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Abstract:This paper analyzes the distinctive features of language of the novel Lolita written by Vladimir Nabokov, in terms of the prose style, artistic allusions and synesthetic details. This paper discusses about how the narrator uses various linguistic devices, exhibiting the power of language and thus romanticizing the otherwise revolting subject matter.
Key Words:Lolita; power of language; pedophilia
Published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, Lolita is an English novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, a famous multilingual novelist, poet and short story writer. Famous for its exploration of the controversial subject matter and distinctive writing style, Lolita became one of the best known and the most classic representative of the twentieth century literature. It was ranked at No. 4 in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and was also included as one of The 100 Best Books of All Time. Lolita was twice adapted for film, by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again by Adrian Lyne in 1997.
Lolita is a story of a middle-aged professor’s abnormal desire for his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. The protagonist Humbert Humbert, confesses his affair with Lolita in the first person point of view, focusing only on his own emotions and thoughts. Though once married to an adult woman, Humbert finds himself obsessed with premature underage girls, for they remind him of his first love, Annabel Leigh. After he moves to America and lives with a widow Charlotte Haze, he becomes immediately attracted by her twelve-year-old daughter Dolores, known as Lolita. In order to stay near Lolita, he marries Charlotte and occasionally flirts with his stepdaughter. After Charlotte dies in a car accident, Humbert possesses Lolita for his own for nearly a year before she leaves with a playwright Quilty. It takes Humbert two years to track them down only to find Lolita pregnant and abandoned by Quilty. Humbert kills Quilty and ends up in jail, where he starts writing his memoir. After Lolita dies of childbirth, he dies of heart failure.
Lolita, the most widely known of all Nabokov’s works, is also a classic representative of postmodern literature. Postmodernism emerged in the early twentieth century and represented a rebellion from the previous notion that novel should be narrated in an objective point of view. One of the most distinguished features of postmodern literature lies in the complexity of language. In Lolita, The sophisticated prose style, the artistic allusion and the description of synesthetic experience exhibit the power of language with which he uses to manipulate his readers. The beauty of words and the elegance of language prove to be so persuasive that sometimes most readers become less repulsed to the subject matter “pedophilia” and more sympathetic with the protagonist. First and foremost, the elegant and sophisticated poetic prose style, as the most distinguished feature of Nabokov’s works, effectively prevails over the shocking subject of pedophilia. In Chapter Ten, Humbert describes his first encounter with Lolita:
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 and, as if I were the fairy tale nurse of some little princess lost, kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds……The twenty-five years I have lived since then tapered to a palpitating point and vanished (p.14).
This paragraph virtually describes Humbert’s perverse desire for Lolita. However, he unfolds it with such elegant and beautiful language that the readers are often seduced by this mask. The parallel construction, the repetition of “the same,” the rhyming words and the metaphor in these prose-like sentences successfully distract his readers from his abnormal lust, and instead brings them into an encounter of romance. 1He narrates it like it were a fairy tale, innocent and beautiful, almost unreal, which the readers find confused and disturbing. Though it is pathological of Humbert’s lust, readers are still compelled to read further and from time to time forget the fact that he is actually a criminal “capable of rape and murder”.2
Secondly, the use of artistic allusion romanticizes the otherwise revolting subject and makes the language more enchanting. In Chapter Three, Humbert describes his short encounter with a twelve-year-old girl Annabel Leigh, who becomes his first love but dies four months later. The name Annabel Leigh is an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee”. According to most critics, “Annabel Lee” refers to Poe and his young wife. They met when Poe’s is twenty-one, and his wife is only fourteen. For one thing, this literary allusion serves as Humbert’s defense. He justifies his pedophilia by presenting Poe’s romantic story to his readers, sending a message that just like Poe, he does nothing wrong but fall in love. For another, through the poetic reference, he is trying to make his doomed lust into a poetic love story. Humbert is counting on his readers to be seduced by the romantic trance of “Annabel Lee”.
Thirdly, synesthetic detail is also one of the approaches that help Humbert lure his readers to his own world. At the very beginning of Chapter One, Humbert writes: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta (p.2)”.
These opening sentences not only convey his passion for Lolita and the impact to his readers, but also make his readers move their bodies, or at least the mouth and the tongue, to feel what he feels simultaneously. In this way, Humbert directly conveys to them his infatuation for Lolita, his lust and his struggle. Another classic depiction of synesthetic experience is in Chapter Four, Humbert’s first unsuccessful attempts of intercourse with Annabel Leigh:
In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory…while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I have her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion……I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder--I believe she stole it from her mother's Spanish maid--a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim (p.4).
The imagery of mimosa, tender trees and stars symbolize the young couple’s first taste of the forbidden fruit, mixed with vagueness and thrill. And the detailed description of Annabel’s scent, as the sense of smell, reinforces the previous description of the senses of vision, touch and hearing, together forming a detailed synesthetic experience.3By sharing the sensuous experience with Humbert and involve themselves in his character, readers become complicit to his crimes.
As is stated above, the proper use of linguistic devices and perfect manipulation of language in Lolita triumph over the depressing subject and sordid scenes in the magic cloak of enchantment. Beyond doubt, Humbert Humbert is a pedophile. However, with the sophisticated prose style, the artistic allusion and the description of synesthetic experience, he brainwashes his readers and manipulates them. If his readers were the jury, then words would become his power, or the invincible lawyer who defends his actions with elaboration. With the power of language, he manages to trivialize his crimes and shield himself from judgment. The sophisticated manipulation of language, and thus of his readers, accounts for his highest achievement, and distinguishes him apart from other writers at his time.
Bibliography
[1]SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Lolita.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 8 Jun. 2012.
[2]纳博科夫：洛丽塔[M].于晓丹译, 译林出版社, 2002.
[3]韩松晓：论《洛丽塔》的第一人称视点及其修辞效果，郑州航空工业管理学院学报( 社会科学版)，2002年第1期.
[4]刘红：从《洛丽塔》看纳博科夫的唯美主义倾向，作家杂志，2012年第四期.
[5]罗桂宝：诗化散文——纳博科夫《洛丽塔》语言风格赏析，甘肃高师学报（第十一卷），2006年第1期.
Key Words:Lolita; power of language; pedophilia
Published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, Lolita is an English novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, a famous multilingual novelist, poet and short story writer. Famous for its exploration of the controversial subject matter and distinctive writing style, Lolita became one of the best known and the most classic representative of the twentieth century literature. It was ranked at No. 4 in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and was also included as one of The 100 Best Books of All Time. Lolita was twice adapted for film, by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again by Adrian Lyne in 1997.
Lolita is a story of a middle-aged professor’s abnormal desire for his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. The protagonist Humbert Humbert, confesses his affair with Lolita in the first person point of view, focusing only on his own emotions and thoughts. Though once married to an adult woman, Humbert finds himself obsessed with premature underage girls, for they remind him of his first love, Annabel Leigh. After he moves to America and lives with a widow Charlotte Haze, he becomes immediately attracted by her twelve-year-old daughter Dolores, known as Lolita. In order to stay near Lolita, he marries Charlotte and occasionally flirts with his stepdaughter. After Charlotte dies in a car accident, Humbert possesses Lolita for his own for nearly a year before she leaves with a playwright Quilty. It takes Humbert two years to track them down only to find Lolita pregnant and abandoned by Quilty. Humbert kills Quilty and ends up in jail, where he starts writing his memoir. After Lolita dies of childbirth, he dies of heart failure.
Lolita, the most widely known of all Nabokov’s works, is also a classic representative of postmodern literature. Postmodernism emerged in the early twentieth century and represented a rebellion from the previous notion that novel should be narrated in an objective point of view. One of the most distinguished features of postmodern literature lies in the complexity of language. In Lolita, The sophisticated prose style, the artistic allusion and the description of synesthetic experience exhibit the power of language with which he uses to manipulate his readers. The beauty of words and the elegance of language prove to be so persuasive that sometimes most readers become less repulsed to the subject matter “pedophilia” and more sympathetic with the protagonist. First and foremost, the elegant and sophisticated poetic prose style, as the most distinguished feature of Nabokov’s works, effectively prevails over the shocking subject of pedophilia. In Chapter Ten, Humbert describes his first encounter with Lolita:
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 and, as if I were the fairy tale nurse of some little princess lost, kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds……The twenty-five years I have lived since then tapered to a palpitating point and vanished (p.14).
This paragraph virtually describes Humbert’s perverse desire for Lolita. However, he unfolds it with such elegant and beautiful language that the readers are often seduced by this mask. The parallel construction, the repetition of “the same,” the rhyming words and the metaphor in these prose-like sentences successfully distract his readers from his abnormal lust, and instead brings them into an encounter of romance. 1He narrates it like it were a fairy tale, innocent and beautiful, almost unreal, which the readers find confused and disturbing. Though it is pathological of Humbert’s lust, readers are still compelled to read further and from time to time forget the fact that he is actually a criminal “capable of rape and murder”.2
Secondly, the use of artistic allusion romanticizes the otherwise revolting subject and makes the language more enchanting. In Chapter Three, Humbert describes his short encounter with a twelve-year-old girl Annabel Leigh, who becomes his first love but dies four months later. The name Annabel Leigh is an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee”. According to most critics, “Annabel Lee” refers to Poe and his young wife. They met when Poe’s is twenty-one, and his wife is only fourteen. For one thing, this literary allusion serves as Humbert’s defense. He justifies his pedophilia by presenting Poe’s romantic story to his readers, sending a message that just like Poe, he does nothing wrong but fall in love. For another, through the poetic reference, he is trying to make his doomed lust into a poetic love story. Humbert is counting on his readers to be seduced by the romantic trance of “Annabel Lee”.
Thirdly, synesthetic detail is also one of the approaches that help Humbert lure his readers to his own world. At the very beginning of Chapter One, Humbert writes: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta (p.2)”.
These opening sentences not only convey his passion for Lolita and the impact to his readers, but also make his readers move their bodies, or at least the mouth and the tongue, to feel what he feels simultaneously. In this way, Humbert directly conveys to them his infatuation for Lolita, his lust and his struggle. Another classic depiction of synesthetic experience is in Chapter Four, Humbert’s first unsuccessful attempts of intercourse with Annabel Leigh:
In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory…while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I have her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion……I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder--I believe she stole it from her mother's Spanish maid--a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim (p.4).
The imagery of mimosa, tender trees and stars symbolize the young couple’s first taste of the forbidden fruit, mixed with vagueness and thrill. And the detailed description of Annabel’s scent, as the sense of smell, reinforces the previous description of the senses of vision, touch and hearing, together forming a detailed synesthetic experience.3By sharing the sensuous experience with Humbert and involve themselves in his character, readers become complicit to his crimes.
As is stated above, the proper use of linguistic devices and perfect manipulation of language in Lolita triumph over the depressing subject and sordid scenes in the magic cloak of enchantment. Beyond doubt, Humbert Humbert is a pedophile. However, with the sophisticated prose style, the artistic allusion and the description of synesthetic experience, he brainwashes his readers and manipulates them. If his readers were the jury, then words would become his power, or the invincible lawyer who defends his actions with elaboration. With the power of language, he manages to trivialize his crimes and shield himself from judgment. The sophisticated manipulation of language, and thus of his readers, accounts for his highest achievement, and distinguishes him apart from other writers at his time.
Bibliography
[1]SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Lolita.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 8 Jun. 2012.
[2]纳博科夫：洛丽塔[M].于晓丹译, 译林出版社, 2002.
[3]韩松晓：论《洛丽塔》的第一人称视点及其修辞效果，郑州航空工业管理学院学报( 社会科学版)，2002年第1期.
[4]刘红：从《洛丽塔》看纳博科夫的唯美主义倾向，作家杂志，2012年第四期.
[5]罗桂宝：诗化散文——纳博科夫《洛丽塔》语言风格赏析，甘肃高师学报（第十一卷），2006年第1期.