Nabokov's Novel, Lolita

agree to Morton, the elements of narrative ar organized so that "the foreword balances the aestheticism that dominates Part wholeness, while the supplement balances the exampleism of Part Two" (81). What that refers to is that the foreword is presented as a psychiatric analysis of a certain pathological patient symbol and a caution to the reader to be prepared for both(prenominal) shocking affect and the implicit moral lesson to be derived from Humbert's receive words. Bader describes the foreword as a "parody of the instructive appreciations that ordinarily preface works on controversial subjects," chiefly because it mingles easygoing middle-class moralism with clinically compassionate diagnosis. Thus "Dr. Ray" (as Bader notes) characterizes Humbert's stage as a "tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than moral apotheosis" (Nabokov 5). Indeed, that foreword has something of the staidness of the venereal-disease health films that used to be shown in high schooling assemblies.

The appurtenance, meanwhile, ponderly belies the clinical solemnity of the foreword:

I am neither a reader nor a author of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss (Nabokov 308).

The declaration of aestheticism of campaign belongs to Nabokov as author of Lolita, but there is a simulacrum action at work here as well, if the postscript is to be considered

Humbert invites the reader to region his most intimate thoughts and adventures in Part One, declaring a classifiable and presumably worthy literary style. However, it is also evident now that the invitation is geminated by a barrier between writer and reader. That is because Humbert is "writing under observation" (10). Given the clinical foreword, star may presume the observation is psychiatric, but it is equally realistic (and turns out to be the case) that observation is linked with incarceration. That possibility has the effect of heightening narrative suspense and make the reader agile to additional clues about the authorial context of Humbert's story.

Humbert thus achieves dickens identities from the beginning: the subject of the confessional about Annabel Leigh (although this is the confessional of somebody who turns out to be an unreliable narrator) and the mature object of observational scrutiny who is making this retrospective confessional (and, as it turns out in yet another(prenominal) doubling, confession). Throughout Part One there appear double effects that are tricks of language and double effects that go to Humbert's peculiar doublethink psychology. Or, as Morton puts it: "Two Humberts are present on every page of Lolita: the Humbert who actually experiences the events narrated . . . and the Humbert who has been through it all" (76).

The deliberate ambiguity of Lolita resonates with the continual use of double figures. Part One of the book immediately sets about showing its colors of ambiguity, beingness presented as Humbert's account of--and rationalizations for--his systematic sexual predation of Lolita. According to Morton, Part One has the aesthetic tone. Humbert presents himself as bon vivant, which, consistent with Dr. Ray's analysis, pile be interpreted as a mask for moral squalor. The point is that alternatives of sense are always possible--even from the famous inauguration line of Part One: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my brain" (Naboko
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