Redeeming the madman artist: 60 years of a misinterpreted Lo
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” With thoughts like that, Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert cannot be the abhorrent pedophile it was once believed, or at least, not only that.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, of pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom, was born on Shakepseare’s birthday on 1899. At the –not so young- age of 60, the émigré became not only a recognized author, but an adjective, through the succes de scandale of his never-aging 12 years old Lo.Lee.Ta.
In honor of the 60th anniversary, a new version of the always controversial Lolita has been released, this time, with illustrations. The task is hard today as it was in 1955, because, then again, pedophilia is …show more content…
Lolita offers neither masturbatory stimuli nor moral lesson; it is an intellectual aphrodisiac. H.H.’s florid language should shock the reader much more than his legal –affairs-. Nabokov had a sense of this; with eleven novels, remarkable translations to and from English, and several poems and short stories, the fairly ripped Russian polyglot was nothing of a noob. The selection of such topic in a context in which he knew a topic of such nature will be surely banned was not accidental. Is it that the lepidopterist was also a pervert whose twisted mind could do nothing but produce a perverse plot disguised in florid narrative? I don’t think so. The –almost Vivian Darkbloom- was only using the scandal to make his style known. The plot is perverse, no doubt, but the fact that Nabokov chose that thematic is not related to sexual deviations of any sort, but to literary …show more content…
The reasons American publishers presented to refrain are rather diverse; without disclosing names, Nabokov said in his afterword “On a Book Entitled Lolita”, that a Publisher X claimed that such publication would end up with both in jail. 60 Years Later, The Folio Society, in a context in which the moniker Lolita is in popular culture language, a reference to an prepubescent “siren”, sees no fear of jail with their new
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” With thoughts like that, Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert cannot be the abhorrent pedophile it was once believed, or at least, not only that.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, of pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom, was born on Shakepseare’s birthday on 1899. At the –not so young- age of 60, the émigré became not only a recognized author, but an adjective, through the succes de scandale of his never-aging 12 years old Lo.Lee.Ta.
In honor of the 60th anniversary, a new version of the always controversial Lolita has been released, this time, with illustrations. The task is hard today as it was in 1955, because, then again, pedophilia is …show more content…
Lolita offers neither masturbatory stimuli nor moral lesson; it is an intellectual aphrodisiac. H.H.’s florid language should shock the reader much more than his legal –affairs-. Nabokov had a sense of this; with eleven novels, remarkable translations to and from English, and several poems and short stories, the fairly ripped Russian polyglot was nothing of a noob. The selection of such topic in a context in which he knew a topic of such nature will be surely banned was not accidental. Is it that the lepidopterist was also a pervert whose twisted mind could do nothing but produce a perverse plot disguised in florid narrative? I don’t think so. The –almost Vivian Darkbloom- was only using the scandal to make his style known. The plot is perverse, no doubt, but the fact that Nabokov chose that thematic is not related to sexual deviations of any sort, but to literary …show more content…
The reasons American publishers presented to refrain are rather diverse; without disclosing names, Nabokov said in his afterword “On a Book Entitled Lolita”, that a Publisher X claimed that such publication would end up with both in jail. 60 Years Later, The Folio Society, in a context in which the moniker Lolita is in popular culture language, a reference to an prepubescent “siren”, sees no fear of jail with their new