Analyzing the Complex Colors of Controversy in Nabokov’s Lolita

01

Nabokov invested a lot of “big material”

The novel “Lolita” is written in the first person, and it is a confession written in prison by Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who immigrated to the United States from Europe. His unforgettable love for his female companion Annabelle in his youth made him obsessed with girls. Girls aged 9-14 are all “fairies”, “goblins” and “nymphets” in his eyes.

The personable and economical Humbert came to Ramsdale, a small town in New England, USA, and rented at the home of Mrs. Charlotte Haze. He fell in love with the landlord’s 12-year-old daughter Lolita immediately. . The landlady quickly fell in love with Humbert, and she wrote to Humbert with an “ultimatum”: either move away immediately, or marry her. Humbert, who was reluctant to leave Lolita, had no choice but to marry Mrs. Haze and become Lolita’s stepfather.

One day, Mrs. Haze peeked at Humbert’s diary and knew that he not only didn’t love her, but also coveted her daughter. She was full of grief and indignation, and wrote a letter to her friend, but was hit by a car and died on the way to deliver the letter. Humbert picked up Lolita from the summer camp as a stepfather, and they stayed in a hotel called “The Enchanted Hunter” that night. Mrs. Haze had mentioned this hotel to Humbert before her death. In the hotel, Humbert secretly gave Lolita sleeping pills, intending to moles her while she was asleep, but due to the bad effect of the medicine, Lolita never fell asleep. The next morning, Lolita woke up and took the initiative Proposed to have sex with Humbert, in fact, she had already had sex with someone at summer camp.

Knowing that her mother died, Lolita could only live with her stepfather. Humbert drove Lolita around the United States in a car, lived in the same room as father and daughter in motels along the way, and continued to satisfy his desires for a year. Lolita then went to Beardsley Middle School, but she was poor in her studies and dropped out voluntarily, suggesting another long trip.

On an Independence Day in the United States, Lolita, who was admitted to a hospital due to illness, suddenly disappeared. Humbert later learned that she was taken away by a pedophile playwright Claire Quilty. Quilty wrote Lolita knew Quilty from a play called “The Possessed Hunter,” which Lolita starred in when she was in school. When Humbert drove Lolita on a trip, Quilty’s car followed him all the way, and eventually he found the opportunity to take Lolita away, but later abandoned her because Lolita refused to shoot obscene videos for him .

Three years later, Humbert suddenly received a letter from Lolita, knowing that she was married to a worker and pregnant, but her life was difficult, and she hoped that her stepfather could give her some money (several hundred dollars). Humbert found Lolita’s place and gave her $4,000, the income from renting out the house Mrs. Haze had left behind. Humbert asked Lolita to “go home” with him, but was rejected, but he asked from Lolita that it was Quilty who took her away. Humbert found Quilty’s residence and shot him dead. Quilty was arrested and imprisoned. The preface of the novel also explained that 17-year-old Lolita died of dystocia, and the baby she gave birth also died, and Humbert died of a heart attack in prison.

In this uncomplicated story, Nabokov puts a lot of “huge material”. In the novel, pedophilia, incest and adultery, as well as stalking, revenge and murder are all “taboo” subjects. The sexual description in the novel is already bold, but it is even more forbidden to directly describe the sexual behavior of adults to underage girls. Therefore, “Lolita” has been branded as pornographic literature.

02
“Books are wonderful, but publishing them can be a prison sentence”

Needless to say, the popularity of Nabokov’s novel “Lolita” is partly due to its “color”, and the so-called “Lolita Incident” made this color known to everyone. The manuscript of “Lolita” was transcribed in the spring of 1954. Nabokov submitted it to four American publishing houses successively, but all of them were rejected. later prosecuted.

In desperation, Nabokov sent the manuscript to his agent in Europe. After several twists and turns, the novel was published by Olympia Press in Paris in 1955. This publishing house is small in scale and not very well-known. It often publishes some quasi-erotic books. It launched the original English version of “Lolita”. The yellow “forbidden book”.

The few months after the novel was published seemed to be uneventful, causing neither the expected farce nor positive reviews, until the famous British writer Graham Greene published an article in the Christmas issue of the Sunday Times, bringing Lolita to life. ” was listed as one of the three best novels of the year in 1955.

Later, John Gordon, editor of the British “Sunday Express”, published an article in a column, expressing his disagreement with Greene’s view. He believed that “Lolita” was “unscrupulous pornography” and “the dirtiest literature” he had ever read. Dirty and obscene book,” the publisher and seller of which should all be imprisoned . Greene writes again, rebuttals, and a notable literary debate begins. At this time, the famous French Gallimard Publishing House decided to publish the French version of the book, and other European publishing houses also bought the copyright one after another, with a bright future.

However, at the end of 1956, the French Ministry of the Interior suddenly announced the ban on the Olympia version of “Lolita” at the request of the British government. Later, Olympia Press sued the French government, and the French media also protested against the official violation of the freedom of the press. The so-called “Lolita Case” (l’affaire Lolita) became international hot news for a while, making “Lolita” famous all over the world .

In order to pave the way for the publication of “Lolita” in the United States, Nabokov and several friends in the press and publishing circles edited and released an album on the “Anchor Review” magazine in June 1957, and selected about three points of the novel. One of the length, and distribution of Nabokov’s “On a Book Titled “Lolita” article, to justify the title of “Lolita”. This strategy seems to be effective. In addition, Nabokov published the novel “Pnin” at this time. “Pnin” was also nominated for the National Book Award, which further confirmed his status as a “serious writer”.

In August 1958, “Lolita” was finally released in the United States. There were two diametrically opposed evaluations in American newspapers and periodicals, which instead contributed to the best-selling of the novel. It sold 100,000 copies within three weeks of publication, creating the highest sales record since the novel “Gone with the Wind” . It has always been at the forefront of the bestseller list, and even once dominated the list until it was replaced by Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” by Nobel Prize winner Pasternak in 1958.

In 1962, Nabokov was invited by Hollywood director Kubrick to adapt the novel into a movie script, and the movie became very popular after it was released. Today, this novel has been translated into dozens of languages ​​in the world, and is regarded as one of the most important novels in the world in the 20th century. Today, the debate over whether Lolita is actually pornography has long since dissipated, but the voyeurism of the novel’s novelty, which is still frequently used as a The name of a commodity or industry related to sex becomes a colored word.

Movie poster of Lolita (1962)

03
The Motivation of Erotic Description in “Lolita”

In the preface to “Lolita” written under the guise of Dr. John Wray Jr., Nabokov wrote proudly: ” Indeed, there is not a single obscene word to be found in the whole work. ”

But there is no doubt that many descriptions in “Lolita” are very “sexy”, such as the intimate scene between the young Humbert and the young Annabelle on the Riviera beach:

I kissed the corners of her open mouth and hot earlobes, and she trembled and shivered. A cluster of stars shimmered above us among the black outlines of slender leaves, and that living sky seemed as naked as the body beneath her light dress. I saw her face in the sky, strangely clear, as if radiating its own faint radiance. Her legs, her lovely, lively legs, were not very tight together. When my hand touched the place I wanted to grope, a hazy and timid expression of half happiness and half pain flashed on that delicate face. She sits a little higher than me. Whenever she was alone and unable to control her strong feelings, she would come to kiss me, her head bent downward in a lazy soft almost sad drooping position, her bare knees always touching and pinching me. Hold my wrist, then relax. Her quivering mouth seemed distorted by a mysterious, pungent potion, and a hissing inhalation approached my face. She always brushed my lips carelessly with parched lips, trying to ease the pain of passionate love; then, my darling always flicked her hair nervously, drew back, and then sneaked closer again, Let me kiss her open mouth. At the same time, with a generosity ready to give her everything—my heart, my throat, my guts—I let her hold the scepter of my lust in one clumsy hand. (Translation by Master Wan)

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Another example is the first “physical contact” between Humbert and Lolita:

It’s been a few days since I’ve left the door ajar while I’m writing in my room, but today the trap has only worked. Lo, fidgeting, shifting her feet from side to side, scrubbing the floor for a while—to hide her embarrassment at having come to me unannounced—went into the room and looked around. , intrigued by the horrible squiggle I wrote on a piece of paper. No, they were not the result of an inspired pause between paragraphs by a belles-letter author, but ugly hieroglyphs (which she could not decipher) of my fatal desire. She had hardly bent her head, and let her brown curls fall over the desk where I was sitting, when hoarse Humbert put his arm around her, shamefully imitating the gestures of blood relatives. My innocent little guest is a little short-sighted, still looking at the piece of paper in her hand, leaning slowly on my lap in a half-sitting, half-standing posture. Her lovely profile, parted lips, and warm hair were only about three inches from my baring canine teeth; . Suddenly I knew I could kiss her neck or the center of her mouth with impunity. I knew she would let me do it, and even close my eyes like they are taught in Hollywood movies. Two slices of vanilla sandwiched between hot and creamy chocolate fudge – hardly more exotic than that. I can’t tell my learned reader (who, I guess, has widened his eyes by then), how I know this. Perhaps my simian ears had involuntarily picked up some slight change in the rhythm of her breathing—for she wasn’t actually reading my scribbles, but was waiting curiously and quite calmly— —Oh, my carefree nymphet! —waiting for the charismatic lodger to do what he longed to do. (Translation by Master Wan)

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Such descriptions come every few chapters in the novel. Of course, they are not without eroticism. However, in a literary work, what is written is often not more important than how and why it is written. The erotic descriptions that appear in Nabokov’s novel “Lolita” have the following motivations and narrative purposes :

First, generous royalties

First of all, when writing “Lolita”, Nabokov may have had the original intention of “taking the popular route”. After coming to the United States in 1940, Nabokov, as an empty-handed new immigrant, kept moving in places such as New York and New England, struggling to survive. Armed with his knowledge of Lepidoptera and European literature, he began teaching at American universities such as Wellesley College, Cornell University, and Harvard University.

At the same time, what Nabokov most wanted to display was his writing talent. Soon after arriving in the United States, Nabokov was forced to reinvent himself as a Russian expatriate writer already renowned in Europe, and to write in English. When the two English novels “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight” and “Signs of a Concubine” published in succession did not arouse great response, Nabokov decided to publish his third English novel. In “Lolita”, the sword is slanted, and it hits the edge.

Nabokov

He wrote “Lolita” very hard. Starting from 1949, he wrote it intermittently for five years before finishing the draft. He obviously knew the “sensitivity” of the novel’s subject matter, and when he submitted the manuscript to the publishing house, he even offered to publish it “anonymously”. He also jokingly called Lolita a “ticking time bomb” that would take two years to finally explode. We cannot conclude that Nabokov wrote “Lolita” because he wanted to use its special plot content to earn generous royalties, but it is probably one of his original intentions to draw more attention by touching sensitive subjects .

In other words, the writing of “Lolita” has a realistic or even realistic motivation, that is, to break through the boundary between popular literature and serious literature, and bring seemingly “vulgar” topics into “elegant” literature. Judging from the actual effect of this work, Nabokov’s goal of making “Lolita” appealing to both refined and popular tastes has also been achieved. A Nabokov biographer sighed because of this: the novel “Lolita” returned to him all the wealth of the Nabokov family that had been lost after the outbreak of the October Revolution .

Second, the plot itself requires

Secondly, the erotic description in “Lolita” is the need of the plot itself, the need of image shaping, and the need of the style of the work. The main object of description in the novel “Lolita” should be the tragedy of desire. Nabokov shows the richness and depth of human consciousness by spying on Humbert’s inner consciousness and subconsciousness, psychology and sexual psychology. to demonstrate the devastating results that Humbertian sexual desires can have.

It is interesting to compare Nabokov’s “Lolita” with Lawrence’s “same title” Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), both of which contain explicit sexual Banned, but if the sexuality in Lady Chatterley’s Lover is meant to celebrate the sacred right of the individual’s emotions, symbolizing emotional freedom against the cold industrial age, Lolita is suggesting The existential tragedy that an individual’s perverted desires can lead to . The two novels were written only more than 20 years apart, but the sex descriptions in them have such different purposes and directions, which also highlights the modernist attribute of the novel “Lolita” from another aspect.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (2022)

The heroine Lolita in the novel “Lolita” is one of Nabokov’s beloved characters in the novel. The author later claimed that among nearly a thousand novel characters he created, Lolita was his second “admiration” role, second only to the protagonist of the same name in the novel “Pnin”.

Lolita in the novel is mediocre in appearance, and doesn’t seem to have any outstanding character or talent. She is lazy and even a bit vulgar. She is just an ordinary girl in a small town in New England. However, with the help of Humbert’s poetic description, But she has become a shining literary image, and Lolita’s aesthetic deification and sanctification are mainly realized by Humbert’s sexual fantasies. As Humbert himself puts it:

“It is not her that I possess madly, but my own creation, another imagined Lolita—perhaps even more real than Lolita, an illusion that overlaps her, envelops her, and separates me and She floats, has no will, no sentience—really, no life of her own.”

In fact, the generation and existence of the most beautiful female images in literary works are inseparable from the sexual imagination of Humberts (Nabokovs) and readers in the works. As one of Nabokov’s most representative works, “Lolita” is also a concentrated expression of Nabokov’s novel style. When Nabokov taught literature courses in American colleges and universities, he always stressed the importance of details; as a novelist who started out writing poems, Nabokov was very keen on creating poetry in his novels; delicate psychological feelings, It is standard for every character in Nabokov’s works.

When reading “Lolita”, we can easily feel that these three stylistic characteristics of Nabokov can often be organically unified in the description of sexiness, and Humbert will find the sexiest details in his sex objects , the aesthetic psychological feelings for these details will be transformed into the most poetic words. In this way, the text of “Lolita” presents a kind of delicate and ambiguous, lyrical and restrained, graceful and sinful. Special tonality.

Third, a transcendence of taboo subjects

Finally, the erotic writing in “Lolita” may be intentional and deliberately done by Nabokov. Every epoch-making literary masterpiece in the history of world literature is a challenge, breakthrough and subversion of certain taboos, and there are no more than three types of objects that have been banned in the history of human publishing, namely, speeches that challenge political authority, and articles that violate religious beliefs. Reading materials and s and texts that are harmful to ethics and customs. The latter category of banned books mostly refers to so-called pornographic literature.

Taking taboos as objects of challenge and bravely breaking into forbidden areas of writing has always been the unanimous move of many writers from all over the world. Nabokov’s “Lolita” can also be regarded as such a writing strategy and a writer’s posture. We can find that after “Lolita” was approved for publication and spread around the world, erotic themes and sexual descriptions began to gradually separate from pornographic literature, and entered the field of serious literature in a grand manner. Writers around the world They are no longer so shy when they describe sex, which is a great convenience that “Lolita” provides for the creation of subsequent writers.

Nabokov completed the transcendence of certain taboos through the sensitive subject “Lolita”, and every breakthrough of the writers in terms of sexual themes symbolizes the freedom of emotion and its free expression, spiritual independence and freedom of human beings. A new step forward in its independent presentation. In this sense, the eroticism of “Lolita” is even just a camouflage.

04
We need to get from the literature

Code of ethics?

When “Lolita” was full of trouble, Nabokov once said confidently: “A novel of such an artistic level needs no self-defense, it can make the work immune to any pornographic accusations.” He was implying , The level of art can also become the criterion for judging whether a work is pornographic, and the true artistic value can become a special pass for a work, allowing its author the right to be free from criticism.

But Nabokov, both while writing Lolita and shortly after it was written, had concerns and “self-defense” over the novel’s sensitive subject matter. Nabokov specially wrote the preface we mentioned earlier for this novel, in the name of the fictional psychiatrist Dr. John Wray Jr. to give readers a dose of vaccination:

“These scenes, though they may be unduly accused by some of being erotic in themselves, are the most functional in the development of a tragic story whose unwavering inclination is not otherwise Yes, it is respect for morality.”

“As a medical record, Lolita will undoubtedly become a classic in psychiatry; as a work of art, it transcends all aspects of atonement. And in our opinion, more important than scientific significance and literary value What is important is the moral impact this book should have on the serious reader.”

In “On a Book Titled ‘Lolita’,” published after the novel was written and which is now often placed after the main text of “Lolita” by publishers around the world, Nabokov dabbles again. a topic:

Sex has been a topic of literature since ancient times, but modern commercialized pornography has been reduced to mediocrity, “obscenity must be paired with mediocrity”, pornographic literature has its own set of stereotypes, and aims to give the recipient physical satisfaction; the publisher They rejected Lolita, “Whether they think my book is pornographic or not, I am not interested. They refuse to buy my book not because of my treatment of the subject matter of the book, but because of the subject matter itself.” “.

“Lolita” [US] Vladimir Nabokov / Zhu Wan / Shanghai Translation Publishing House / 2019

Nabokov also talked about the reading mentality of some readers in a joking tone, saying that they regard this book as “Memoirs of a Loose Woman” or “A History of the Love of a Merry Man”, expecting to read more and more obscene scenes, and the result is natural Couldn’t read it, felt disappointed and frustrated. Nabokov also referred to the various views of the editors:

One editor suggested that the author change Lolita to a 12-year-old boy and tell the story in more concise and forceful language; It was “Young America Seduced Old Europe”; the editor of X Press only read page 188, but asserted that the second book was too long; the editor of Y Press regretted that there was no good person in the novel; Z The editor of the publishing house said that the novel would send him and the director to prison.

After laying out these views, Nabokov firmly stated:

It is absurd to say that a writer in a free country should not be expected to care about the exact line between beauty and sensuality; I would only appreciate but not judge of those who put s of young and beautiful mammals in magazines Accurate, because to be published in these magazines, the neckline of general clothes should be low enough for insiders to chuckle, but also high enough for laymen not to frown.

…I think there are some readers who find the bold text in such novels provocative. There are also refined people who will think that Lolita is meaningless because it doesn’t teach anything. I neither read didactic novels nor write didactic novels. No matter what John Ray says, “Lolita” doesn’t carry a moral message. For me, fiction exists only if it can bring me what I would bluntly call aesthetic happiness… (translated by Jin Shaoyu)

Here, Nabokov not only denies that the novel “Lolita” is immoral, but also denies that it is a novel that promotes morality. What he values ​​most is the novel “Aesthetic Happiness” that exists as “aesthetic happiness”. Lolita.

05
Can be read as a suspense novel

Whether erotic or pornographic, whether pink or yellow, are not all in the color spectrum of the novel “Lolita”.

“Lolita” is also dark. This novel can be read as a suspense novel, with suspense throughout. Nabokov wrote “Lolita” simultaneously with hunting butterflies. He often went to the field to do research on Lepidoptera during summer vacation. The text of “Rita” and the butterfly specimens are by-products of each other, probably related to this, “hunting” has become the main story line of “Lolita”.

Several main characters in the novel are both hunter and prey, or each other as hunter and prey: Humbert’s coveting and possession of Lolita is the main line of the novel, but there is also a reverse nature in the relationship between the two of them, that is, Lolita. Rita’s temptation to Humbert; both Humbert and Quilty regard Lolita as prey, and Humbert also regards Quilty as his “second self” as a hunting target, and finally Kill him; Humbert and his two wives, Valeria and Mrs. Haze, also form a mutual “hunting” relationship. These intricate plot clues are often hidden and deeply buried, which puts a veil of mystery on the work.

As Boyd said: “Nabokov stuffed the whole work with various delayed surprises, delayed discoveries, implicit jokes, hidden concentrates of his imaginary world…” “Lawrence Rita is full of codes, landmines everywhere, plus allusions, allusions, metaphors and intertextualities one after another, making the whole work like a secret room playing an escape game. Being in it, there is both expected tension And fears, but also unexpected discoveries and surprises.

06
Call it “anti-American”
Nabokov expressed insult

“Lolita” is also gray. Among Nabokov’s works, “Lolita” is the first novel describing the United States, and it covers all aspects of American life at that time, such as American movies, popular songs, popular magazines, advertisements, trademarks, travel, summer camps , motels, boarding schools, fast food restaurants, cold drink shops, potato chips, lollipops, sundaes, and more.

Although Nabokov has always rejected the “realism” in literature, he has always paid attention to detail capture and display in “Lolita” as always, objectively making this novel a “realism” of American social life in the middle of the 20th century. true reflection”. Such content is not only very attractive to readers outside the United States, but also one of the main reasons why American readers widely accept this novel. This is probably the result of the acceptance of the novel “Lolita” and Nabokov’s literary standpoint. A little joke.

While Nabokov repeatedly asserted that “the idea of ​​knowing a country, a social class, or an author by reading fiction is absurdly childish,” he was also willing to admit that Lolita was his ” “Love Record with English” is a helpless move he was forced to give up his handy Russian and replace it with second-rate English. In other words, “Lolita” is a symbol of Nabokov’s English and American literary writing. Therefore, this novel is regarded as “the most American one” among his works, and its author has thus become a “An American Writer”.

But it is worth noting that when describing the real American life, Nabokov also used his usual humor and sarcasm, even watching and deconstructing, thus painting American life with a thick gray tone. In the novel, he satirizes American popular culture such as American movies and fashion magazines, alludes to the disadvantages of educational methods that Americans are proud of such as summer camps and boarding schools, and mocks the social life of people in small towns in the United States , have aroused some discussion, which made Nabokov can’t help but bluntly defend himself: ” Some reviewers added another charge to me. They said that “Lolita” was anti-American. This one The crime hurts me a lot more than being stupidly obscene and immoral. ”

Nabokov’s attitude towards America and American life in “Lolita” is, in the final analysis, his consistent textual tone and the ironic attitude that most artists would have when facing reality. Besides, he This kind of tone and attitude is very American in itself.

07
Be wary of “romanticizing” self-justifications

“Lolita” is also gold. Humbert’s eloquent eloquence, fond reminiscences, and ostentatious quotations throughout the novel give the work a certain bright tone at times. Nabokov’s Humbert is a very complex image, and there is no doubt that he has some kind of dual personality.

Nabokov seemed unsympathetic to his hero, whom he once characterized as “a pompous, brutal villain who tries to be ‘moving’.” But Nabokov tried to confuse Readers, make it possible for readers to feel compassion for Humbert, as “ladies and gentlemen of the jury” might be moved by Humbert’s rhetoric.

Humbert, of course, is a villain. He married his first wife, Valeria, as a safety valve for his sexual desires; Mrs. Ze; what he did to Lolita was certainly more immoral, and it was a complete criminal. But there’s another side to Humbert too, learned, imaginative, emotionally sensitive, conscious, and most importantly, his affection for Lolita is both sinful and sincere , has both a profane and destructive side, as well as an aesthetic and reconstructive side. It is in his consciousness that Lolita, who is very ordinary in appearance and even in heart, has become an aesthetic object full of youthful vitality and fairy magic. . More importantly, he uses his confession, which is full of artistic appeal, to subtly defend himself.

He admits that he is a criminal and a devil, and at the same time expresses his inner entanglement, his emotional sincerity, and even his moral repentance. When Humbert talks about his first-person narration in the novel, he sometimes refers to it as “confession”, sometimes as “statement”, sometimes as “confession”, and sometimes as “memory”. His stories are not only court statements and self-defense, but also love confession and spiritual confession. His narrative tone is sometimes sad and sometimes funny, sometimes lyrical and sometimes treacherous. The writing style of the novel seems to be the concrete manifestation of Humbert’s dual personality.

At the beginning of the novel, Humbert’s memories of his teenage love with Annabelle are all bathed in the golden sunshine on the Riviera beach. Lolita, who first appeared in Humbert’s sight, is sunbathing, and her golden body has remained in the reader’s memory ever since. The affectionate call to Lolita appears at the beginning and end of the novel, like a golden frame inlaid for the text of the whole book.

Here is the beginning of the novel: “Lolita is the light of my life, the fire of my desire, and at the same time my sin, my soul. Lo-li-ta; the tip of the tongue has to move down the palate three times, to the third Again lightly on the teeth: Lo-Li-ta. In the morning she was Lo, ordinary Lo, four feet ten in one sock. In slacks she was Lora .At school, she was Dolly. At official autographs, she was Dolores. But in my arms, she was always Lolita.”

Here is the end of the novel: “God let Hen Hen live at least two or three months longer, so that He could keep you alive in the hearts of posterity. I now think of bison and angels, of the secret of long-lasting paint, of prophetic of the sonnets, think of the sanctuary of art. This is the only immortal thing you and I can share, my Lolita.”

From holding Lolita possessively in his “arms” to using words to make Lolita “immortal”, Humbert has actually completed his moral repentance. After killing his other half, Quilty, he was standing on the hillside waiting for the police to arrest him. At this time, he heard a sound of children playing from the bottom of the hill, and he suddenly had an epiphany: “I am standing here. On the top of the high slope I heard that sweet tremor, that disconnected cry that broke out among reserved whispers, and then I understood that the poignant, hopeless thing was not that Lolita was not with me, but It’s her voice that’s not in that harmony.”

At this moment, Humbert’s spirit and emotion also seem to have climbed “on the top of the high slope”, achieving an ascension. In this epiphany, he is full of his lost childhood Lolita and Lolita Mourning for a lost childhood, mixed with his confession, of course. It can also be said that Humbert’s desire for Lolita has gradually sublimated into love, or love in a broad sense, including paternal love. Therefore, when he saw the pregnant Lolita, he dared to say confidently: “I looked at her again and again, as if I knew clearly that I would die, and knew that I loved her more than what I saw in this world.” More than anything I’ve ever lived or imagined, anywhere else I’ve hoped.” All these passages seem to radiate a bewildering golden glow.

“Lolita” probably has some other colors. Every reader’s reading eyes are actually a pair of colored glasses, which can distinguish different colors in this novel, or project different colors to this novel. Go in the novel.