[lit-ideas] Re: Reading Lolita in Tehran
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 14:32:46 EST
In a message dated 4/3/2004 6:46:49 AM Eastern Standard Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Yes, I reflected later that it might have to do also
with cherishing individuality, not only with women's
liberation.
On one level, _Lolita_ works as a study of an artist understanding a
character, bridging the gap between creation and creator, and by extension, one
person
recognizing another.
Many of Nabokov's novels are about this recognition of the other. Consider
_Despair_ where the narrator never comes to terms with the fact that the person
he has chosen as his perfect double doesn't look like him at all. Or
_Invitation to a Beheading_ which turns on the protagonist's recognition that
he has
created his own jail and execution.
The greatest moment of recognition Humbert gets, in my opinion, is at the
very end of the book, when he drives up a mountainside and hears the voices of
school children at play echoing up from the valley below. Then he has a glimpse
of the life he has stolen from Dolores Haze, when he made her into Lolita.
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