The prompting for my previous question came from a pair of comments by Humbert which have now slowly drifted to the surface and which, now that I want them, I can't find for love nor money. (Although I bet I know someone in this forum who can!
)
Early on, Humbert said something that was very obscure to me about acquainting Lolita with his (darker) world.
And left by itself, that had no further explanation. Until just recently, here in the thread, when someone mentioned what must be the closing parenthesis to that thought, so to speak. Later on, Humbert said something to the effect that Lolita had peered past the edge into his world and not liked what she had seen.
Those are two comments that would seem to speak directly to Lolita's frame of mind, and to our wondering "just what did she think she was doing?" In the spirit of Nomi Tamir-Ghez in the
Casebook, who says Nabokov allows information to "leak out," those two statmenets by Humbert may be as close as we'll ever get to an indication of what was going on between them, or at least what he thought was going on between them. (or says he thought was going on between them, etc etc).
In many (all?) other instances the answer to Nabokov's puzzles can be found by searching hard enough for the clues. And I have just seen someone who said that was indeed the case, that Nabokov always adhered strictly to the rules of always providing enough information to unravel and understand his stories.
On the question of when Humbert is lying and when he is telling the truth, however, it seems to me that there is no explicit confirmatory or contradictory information given by Nabokov to permit the reader to settle the question. Which is why I am suddenly more interested in those two quotes I have alluded to, for the light they may shed on a large section of the story. But which is why I am also beginning to conclude that we will never know exactly just how to take large sections of Humbert's confession. Half of the answer is there on the printed page, and the other half of the answer will be what we bring to the story to complete it, and to answer the question in our own minds. (As was previously mentioned here also).
So the detective work goes on,
Peder
So, first read Nabokov, then read about Nabokov and his works.
