of educational works that compare French writers to English writers), and as such there are several references to French literature
, including the authors Gustave Flaubert
, Marcel Proust
, François Rabelais
, Charles Baudelaire
, Prosper Mérimée
, Remy Belleau
, Honoré de Balzac
, and Pierre de Ronsard
.
Vladimir Nabokov was fond of Lewis Carroll
and had translated Alice in Wonderland into Russian. He even called Carroll the "first Humbert Humbert". Lolita contains a few brief allusions in the text to the Alice books, though overall Nabokov avoided direct allusions to Carroll. In her book, Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, Joyce Milton claims that a major inspiration for the novel was Charlie Chaplin
's relationship with his second wife, Lita Grey
, whose real name was Lillita and is often misstated as Lolita. Graham Vickers in his book Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov's Little Girl All Over Again argues that the two major real-world predecessors of Humbert are Lewis Carroll and Charlie Chaplin. Although Appel's comprehensive Annotated Lolita contains no references to Charlie Chaplin, others have picked up several oblique references to Chaplin's life in Nabokov's book. Bill Delaney notes that at the end Lolita and her husband move to the Alaska
n town of Grey Star while Chaplin's The Gold Rush
, set in Alaska, was originally set to star Lita Grey. Lolita's first sexual encounter was with a boy named Charlie Holmes, whom Humbert describes as "the silent...but indefatigable Charlie." Chaplin had an artist paint Lita Grey in imitation of Joshua Reynolds
's painting The Age of Innocence. When Humbert visits Lolita in a class at her school, he notes a print of the same painting in the classroom. Delaney's article notes many other parallels as well.
The foreword refers to "the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933 by Hon. John M. Woolsey
in regard to another, considerably more outspoken book"—that is, the decision in the case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses
, in which Woolsey ruled that James Joyce
's Ulysses
was not obscene and could be sold in the United States.
In chapter 29 of Part II, Humbert comments that Lolita looks "like Botticelli's russet Venus—the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty", referencing Sandro Botticelli
's depiction of Venus
in, perhaps, The Birth of Venus
or Venus and Mars
.
In chapter 35 of Part II, Humbert's "death sentence
" on Quilty parodies the rhythm and use of anaphora in T. S. Eliot
's poem Ash Wednesday
.
Many other references to classical and Romantic literature abound, including references to Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
and to the poetry of Laurence Sterne
.
, kidnapped in 1948 by 50-year-old mechanic Frank La Salle, who had caught her stealing a five-cent notebook. La Salle traveled with her over various states for 21 months and is believed to have rape
d her. He claimed that he was an FBI
agent and threatened to "turn her in" for the theft and to send her to "a place for girls like you." The Horner case was not widely reported, but Dolinin notes various similarities in events and descriptions.
While Nabokov had already used the same basic idea—that of a child molester and his victim booking into a hotel as father and daughter—in his then-unpublished 1939 work Volshebnik (Волшебник), the Horner case is mentioned explicitly in Chapter 33 of Part II:
's book The Two Lolitas describes his recent discovery of a 1916 German
short story
titled "Lolita" about a middle-aged man travelling abroad who takes a room as a lodger and instantly becomes obsessed with the preteen girl (also named Lolita) who lives in the same house. Maar has speculated that Nabokov may have had cryptomnesia
(a "hidden memory" of the story that Nabokov was unaware of) while he was composing Lolita during the 1950s. Maar
says that until 1937 Nabokov lived in the same section of Berlin as the author, Heinz von Eschwege (pen name: Heinz von Lichberg
), and was most likely familiar with his work, which was widely available in Germany during Nabokov's time there. The Philadelphia Inquirer
, in the article "Lolita at 50: Did Nabokov take literary liberties?" says that, according to Maar, accusations of plagiarism
should not apply and quotes him as saying: "Literature has always been a huge crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast... Nothing of what we admire in Lolita is already to be found in the tale; the former is in no way deducible from the latter." See also Jonathan Lethem
in Harper's Magazine
on this story.
to Lolita ("On a Book Entitled Lolita"), that first appeared in the first U.S. edition and has appeared thereafter
One of the first things Nabokov makes a point of saying is that, despite John Ray Jr.'s claim in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story.
Nabokov adds that "the initial shiver of inspiration" for Lolita "was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes
who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage". Neither the article nor the drawing has been recovered.
In response to an American critic who characterized Lolita as the record of Nabokov's "love affair with the romantic novel", Nabokov writes that "the substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct".
Nabokov concludes the afterword with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English".
in 1962, he said:
Over a year later, in an interview for Playboy, he said:
In the same year, in an interview with Life
, Nabokov was asked which of his writings had most pleased him. He answered:
; the translation was published by Phaedra Publishers in New York
in 1967.
The translation includes a "Postscriptum" in which Nabokov reconsiders his relationship with his native language. Referring to the afterword to the English edition, Nabokov states that only "the scientific scrupulousness led me to preserve the last paragraph of the American afterword in the Russian text..." He further explains that the "story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick."
in 1970. (Nabokov was able to comment on Appel's earliest annotations, creating a situation that Appel described as being like John Shade
revising Charles Kinbote
's comments on Shade's poem Pale Fire. Oddly enough, this is exactly the situation Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd
proposed to resolve the literary complexities of Nabokov's Pale Fire
.) A pioneering study of Nabokov's interest in and literary uses of film imagery. A survey of the novel's reception, organised by decade. Essays on the life and novels. The major study of Nabokov's lepidoptery, frequently mentioning Lolita. An introduction and study-guide in PDF format.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
, middle-aged literature professor Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after she becomes his stepdaughter. His private nickname for Dolores is Lolita.
The book is also notable for its writing style. The narrative is highly subjective as Humbert draws on his fragmented memories, employing a sophisticated prose style, while attempting to gain the reader's sympathy through his sincerity and melancholy, although near the end of the story Humbert refers to himself as a "maniac" who "deprived" Dolores "of her childhood", and he shortly thereafter states "the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
" in which they were involved.
After its publication, Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious girl. The novel was adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
in 1962
Lolita (1962 film)
Lolita is a 1962 comedy-drama film by Stanley Kubrick based on the classic novel of the same title by Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Sue Lyon as Dolores Haze and Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze with Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.Due to the MPAA's restrictions at...
, and again in 1997
Lolita (1997 film)
Lolita is a 1997 French-American drama film directed by Adrian Lyne. It is the second screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze,...
by Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for directing films that focus on sexually charged characters and often uses natural light, a fog machine and other effects to create eroticized atmospheres...
. It has also been adapted several times for stage and has been the subject of two operas, two ballets, and an acclaimed but failed Broadway musical.
Lolita is included on Times list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005
TIME's List of the 100 Best Novels
Times List of the 100 Best Novels, is an unranked list of the 100 best novels—and 10 best graphic novels—published in the English language between 1923 and 2005. The list was compiled by Time critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo....
. It is fourth on the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
's 1998 list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th century. It also made the World Library's list of one of The 100 Best Books of All Time
The 100 Best Books of All Time
The World Library is a list of the 100 best books, as proposed by 100 writers from 54 different countries, compiled and organized in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club. This list endeavours to reflect world literature, with books from all countries, cultures, and time periods...
.
Plot summary
Lolita is divided into two parts and 69 chapters. It is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar born in 1910 to a Swiss father and an EnglishEnglish people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
mother in Paris, who is obsessed with young girls, whom he refers to as "nymphets". Humbert suggests that this obsession results from the death of a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh (a deliberate play by Nabokov on the poem "Annabel Lee
Annabel Lee
"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He...
", by Humbert's favorite poet Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, which also involves a dead girl and her left behind lover). After an unsuccessful marriage to a Polish doctor's adult daughter, Valeria, Humbert moves to Ramsdale, a small New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
town, in 1947 to write. He rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a widow. While Charlotte tours him around the house, he meets her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (also known as Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo and L), with whom—partially due to her uncanny resemblance to Annabel—he immediately becomes infatuated. Humbert stays at the house only to remain near her. While he is obsessed with Lolita, he disdains her crassness and preoccupation with contemporary American popular culture, such as teen movies and comic books.
While Lolita is away at summer camp, Charlotte, who has fallen in love with Humbert, tells him that he must either marry her or move out. Humbert agrees to marry Charlotte in order to continue living near Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her, as well as his lust for Lolita, until she reads his diary. Upon learning of Humbert's true feelings and intentions, Charlotte plans to flee with Lolita and threatens to expose Humbert as a "detestable, abominable, criminal fraud." Fate intervenes on Humbert's behalf, however; as she runs across the street in a state of shock, Charlotte is struck and killed by a passing car.
Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, pretending that Charlotte is ill at an invented hospital. Rather than return to Charlotte's home (out of fear that the neighbors will be suspicious), he takes Lolita to a hotel. Humbert gives her sleeping pills (which he names Vitamin X) and leaves in their room, telling her to go to bed. As he waits for the pills to work, he wanders through the hotel and meets a man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert excuses himself from the strange conversation and returns to the room. There, he attempts to molest Lolita (climbing into her bed as there were no spare cots available at the hotel), but the sedative is too mild, his "security...a sham one." Instead, she initiates sex the next morning. He discovers that he is not her first lover, as she had relations with a female tent-mate the previous summer, and had sex with a boy at Camp Q. Later, Humbert reveals to Lolita that Charlotte is actually dead; Lolita now has no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms for she has "absolutely nowhere else to go." Further to this, Humbert points out that if he was to go to jail, Lolita would probably end up in care.
Lolita and Humbert drive around the country, moving from state to state and motel to motel. He sees the necessity of maintaining a common base of guilt to keep their relations secret and wants denial to become second nature for Lolita; he tells her if he is arrested, she will "become a ward of the Department of Public Welfare," losing all her clothes and presents. Later he bribes her for sexual favors, though he knows that she does not reciprocate his love and shares none of his interests. After a year touring North America, the two settle down in another New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
town, where Lolita is enrolled in Beardsley School for girls. Humbert is very possessive and strict, forbidding Lolita to take part in after-school activities or to associate with boys; most of the townspeople, however, see this as the action of a loving and concerned, while old-fashioned parent.
Lolita begs to be allowed to take part in the school play; Humbert reluctantly grants his permission in exchange for more sexual favors. The play is written by Clare Quilty. He is said to have attended a rehearsal and been impressed by Lolita's acting. Just before opening night, Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument; Lolita runs away while Humbert assures the neighbors everything is fine. He searches frantically until he finds her exiting a phone booth. She is in a bright, pleasant mood, saying she tried to reach him at home and that a "great decision has been made." They go to buy drinks and Lolita tells Humbert she doesn't care about the play, rather, wants to leave town and resume their travels.
As Lolita and Humbert drive westward again, Humbert gets the feeling that their car is being tailed and he becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting that Lolita is conspiring with others in order to escape. She falls ill and must convalesce in a hospital; Humbert stays in a nearby motel, without Lolita for the first time in years. One night, Lolita disappears from the hospital; the staff tell Humbert that Lolita's "uncle" checked her out. Humbert embarks upon a frantic search to find Lolita and her abductor, but eventually he gives up. During this time, Humbert has a two year relationship (ending in 1952) with an adult named Rita, who he describes as a "kind, good sport." She "solemnly approve[s]" of his search for Lolita. Rita figuratively dies when Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant and in desperate need of money. Humbert goes to see Lolita, giving her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals the truth: Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's and the writer of the school play, checked her out of the hospital and attempted to make her star in one of his pornographic films; when she refused, he threw her out. She worked odd jobs before meeting and marrying her husband, who knows nothing about her past. Humbert asks Lolita to leave her husband, Dick, and live with him, to which she refuses. He gives her a large sum of money anyway, which secures her future. As he leaves she smiles and shouts good bye in a "sweet, American" way.
Humbert finds Quilty at his mansion; he intends to kill him, but first wants him to understand why he must die; he took advantage of a sinner (Humbert), he took advantage of a disadvantage. Eventually, Humbert shoots him several times (throughout which Quilty is bargaining for his life in a witty, though bizarre, manner). Once Quilty has died, Humbert exits the house. Shortly after, he is arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well, and reveals the novel in its metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
to be the memoirs of his life, only to be published after he and Lolita have both died.
According to the novel's fictional "Foreword", Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis is a form of thrombosis affecting the coronary circulation. It is associated with stenosis subsequent to clotting. The condition is considered as a type of ischaemic heart disease.It can lead to a myocardial infarction...
upon finishing his manuscript. Lolita dies giving birth to a stillborn
Stillbirth
A stillbirth occurs when a fetus has died in the uterus. The Australian definition specifies that fetal death is termed a stillbirth after 20 weeks gestation or the fetus weighs more than . Once the fetus has died the mother still has contractions and remains undelivered. The term is often used in...
girl on Christmas Day, 1952.
Erotic motifs and controversy
Lolita is frequently described as an "erotic novel", not only by some critics but even in Facts on File: Companion to the American Short Story. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia called Lolita "an experiment in combining an erotic novel with an instructive novel of manners," The same description of the novel is found in Desmond MorrisDesmond Morris
Desmond John Morris, born 24 January 1928 in Purton, north Wiltshire, is a British zoologist and ethologist, as well as a popular anthropologist. He is also known as a painter, television presenter and popular author.-Life:...
' reference work The Book of Ages. A survey of books for Women's Studies courses describes it as a "tongue-in-cheek erotic novel". Books focused on the history of erotic literature such as Michael Perkins' The Secret Record: Modern Erotic Literature also so classify Lolita.
More cautious classifications have included a "novel with erotic motifs" or one of "a number of works of classical erotic literature and art, and to novels that contain elements of eroticism, like ... Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover"
However, this classification has been disputed. Malcolm Bradbury writes "at first famous as an erotic novel, Lolita soon won its way as a literary one—a late modernist distillation of the whole crucial mythology." Samuel Schuman says that Nabokov "is a surrealist, linked to Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Kafka. Lolita is characterized by irony and sarcasm. It is not an erotic novel"
Lance Olsen writes "The first 13 chapters of the text, culminating with the oft-cited scene of Lo unwittingly stretching her legs across Humbert’s excited lap [...] are the only chapters suggestive of the erotic." Nabokov himself observes in the novel's afterword that a few readers were "misled. [by the opening of the book]...into assuming this was going to be a lewd book...[expecting] the rising succession of erotic scenes; when these stopped, the readers stopped, too, and felt bored."
Style and interpretation
The novel is a tragicomedyTragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
narrated by Humbert, who riddles the narrative with word play
Word play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
and his wry observations of American culture. His humor provides an effective counterpoint to the pathos
Pathos
Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....
of the tragic
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
plot. The novel's flamboyant style is characterized by double entendre
Double entendre
A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....
s, multilingual pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s, anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
s, and coinages such as nymphet, a word that has since had a life of its own and can be found in most dictionaries, and the lesser used "faunlet." One of the novel's characters, "Vivian Darkbloom," is an anagram of the author's name.
Several times, Humbert begs the reader to understand that he is not proud of his rape of Lolita, but is filled with remorse. At one point he listens to the sounds of children playing outdoors, and is stricken with guilt at the realization that he robbed Lolita of her childhood. When he is reunited with the adult Lolita, he realizes that he still loves her even if she no longer is the nymphet of his dreams.
Some critics have accepted Humbert's version of events at face value. In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
excused the narrator entirely, writing that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child. This is no pretty theme, but it is one with which social workers, magistrates and psychiatrists are familiar."
Most writers, however, have given less credit to Humbert and more to Nabokov's powers as an ironist. For Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
, in his interpretation of Lolita in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity , is a book by American philosopher Richard Rorty, based on two sets of lectures he gave at University College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge....
, Humbert is a "monster of incuriosity." Nabokov himself described Humbert as "a vain and cruel wretch" and "a hateful person."
In his essay on Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
"Koba the Dread," Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
proposes that Lolita is an elaborate metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for the totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood (though Nabokov states in his afterword that he "[detests] symbols and allegories
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
"). Amis interprets it as a story of tyranny told from the point of view of the tyrant
Tyrant
A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...
. "Nabokov, in all his fiction, writes with incomparable penetration about delusion and coercion, about cruelty and lies," he says. "Even Lolita, especially Lolita, is a study in tyranny."
In 2003 Iranian expatriate Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi, born ca. 1947, is an Iranian academic and bestselling writer who has resided in the United States since 1997 when she emigrated from Iran. Her field is English language literature....
published the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a book by Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi.Published in 2003, it has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over one hundred weeks and has been translated into thirty-two languages....
about a covert women's reading group. For Nafisi, the essence of the novel is Humbert's solipsism
Solipsism
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus and ipse . Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not...
and his erasure of Lolita's independent identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
. She writes: "Lolita was given to us as Humbert's creature [...] To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own [...] Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her history, that past is still given to us in glimpses."
One of the novel's early champions, Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...
, warned in 1958 of the moral difficulty in interpreting a book with so eloquent and so self-deceived a narrator: "we find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents [...] we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting."
Publication and reception
Nabokov finished Lolita on 6 December 1953, five years after starting it. Due to its subject matter, Nabokov intended to publish it pseudonymously (although the anagrammatic character Vivian Darkbloom would tip off the alert reader). The manuscript was turned down, with more or less regret, by VikingViking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
, Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
, New Directions, Farrar, Straus
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. Farrar. Known primarily as Farrar, Straus in its first decade of existence, the company was renamed several times, including Farrar, Straus and Young and Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
, and Doubleday. After these refusals and warnings, he finally resorted to publication in France. Via his translator Doussia Ergaz, it reached Maurice Girodias
Maurice Girodias
Maurice Girodias was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press, and spent most of his productive years in Paris.-Early life:...
of Olympia Press
Olympia Press
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane...
, "three quarters of [whose] list was pornographic trash". Underinformed about Olympia, overlooking hints of Girodias's approval of the conduct of a protagonist Girodias presumed was based on the author, and despite warnings from Morris Bishop
Morris Bishop
Morris Gilbert Bishop was an American scholar, historian, biographer, author, and humorist.Raised in Canada and New York, he attended Cornell from 1910–1913, earning a Bachelor's in 1913 and then a Master of Arts degree in 1914...
, his friend at Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, Nabokov signed a contract with Olympia Press for publication of the book, to come out under his own name.
Lolita was published in September 1955, as a pair of green paperbacks "swarming with typographical errors". Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no substantial reviews. Eventually, at the very end of 1955, Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
, in the (London) Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, called it one of the three best books of 1955. This statement provoked a response from the (London) Sunday Express, whose editor John Gordon
John Gordon (journalist)
John Rutherford Gordon was a Scottish newspaper editor and columnist.Born in Dundee, Gordon began work on the Dundee Advertiser in 1904. He was rapidly promoted, and by the end of the decade was overseeing the Perthshire and Dundee editions of the People's Journal...
called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography." British Customs
Her Majesty's Customs and Excise
HM Customs and Excise was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government in the UK. It was responsible for the collection of Value added tax , Customs Duties, Excise Duties, and other indirect taxes such as Air Passenger Duty, Climate Change Levy, Insurance Premium Tax, Landfill Tax and...
officers were then instructed by a panicked Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. In December 1956, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
followed suit, and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita (the ban lasted for two years). Its eventual British publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It is a division of the Orion Publishing Group.-History:...
caused a scandal that contributed to the end of the political career of one of the publishers, Nigel Nicolson
Nigel Nicolson
Nigel Nicolson OBE was a British writer, publisher and politician.-Biography:Nicolson was the son of the writers Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; he had a brother Ben, later an art historian...
.
The novel then appeared in Danish and Dutch translations (two editions of a Swedish translation were withdrawn at the author's request).
Despite initial trepidation, there was no official response in the U.S., and the first American edition was issued by G.P. Putnam's Sons in August, 1958. The book was into a third printing within days and became the first since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks.
The novel continues to generate controversy today as modern society has become increasingly aware of the lasting damage created by child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...
. In 2008, an entire book was published on the best ways to teach the novel in a college classroom given that "its particular mix of narrative strategies, ornate allusive prose, and troublesome subject matter complicates its presentation to students" In this book one author urges teachers to note that Lolita's suffering is noted in the book even if the main focus is on Humbert. Many critics describe Humbert as a rapist
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, notably Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi, born ca. 1947, is an Iranian academic and bestselling writer who has resided in the United States since 1997 when she emigrated from Iran. Her field is English language literature....
in her bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, though in a survey of critics David Larmour notes that other interpreters of the novel have been reluctant to use that term. Near the end of the novel, Humbert accuses himself of rape- however, after noting this Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd tries to let Humbert off the hook on the grounds that Dolores was not a virgin and seduced Humbert in the morning of their hotel stay although sex had been suggested by Humbert earlier. This perspective is vigorously disputed by Peter Rabinowitz in his essay "Lolita: Solipsized or Sodomized?".
Today, Lolita is considered by many to be one of the finest novels written in the 20th century. In 1998, it came fourth in a list by the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century.
Links in Nabokov's work
In 1939 Nabokov wrote a novellaNovella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
, Volshebnik (Волшебник), that was published only posthumously in 1986 in English translation as The Enchanter
The Enchanter
The Enchanter is a novella written by Vladimir Nabokov in Paris in 1939. As Волшебник it was his last work of fiction written in Russian. Nabokov never published it during his lifetime. After his death, his son Dmitri translated the novella into English in 1986 and it was published the following...
. It bears many similarities to Lolita, but also has significant differences: It takes place in Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
, and the protagonist is unable to consummate his passion with his stepdaughter, leading to his suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. The theme of ephebophilia
Ephebophilia
Ephebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed...
was already touched on by Nabokov in his short story "A Nursery Tale
A Nursery Tale
A Nursery Tale is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov first published in the expatriate Russian newspaper Rul on 27 and 29 June 1926 and in the book form in The Return of Chorb in 1930...
", written in 1926. Also, in the 1932 Laughter in the Dark, Margot Peters is 16 and already had an affair when middle-aged Albinus becomes attracted to her.
In chapter three of the novel The Gift (written in Russian in 1935–1937) the similar gist of Lolitas first chapter is outlined to the protagonist, Fyodor Cherdyntsev, by his obnoxious landlord Shchyogolev as an idea of a novel he would write "if I only had the time": A man marries a widow only to gain access to her young daughter, who resists all his passes. Shchyogolev says it happened "in reality" to a friend of his; it is made clear to the reader that it concerns himself and his stepdaughter Zina (15 at the time of marriage) who becomes the love of Fyodor's life and his child bride.
In April 1947, Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea...." The work expanded into Lolita during the next eight years. Nabokov used the title A Kingdom by the Sea in his 1974 pseudo-autobiographical novel Look at the Harlequins!
Look at the Harlequins!
Look at the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.-Plot summary:...
for a Lolita-like book written by the narrator who, in addition, travels with his teenage daughter Bel from motel to motel after the death of her mother; later, his fourth wife is Bel's look-alike and shares her birthday.
In Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire
Pale Fire
Pale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
, the titular poem by fictional John Shade mentions Hurricane Lolita coming up the American east coast in 1958, and narrator Charles Kinbote (in the commentary later in the book) notes it, questioning why anyone would have chosen an obscure Spanish nickname for a hurricane. There were no hurricanes named Lolita that year
1958 Atlantic hurricane season
The 1958 Atlantic hurricane season officially began on June 15, 1958, and lasted until November 15, 1958. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic basin...
, but that is the year that Lolita the novel was published in North America.
The unfinished novel The Original of Laura
The Original of Laura
The Original of Laura is the incomplete final novel by Vladimir Nabokov, which he was writing at the time of his death in 1977. It was finally published, after 30 years of private debate, on November 17, 2009. Nabokov had requested that the work be destroyed upon his death, but his family hesitated...
, published posthumously, features the character Hubert H. Hubert, an older man preying upon then-child protagonist, Flora. In contrast to in Lolita, his advances are unsuccessful.
Literary pastiches, allusions and prototypes
The novel abounds in allusions to classical and modern literature. Virtually all of them have been noted in The Annotated Lolita edited and annotated by Alfred Appel, Jr.. Many are references to Humbert's own favorite poet, Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
.
Humbert Humbert's first love, Annabel Leigh, is named after the "maiden" in the poem "Annabel Lee
Annabel Lee
"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He...
" by Poe; this poem is alluded to many times in the novel, and its lines are borrowed to describe Humbert's love. A passage in chapter 11 reuses
Assemblage (composition)
Assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context". The concept was first proposed by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber in the journal, Computers & Composition, in 2007...
verbatim Poe's phrase ...by the side of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride. In the opening of the novel, the phrase Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied, is a pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
of two passages of the poem, the winged seraphs of heaven (line 11), and The angels, not half so happy in heaven, went envying her and me (lines 21–2). Nabokov originally intended Lolita to be called The Kingdom by the Sea
The Kingdom by the Sea
The Kingdom by the Sea is a written account of a three month long journey taken by novelist Paul Theroux round the United Kingdom in the summer of 1982. Starting his journey in London, he takes a train to Margate on the English coast. He then travels roughly clockwise round the British coastline,...
, drawing on the rhyme with Annabel Lee that was used in the first verse of Poe's work. A variant of this line is reprise
Reprise
Reprise is a fundamental device in the history of art. In literature, a reprise consists of the rewriting of another work; in music, a reprise is the repetition or reiteration of the opening material later in a composition as occurs in the recapitulation of sonata form, though—originally in the...
d in the opening of chapter one, which reads ...had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea.
Humbert Humbert's double name recalls Poe's "William Wilson
William Wilson (short story)
"William Wilson" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years outside of London. The tale follows the theme of the doppelgänger and is written in a style based on rationality...
", a tale in which the main character is haunted by his doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
, paralleling to the presence of Humbert's own doppelgänger, Clare Quilty. Humbert is not, however, his real name, but a chosen pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
.
Chapter 27 contains a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's stream of consciousness.
Humbert Humbert's field of expertise is French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
(one of his jobs is writing a series of educational works that compare French writers to English writers), and as such there are several references to French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
, including the authors Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, François Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
, Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Prosper Mérimée
Prosper Mérimée
Prosper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.-Life:...
, Remy Belleau
Remy Belleau
Remy Belleau , was a poet of the French Renaissance. He is most known for his paradoxical poems of praise for simple things and his poems about precious stones....
, Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, and Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...
.
Vladimir Nabokov was fond of Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
and had translated Alice in Wonderland into Russian. He even called Carroll the "first Humbert Humbert". Lolita contains a few brief allusions in the text to the Alice books, though overall Nabokov avoided direct allusions to Carroll. In her book, Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, Joyce Milton claims that a major inspiration for the novel was Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
's relationship with his second wife, Lita Grey
Lita Grey
Lita Grey was an American actress and the second wife of Charlie Chaplin. She was born in Hollywood, California, in 1908, to a Mexican-born mother and a father of Irish heritage and christened Lillita Louise MacMurray.-Personal life:Grey married four times...
, whose real name was Lillita and is often misstated as Lolita. Graham Vickers in his book Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov's Little Girl All Over Again argues that the two major real-world predecessors of Humbert are Lewis Carroll and Charlie Chaplin. Although Appel's comprehensive Annotated Lolita contains no references to Charlie Chaplin, others have picked up several oblique references to Chaplin's life in Nabokov's book. Bill Delaney notes that at the end Lolita and her husband move to the Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
n town of Grey Star while Chaplin's The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush is a 1925 silent film comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. The film also stars Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite....
, set in Alaska, was originally set to star Lita Grey. Lolita's first sexual encounter was with a boy named Charlie Holmes, whom Humbert describes as "the silent...but indefatigable Charlie." Chaplin had an artist paint Lita Grey in imitation of Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
's painting The Age of Innocence. When Humbert visits Lolita in a class at her school, he notes a print of the same painting in the classroom. Delaney's article notes many other parallels as well.
The foreword refers to "the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933 by Hon. John M. Woolsey
John M. Woolsey
John Munro Woolsey was a United States federal judge in New York City.Born in Aiken, South Carolina, Woolsey attended Phillips Academy, and received an A.B. from Yale University in 1898. He was awarded an LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1901, where he was a founder of the Columbia Law Review...
in regard to another, considerably more outspoken book"—that is, the decision in the case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses
United States v. One Book Called Ulysses
United States v. One Book Called Ulysses was a 1933 case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dealing with freedom of expression. At issue was whether James Joyce's novel Ulysses was obscene. In deciding it was not, Judge John M...
, in which Woolsey ruled that James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
was not obscene and could be sold in the United States.
In chapter 29 of Part II, Humbert comments that Lolita looks "like Botticelli's russet Venus—the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty", referencing Sandro Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
's depiction of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
in, perhaps, The Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore...
or Venus and Mars
Venus and Mars (Botticelli)
Venus and Mars is a c. 1483 painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. It shows the Roman gods Venus and Mars in an allegory of Beauty and Valour. Venus watches Mars sleep, while two infant satyrs play carrying his armour while another rests under his arm...
.
In chapter 35 of Part II, Humbert's "death sentence
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...
" on Quilty parodies the rhythm and use of anaphora in T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's poem Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday (poem)
"Ash Wednesday" is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930 , this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem",...
.
Many other references to classical and Romantic literature abound, including references to Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks...
and to the poetry of Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
.
Other possible real-life prototypes
In addition to the possible prototypes of Lewis Carroll and Charlie Chaplin mentioned above in Allusions, Alexander Dolinin suggests that the prototype of Lolita was 11-year-old Florence HornerFlorence Sally Horner
Florence Sally Horner was a girl abducted by a child molester in 1948.-Abduction:At the age of 11, Horner stole a 5-cent notebook from a store in Camden, New Jersey. Frank La Salle, a 50 year-old mechanic, caught her stealing, told her that he was an FBI agent, and threatened to send her to "a...
, kidnapped in 1948 by 50-year-old mechanic Frank La Salle, who had caught her stealing a five-cent notebook. La Salle traveled with her over various states for 21 months and is believed to have rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
d her. He claimed that he was an FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
agent and threatened to "turn her in" for the theft and to send her to "a place for girls like you." The Horner case was not widely reported, but Dolinin notes various similarities in events and descriptions.
While Nabokov had already used the same basic idea—that of a child molester and his victim booking into a hotel as father and daughter—in his then-unpublished 1939 work Volshebnik (Волшебник), the Horner case is mentioned explicitly in Chapter 33 of Part II:
Heinz von Lichberg's "Lolita"
German academic Michael MaarMichael Maar
Michael Maar is a German literary scholar and author.For his 1995 doctoral dissertation on Thomas Mann, titled Geister und Kunst, he was awarded the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. He was himself elected a member of the academy in 2002...
's book The Two Lolitas describes his recent discovery of a 1916 German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
titled "Lolita" about a middle-aged man travelling abroad who takes a room as a lodger and instantly becomes obsessed with the preteen girl (also named Lolita) who lives in the same house. Maar has speculated that Nabokov may have had cryptomnesia
Cryptomnesia
Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognised as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original...
(a "hidden memory" of the story that Nabokov was unaware of) while he was composing Lolita during the 1950s. Maar
Maar
A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater that is caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption, an explosion caused by groundwater coming into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake. The name comes from the local Moselle...
says that until 1937 Nabokov lived in the same section of Berlin as the author, Heinz von Eschwege (pen name: Heinz von Lichberg
Heinz von Lichberg
Heinz von Lichberg, real name Heinz von Eschwege was a German author and journalist, remembered chiefly for his 1916 short story titled Lolita, upon which is has been argued that Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name likely was based...
), and was most likely familiar with his work, which was widely available in Germany during Nabokov's time there. The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
, in the article "Lolita at 50: Did Nabokov take literary liberties?" says that, according to Maar, accusations of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
should not apply and quotes him as saying: "Literature has always been a huge crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast... Nothing of what we admire in Lolita is already to be found in the tale; the former is in no way deducible from the latter." See also Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
in Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
on this story.
Afterword
In 1956 Nabokov wrote an afterwordAfterword
An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed....
to Lolita ("On a Book Entitled Lolita"), that first appeared in the first U.S. edition and has appeared thereafter
One of the first things Nabokov makes a point of saying is that, despite John Ray Jr.'s claim in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story.
Nabokov adds that "the initial shiver of inspiration" for Lolita "was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes
Jardin des Plantes
The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. It is one of seven departments of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. It is situated in the 5ème arrondissement, Paris, on the left bank of the river Seine and covers 28 hectares .- Garden plan :The grounds of the Jardin des...
who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage". Neither the article nor the drawing has been recovered.
In response to an American critic who characterized Lolita as the record of Nabokov's "love affair with the romantic novel", Nabokov writes that "the substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct".
Nabokov concludes the afterword with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English".
Estimation
Nabokov rated the book highly. In an interview for BBC TelevisionBBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
in 1962, he said:
Lolita is a special favorite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real.
Over a year later, in an interview for Playboy, he said:
I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle—its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works—at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, my short stories, my book of recollections; but I cannot grudge her this. There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet.
In the same year, in an interview with Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, Nabokov was asked which of his writings had most pleased him. He answered:
I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
Russian translation
Nabokov translated Lolita into RussianRussian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
; the translation was published by Phaedra Publishers in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1967.
The translation includes a "Postscriptum" in which Nabokov reconsiders his relationship with his native language. Referring to the afterword to the English edition, Nabokov states that only "the scientific scrupulousness led me to preserve the last paragraph of the American afterword in the Russian text..." He further explains that the "story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick."
Adaptations
Lolita has been filmed twice, been a musical, four stage-plays, one completed opera, and two ballets. There is also Nabokov's unfilmed (and re-edited) screenplay, an uncompleted opera based on the work, and an "imagined opera" which combines elements of opera and dance.- The first film adaptationLolita (1962 film)Lolita is a 1962 comedy-drama film by Stanley Kubrick based on the classic novel of the same title by Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Sue Lyon as Dolores Haze and Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze with Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.Due to the MPAA's restrictions at...
was made in 1962 by Stanley KubrickStanley KubrickStanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
, and starred James MasonJames MasonJames Neville Mason was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes .- Early life :Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the...
, Shelley WintersShelley WintersShelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...
, Peter SellersPeter SellersRichard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
and Sue LyonSue Lyon- Lolita :Sue Lyon was 14 years old when she was cast in the role of Dolores "Lolita" Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. She was chosen for the role partly because her curvy figure suggested an older adolescent...
as Lolita; Nabokov was nominated for an Academy AwardAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for his work on this film's adapted screenplayScreenplayA screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
, although little of this work reached the screen, his screenplay having been thoroughly rewritten by Stanley Kubrick and James Harris, though neither took credit.
The film greatly expanded the character of Clare Quilty, and removed all references to Humbert's obsession with young girls before meeting Dolores.
- The second film adaptationLolita (1997 film)Lolita is a 1997 French-American drama film directed by Adrian Lyne. It is the second screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze,...
(1997) was directed by Adrian LyneAdrian LyneAdrian Lyne is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for directing films that focus on sexually charged characters and often uses natural light, a fog machine and other effects to create eroticized atmospheres...
, starring Jeremy IronsJeremy IronsJeremy John Irons is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the...
, Dominique SwainDominique SwainDominique Ariane Swain is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as the title character in the 1997 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, and as Jamie Archer in the film Face/Off.- Early life :...
, and Melanie GriffithMelanie GriffithMelanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...
. It received mixed reviews. It was delayed for over a year because of its controversial subject matter, and was not released in AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
until 1999.
Multiple critics noted that this film removed all elements of dark comedy from the story. In Salon, Charles Taylor wrote that it "replaces the book's cruelty and comedy with manufactured lyricism and mopey romanticism."
- Nabokov's own re-edited and condensed version of the screenplay (revised December 1973) he originally submitted for Kubrick's film (before its extensive rewrite by Kubrick and Harris) was published by McGraw-HillMcGraw-HillThe McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
in 1974. One new element is that Quilty's play The Hunted Enchanter, staged at Dolores' high school, contains a scene that is an exact duplicate of a painting in the front lobby of the hotel, The Enchanted Hunter, at which Humbert allows Lolita to seduce him.
- The book was adapted into a musicalMusical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
in 1971 by Alan Jay LernerAlan Jay LernerAlan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film...
and John BarryJohn Barry (composer)John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
under the title Lolita, My LoveLolita, My LoveLolita, My Love was an unsuccessful musical by John Barry and Alan Jay Lerner, based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. It closed in Boston in 1971 while on a tour prior to Broadway.-Production history:...
. Critics were surprised at how sensitively the storyNarrativeA narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
was translated to the stageTheatreTheatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, but the show nonetheless closed before it opened in New York.
- In 1982 Edward AlbeeEdward AlbeeEdward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
adapted the book into a play, Lolita. It was savaged by critics, Frank RichFrank RichFrank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...
notably predicting fatal damage to Albee's career. Rich noted that the play's reading of the character of Quilty seemed to be taken from the Kubrick film.
- In 1992 Russian composer Rodion ShchedrinRodion ShchedrinRodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin is a Russian composer. He was one оf the leading Soviet composers, and was the chairman of the Union of Russian Composers from 1973 until 1990.-Life and Works:...
adapted Lolita into a Russian-language opera LolitaLolita (opera)Lolita is an opera in two acts by composer Rodion Shchedrin. The opera was composed in 1992 and uses a Russian language libretto by the composer which is based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name, written in English...
, which premiered in Swedish in 1994 at the Royal Swedish OperaRoyal Swedish OperaKungliga Operan is Sweden's national stage for opera and ballet.-Location and Environment:...
in 1994. The first performance in Russian was in MoscowMoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in 2004. The opera was nominated for Russia's Golden MaskGolden MaskThe Golden Mask is a Russian theatre festival and the National Theatre Award established in 1994 by the Theatre Union of Russia. The award is given to productions in all genres of theatre art: drama, opera, ballet, operetta and musical, and puppet theatre. It presents the most significant...
award. Its first performance in German was on 30 April at the Hessisches Staatstheater WiesbadenHessisches Staatstheater WiesbadenThe Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden is the State Theatre of the German state Hesse in the capital Wiesbaden, producing operas, plays, ballets, musicals and concerts on four stages. It is also known as Staatstheater Wiesbaden or Theater Wiesbaden...
as the opening night of the Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden in 2011. The German version was shortened from 4 hours to three, but noted Lolita's death at the conclusion, which had been omitted from the earlier longer version. It runs four hours, and was considered well-staged but musically monotonous.>In 2001 Shchedrin extracted "symphonic fragments" for orchestra from the opera score, which were published as Lolita-Serenade.
- In 2003 Russian director Victor Sobchak wrote a second non-musical stage adaptation, which played at the Lion and Unicorn fringe theater in London. It drops the character of Quilty and updates the story to modern England, and includes long passages of Nabokov's prose in voiceover.
- Also in 2003, a stage adaptation of Nabokov's unused screenplay was performed in Dublin adapted by Michael West. It was described by Karina Buckley (in the Sunday TimesThe Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
of London) as playing more like Italian commedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
than a dark drama about pedophiliaPedophiliaAs a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
. Hiroko Mikami notes that the initial sexual encounter between Lolita and Humbert was staged in a way that left this adaptation particularly open to the charge of placing the blame for initiating the relationship on Lolita and normalizing child sexual abuse; however, Mikami challenged this reading of the production, noting that the ultimate devastation of events on Lolita's life is duly noted in the play.
- In 2003 Italian choreographer Davide Bombana created a ballet based on Lolita that ran 70 minutes. It used music by Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
, György LigetiGyörgy LigetiGyörgy Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
, Alfred SchnittkeAlfred SchnittkeAlfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
and Salvatore SciarrinoSalvatore SciarrinoSalvatore Sciarrino is an Italian composer of contemporary classical music.-Biography:In his youth, Sciarrino was attracted to the visual arts, but began experimenting with music when he was twelve. Though he had some lessons from Antonino Titone and Turi Belfiore, he is primarily self-taught as a...
. It was performed by the Grand Ballet de Génève in SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
in November 2003. It earned him the award Premio Danza E Danza in 2004 as "Best Italian Choreographer Abroad".
- The BostonBostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
-based composer John HarbisonJohn HarbisonJohn Harris Harbison is an American composer, best known for his operas and large choral works.-Life:...
began an opera of Lolita, which he abandoned in the wake of the clergy child abuse scandal in BostonSexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of BostonThe sexual abuse scandal in Boston archdiocese was part of a series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States and Ireland. In early 2002, Boston Globe coverage of a series of criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests thrust the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests...
. Fragments were woven into a seven-minute piece, "Darkbloom: Overture for an Imagined Opera". Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, is a character in Lolita.
- American composer Joshua FinebergJoshua FinebergJoshua Fineberg is an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Biography:Joshua Fineberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He began his musical studies at the age of five...
and choreographer Johanne Saunier created an "imagined opera" of Lolita. Running 70 minutes, it premiered in Montclair, New JerseyMontclair, New Jersey-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 38,977 people, 15,020 households, and 9,687 families residing in the township. The population density was 6,183.6 people per square mile . There were 15,531 housing units at an average density of 2,464.0 per square mile...
in April 2009. While other characters silently dance, Humbert narrates, often with his back to the audience as his image is projected onto video screens. Writing in the New York Times, Steve Smith noted that it stressed Humbert as a moral monster and madman, rather than as a suave seducer, and that it does nothing to "suggest sympathy" on any level of Humbert. Smith also described it as "less an opera in any conventional sense than a multimedia monodrama". The composer described Humbert as "deeply seductive but deeply evil". He expressed his desire to ignore the plot and the novel's elements of parody, and instead to put the audience "in the mind of a madman". He regarded himself as duplicating Nabokov's effect of putting something on the surface and undermining it, an effect for which he thought music was especially suited.
- In 2009 Richard Nelson created a one-man drama, the only character onstage being Humbert speaking from his jail cell. It premiered in London with Brian Cox as Humbert. Cox believes that this is truer to the spirit of the book than other stage or film adaptations, since the story is not about Lolita herself but about Humbert's flawed memories of her.
Derivative literary works
- The 1995 novel Diario di Lo by Pia Pera retells the story from Lolita's point of view, making a few modifications to the story and names. (For example, Lolita does not die, and her last name is now "Maze".) The estate of Nabokov attempted to stop publication of the English translation (Lo's DiaryLo's DiaryLo's Diary is a 1999 novel by Pia Pera, retelling Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita from the point of view of Dolores....
), but it was protected by the court as "parody". "There are only two reasons for such a book: gossip and style", writes Richard CorlissRichard CorlissRichard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
, adding that Lo's Diary "fails both ways".
- The short book Poems for Men who Dream of Lolita by Kim MorrisseyKim MorrisseyKim Morrissey is a Canadian poet and playwright who lives in London, England. Many of her works examine the role of women in nineteenth century culture, re-imagining the lives of historical figures. She is also part of the Comedy Collective UK...
contains poems which purport to be written by Lolita herself, reflecting on the events in the story, a sort of diary in poetry form. Morrissey portrays Lolita as an innocent, wounded soul. In Lolita Unclothed, a documentary by Camille PagliaCamille PagliaCamille Anna Paglia , is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984...
, Morrisey complains that in the novel Lolita has "no voice".
- Morrisey's retelling was adapted into an opera by composer Sid Rabinovitch, and performed at the New Music Festival in Winnipeg in 1993.
- Steve MartinSteve MartinStephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....
wrote the short story "Lolita at Fifty" (included in his collection Pure DrivelPure DrivelPure Drivel is a collection of stories by Steve Martin, published in 1998, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker.-External links:* at Amazon.com...
), which is a gently humorous look at how Dolores Haze's life might have turned out. She has gone through many husbands. Richard CorlissRichard CorlissRichard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
writes that: "In six pages Martin deftly sketches a woman who has known and used her allure for so long—ever since she was 11 and met Humbert Humbert—that it has become her career."
- Emily PragerEmily Prager- Life and work :Prager grew up in Texas, Taiwan, and Greenwich Village, NY. She is a graduate of The Brearley School, Barnard College and has a Masters Degree in Education...
states in the foreword to her novel Roger FishbiteRoger FishbiteRoger Fishbite is a novel by the American writer and journalist Emily Prager, which was published in 1999.- Themes and literary connections :...
that she wrote it mainly as a literary parody of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, partly as a "reply both to the book and to the icon that the character Lolita has become". Prager's novel, set in the 1990s, is narrated by the Lolita character, thirteen-year-old Lucky Lady Linderhoff.
- The Italian novelist and scholar Umberto EcoUmberto EcoUmberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
published a short parody of Nabokov's novel called "Granita" in 1959. It presents the story of Umberto Umberto (Umberto being both the author's first name and the Italian form of "Humbert") and his illicit obsession with the elderly "Granita".
Further reading
One of the best guides to the complexities of Lolita. First published by McGraw-HillMcGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
in 1970. (Nabokov was able to comment on Appel's earliest annotations, creating a situation that Appel described as being like John Shade
John Shade
John Shade is a fictional character in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire.-Shade and family:The structure is notoriously difficult to unravel, but most readers agree that Shade is a poet married to his teenage sweetheart, Sybil. Their only child, a daughter named Hazel, apparently committed...
revising Charles Kinbote
Charles Kinbote
Charles Kinbote is the unreliable narrator in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire.-Academic work:Kinbote appears to be the scholarly author of the Foreword, Commentary and Index surrounding the text of the late John Shade's poem "Pale Fire", which together form the text of Nabokov's novel...
's comments on Shade's poem Pale Fire. Oddly enough, this is exactly the situation Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd
Brian Boyd
Brian Boyd is known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on literature and evolution...
proposed to resolve the literary complexities of Nabokov's Pale Fire
Pale Fire
Pale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
.) A pioneering study of Nabokov's interest in and literary uses of film imagery. A survey of the novel's reception, organised by decade. Essays on the life and novels. The major study of Nabokov's lepidoptery, frequently mentioning Lolita. An introduction and study-guide in PDF format.
- Levine, Peter (1967). "Lolita and Aristotle's Ethics" in Philosophy and Literature Volume 19, Number 1, April 1995, pp. 32–47. The original novel. Essays on the novel, mostly from the 1980s–90s. A widely praised monograph dealing extensively with Lolita
External links
- Photos of the first edition of Lolita
- Cover images of various editions
- Lolita USA: The itineraries of Humbert's and Lolita's two voyages across the U.S.A. 1947–1949, with maps and pictures.
- Lolita Calendar—A detailed and referenced inner chronology of NabokovNabokovNabokov may refer to:* Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov , Russian-American author, entomologist, and chess problem composer* Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov , Russian criminologist, journalist, and liberal politician, and father of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov* Nicolas Nabokov , Russian-American...
's novel.