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Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Gem said:
Wow. I go to sleep for a few hours, come back and find some great posts. I think i'll go back to sleep, er.. i mean to think ;) i'll come back later and see how you are all getting along :D
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Gem,
I see that you are on to the secret! :D
I do my best er thinking when I am nearly asleep.

This sounds like it is going to get very ambiguous (pun intended).
I have been wondering if the doppelganger might also represent what we hear called the "evil twin?" That is, Humbert's darker side. And that, when he kiills Quilty, that might symbolically suggest his finally conquering the evil within himself?

Do I hear Steffee tittering in the corner as she listens to this?

Now I need more think :)
Peder
 
Now go to bed.
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i'm going - not that i'm likely to get any sleep with these thoughts of HH's doppelgangers swirling around my head - all of cos of you pesky kids :D

Goodnight.
 
Gem said:
could this be Nabokovs way of telling us that Don't fall into HH's trap - as he is all those things too - as doppelgangers are a version of oneself - we musn't sympathise no matter what HH says and how he says it.
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Now thats an interesting angle! Because certain of us (who, me?) have been somewhat sympathetic, well, maybe thats too strong a word, but at least not as condemning as on first reading/glance. No doubt about it, HH was in fact a louse of the highest order. [or is that the lowest order?] :rolleyes:

Perhaps one reason I find it difficult to work up any sympathy for Quilty is the fact that Nabokov did not provide any childhood background for him. VN went to a lot of trouble to provide tons of heartrending background on HH.

Hah! Manipulated again, by the Master Manipulator!! ;)
 
Peder,

Absolutely. No fair that you expressed that so much better than me. I'm going to bed in a jealous huff now :)
 
Gem said:
i'm going - not that i'm likely to get any sleep with these thoughts of HH's doppelgangers swirling around my head - all of cos of you pesky kids :D

Goodnight.
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Its a tough job............but someones gotta do it!:D

Nighty Night:)
 
It looks like a lot of furious typing has been going on. :D
Can't even type a post without three others appearing while you type.
Its like rabbits!
 
Ok, i Just realised Humbert Humbert - thats why he's called that - the name is like a parody of the doppelganger thing - am i slow or what? :rolleyes:

Ok i'm going now and won't be back :)
 
Peder said:
And there was another one.
I'm not even reading -- just counting and typing![/QUOTE

Nighty night, Peder. /yawn/ . We will be on this like a ... like a Lolita on a lollypop in the morning ... :eek:
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ROFLMAO at this thread.

As I'm in the UK, I wake up in the morning to find most of the discussion has took place at 4am my time...

The reason I mentioned the doppelganger thing at all, is because we learned about them to some extent in my English Lit. class, mainly regarding Frankenstein.

For all Lolita is NOTHING at all like Frankenstein, the similarities between HH and Quilty, and Frankenstein and his 'creation' are there... the one that tries to be good but can't (HH, Frankenstein), and the 'evil twin' of them (Quilty, 'creation'). And a 'typical' doppelganger feature involves the 'good' finally conquering and destroying the 'evil'.

As a huge Edgar Allen Poe fan and short stories, the story William Wilson is a fantastic illustration of a doppelganger, the battle between good and evil, but one which actually goes on to clarify exactly what it is...

"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead — dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist — and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

Sorry for quoting another text... I could imagine Quilty saying that to HH.

As for sympathy, I think I do feel (a tiniest bit of) sympathy for HH. He was foolish, a "brute", but he tried so hard not to do it.
 
steffee said:
ROFLMAO at this thread.
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Right on, Steffee! Right on!

I just have to respond to that much without reading further! Now I'll go back and start from the beginning and then read the rest of your post in proper order. But from what I can tell it looks like there was a wild party here last night. The drapes are torn, there are liquor stains all over the rug, the chandelier is off the ceiling, furniture tumbled over and disarranged, and tattered Lolita books all over the place shredded from furious page flipping. Not to mention the feathers from a pillow fight. Plus it looks like they were chasing each other around the table and jumping over the back of the couch from what I can make of it.

:)
Peder
 
Steffee,
Wonderful explanation! Especially since I haven't read any of those works or heard a doppelganger explained before. I have seen them in two literary works but never before knew what a 'familiar' was, as in 'the Devil's familiar.' But now it occurs to me that those fleeting glimpses of Quilty in Lolita sound, at a stretch, like fleeting appearances of the Devil's familiar, meaning Quilty's familiar, which is present whenever Humbert is engaged in doing some evil thing. And now that I type that sentence, it is not present during HH's final meeting and conversation wiith Lolita.
Your suggestion of doppelganger really opens wide the door to symbolic interpretaion(s) of Lolita, and places it truly among some of the most amazing works of world literature (Goethe's Faust, and Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, being two that I have read.)
--
As for that discussion, there were 18 posts in 27 minutes, which must be amazing in it own way. And it really was the case that typing and posting were overlapping and it would take multiple screens to sort out the linear thread above. But at one point, definnitely, two doppelgangers were typing the same cloned thoughts on two different keyboards miles apart. Amazing!
--
Can't let it go! So:
Quilty == Devil?
Humbert == Faust?
Lolita == Margaret?

That would absolutely blow the mind as an interpretation. But no! Humbert as Faust, even to say it, would be a desecration. And the dramatic conflicts aren't the same. So what do you thinK about a closest fit for Lolita in the world of Doppelganger stories? Or did Nabokov do it again -- create a unique concept?

It's time for the world to turn a little to let the rest of the partygoers wake up. :D

But, wow, Steffee! You really ripped it!
Peder
 
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