It Was Many And Many A Year Ago, In a Kingdom By The Sea

Hello fellow peers! Thanks for stopping by my blog. Today I'll be giving a brief rundown of the beginning of Lolita and how I've come to enjoy it so far.

Let me begin by saying that I am guilty of not reading the foreword's to books. Oftentimes, they bore me. However, once I was done reading the first quarter of the book I went back and read the foreword, in an attempt to gain some sort of idea as to where this story began or an insight on the characters.

"No doubt, H.H. is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy... He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!" (5)

This quote from the forward speaks true of our dearest Humbert Humbert, and how I feel after reading it thus far. Humbert is a pedophile, obsessed with young girls between the ages of nine and fourteen. Humbert defines these girls as "nymphets", a term he coined himself. Humbert is a genius man, with the ability to manipulate those around him. He describes himself as "an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor." (25) His outwardly handsome appearance enables him to "obtain at the snap of my fingers, any adult female I chose." (25) Which was the opposite of what Humbert wanted, at least for the age range of women he was interested in.

Humbert's pedophilia can be traced back twenty four years, when he first fell in love with his beloved Annabel Leigh. (Based solely off the Edgar Allen Poem Annabel Lee) "All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly should I add... but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have found so easy an opportunity to do." (12) Annabel Leigh died four months later of typhus, which devastated Humbert. I think it was because he could not be with his beloved Annabel that Humbert grew to be a pedophile. His longing for her was just transcribed into his adult years, and was translated onto all the young girls he saw that he categorized as nymphets.

Twenty four years later, after the death of Annabel and his first marriage to Valeria, Humbert travels to the United States, and ends up boarding with a women named Mrs. Haze. His dislike for her disorderly house and weird manners caused him to almost leave, until he met Dolores Haze, the daughter of Mrs. Haze. "It was the same child- the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from the gaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day." (39) As you can see, this isn't how an adult male should be physically describing a young girl. In this quote, Humbert tries to reincarnate his beloved Annabel into Dolores, comparing their stature and appearance. Their distinctly similar characteristics drives Humbert to agree to live with the Haze's, and from then on his relationship with Dolores, also known as his Lolita, begins.

However, you might be thinking, "Amanda, how can you even like this book? The dude is so creepy!" And you would be right with that statement, but going back to the foreword, Humbert's "singing violin" can really change how you view Humbert. Now, I'm not discrediting Humbert in any way. Yes, he is a horrible man, however, the way Nabokov writes as Humbert really makes you feel tenderness for Lolita, and even Humbert, as your curiosity to know what happens next pushes you further into the novel, even if it is really disturbing. It is the eloquence in his speech that pulls the reader farther and farther into the novel, wanting to know more of what happens next.

I think this conflict between the subject matter and the linguistics of the book are what really make it special. So far, I've enjoyed having to slow down and really analyze every obscure word Humbert uses in his memoir. I'm looking forward to knowing whether the marriage between Mrs. Haze and Humbert works out, and what that means for Lolita and Humbert's ever-growing relationship.

I hope I've given some insight into Lolita, and I can't wait to see what happens next!