The Annabel story.

Nabokov's aim: did he try to explain Humbert's behaviour, thought of some basic psychology and came up with this story about his childhood?
It sounds unconvincing to me. Did he think he should give his readers or the censors an explanation?
I imagine that not much was known about pedophiles in the 1950's from a medical point of view, and even now psychiatry may be rather sketchy on this point.

Now on the other hand, the story is very useful to the narrator.

Raving wrote:

it seems that Mr. Humbert is trying to explain away his infatuation with Lolita. It seems he is trying to say it isn't his fault because he had a devasting relationship with Annabel that was not ended properly. Almost like he is trying to justify his sexual urge to Lolita.

Yes, I agree! He keeps adding justifications to try and convince us -- we can see a rather pathetic, manipulative character here. There is a lot of self-pity and self-centredness.

The subject of control enters my mind. Humbert seems like he is trying to say that if he could have had Annabel then he could have controlled himself around Lolita. Annabel's death and Lolita's presence ripped that control away from him.

Interesting. First I had thought of who was trying to control whom, but this adds the issue of controlling oneself-- or failing to.

Annabel, continued... reference to Poe's peom.

Lolita is supposed to be full of literary references, and... I didn't order the annotated version of Lolita! How about you?
The reference to Poe's Annabel changes things. Nabokov would have expected his readers to know the poem, and the contrast is striking.
Where Humbert is often clumsy and pathetic, Poe is simple and beautiful.
Humbert was already giving me an overload of information, and Poe adds one more layer.
What do you think?


Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:--
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

I found that the Poe Annabel interesting because of its similarity to Lolita. It seems to bring everything into focus where Humbert is just giving you a rough outline.

I am not to sure how old they were supposed to be in their trist. I was guess 14 because of his description on how clumsy and unexperienced they were. I believe that Shakespeare's Juliet was in fact 14.

The use of the language that Nabokov uses is very descriptive (trying to find the right word but lacking it at the moment). If I was sitting on the jury I would think to myself that this gentleman is trying to sound intelligent but going overboard almost to the point of being obsurd. I also agree that Humbert seems to be explaining too much. To quote Shakespeare "I think you protest too much" (not exact quote but you know what I mean).

I believe that I bought the annotated one. I will have to wait and see what comes in though.

Sorry not to be more specific. About the quote, I was referring to Nabokov saying that this was a story about love, not sex. I think he said that because it is provocative; it makes us re-examine a character whom we would like to write off as a pedophile. Humbert is never quite what we expect, especially in the first few chapters; he is charming, charismatic, humorous. We find ourselves rooting for him at times and then remembering ourselves.

That is the point of the quote, and of the Annabel story. I think the Annabel story does two things. 1) It's an homage to the gothic side of this novel, since Humbert's voice is very much a Poe-inspired limited narrator who llets us look too closely into his own psyche. 2) It gives us a context with which to understand and empathize with Humbert. He loses this childhood love and then searches for its recurrence for the rest of his life. This is a story about love. Does Humbert love Lolita? I don't think so. Does he love Annabel through Lolita? Possibly.

~Rahel

Rahel wrote:

Humbert is never quite what we expect, especially in the first few chapters; he is charming, charismatic, humorous. We find ourselves rooting for him at times and then remembering ourselves.

Exactly! I found myself at times rooting for him as an adult as opposed to a dreadful teenager, and as a European opposed to an American!

It's an homage to the gothic side of this novel, since Humbert's voice is very much a Poe-inspired limited narrator

Lovely, this is one more thing to look forward to then.

Raving wrote:

If I was sitting on the jury I would think to myself that this gentleman is trying to sound intelligent but going overboard almost to the point of being absurd.

Yes, that would explain the strange use of language.

I also agree that Humbert seems to be explaining too much. To quote Shakespeare

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much" (Hamlet).

I'm looking forward to the continuation of this discussion...

I'll add a few lines about Poe's Annabel Lee poem.

It prefaces the novel with what seems to be a reference to purity.
Also, it makes Humbert sound almost respectable for a while: after all, it's a beautiful poem, I learnt it in high school, there can't be anything wrong with it.
It introduces the theme of child and bride (not in the same line in the poem).
Humbert calls both Annabel and Lolita his "bride", and here he changes the meaning of the word to suit his fancy.

I am still waiting on my copy. Getting antsy for it.

I'll write a quotation from Nabokov's interview in the youtube video mentioned above.
Nabokov refers to a story he read in a newspaper:

The story of an ape, given a piece of charcoal.
The first thing he sketched was the bars of his own cage.
(...) My baboon, Humbert humbert, is drawing exactly that. He is drawing and shading and erasing and redrawing the bars of his cage, the bars between him and, as he calls it "the human herd".

Have you got any comments to write about this quote as you read Lolita?

First let me say, I finally got my copy and started reading it right away.

Second, on the quote. I would have to agree. As I said before it is like he is trying to justify his actions. But when in reality, we are beginning to see him (well, me anyway) as a sad, sad man.

Case in point, Humbert was talking about his nymphets. Then he explains their age range which is 9-14. He says the loves this age because they are developing that look, that certain power that if developed right can rule the world. But they can not mature over 14. Then he goes on to justify that so many writers and cultures in history have proven him right. The problem is that in history they did that (such as marrying them off at 12, selling to harems, or arranging marriages at birth) because the human life expectancy was thirty to forty years old.

Well, I am still very intrigued by this book because I am wondering just how far he is willing to go with this infatuation.

The one thing that keeps coming back to me is this question. Who has the control?

The foreword to Lolita.

I think it is worth discussing.
This is from one of the sites i referred to above:

Lolita begins with an earnest foreword, purportedly written by one John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., author of Do the Senses Make Sense? (whose initials-- "J.R., Jr."-- echo as suspiciously as "Humbert Humbert"). Why might Nabokov have chosen to frame his novel in this fashion? What is the effect of knowing that the narrative's three main characters are already dead--and, in a sense, nonexistent, since their names have been changed?

Having the foreword written by a fictitious writer is intriguing.
John Ray prefaces a books supposedly written by Humbert in prison while awaiting his trial-- which, we learn, never took place, since H H "died in legal captivity, of coronory thrombosis, in 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start."

We are told about the strange name, Humbert Humbert: "This remarkable memoir is presented intact. Its author's bizarre cognomen (last name) is his own invention;"

"I have no intention to glorify H.H. No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, a moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conductive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and the scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman."

I think the author is trying to protect himself from accusations from his future readers.

So, for the moment, I have two questions:

1- Why did Nabokov introduce John Ray to write the foreword ?

2- As we read the novel, do we find the sentences quoted above to be a true description and analysis?