JM: one must be careful in trying to derive “meaning” from “etymology,” especially when the roots of words can have so many plausible connections in either sound or spelling with potential cognates in other, earlier languages. Even if we could go back in time and “nail” the very first usage and context, we cannot be sure of the user’s reasons. Mistakes are made! That’s why we have “nickname” and a creature called the “newt.” (OE: An ickname; an ewt — both misheard and re-spelled.)
Remember, every word starts life as a “neologism.” Most neologisms either fade away or survive fitfully in obscure depositories. The successful neologisms catch on, and after much wear’n’tear become embedded into our everyday lexis. A word’s meaning(s) emerge as “agreed, shared common usages.” This is the core of practical semantics, avoiding the “Tweedledum” (or was it –dee?) notion that “a word means just what I want it to mean!”
We poor lexicographers try IN VAIN to keep up with changing usage (semantic spread), concocting as best we can, in the form of definitions and citations, the consensus interpretations of intended meanings. Mistakes are made! Dictionaries, however error-free and authoritarian are a mixed blessing, giving the unwary the prescriptive illusion of correctness and a false feeling of precision and completeness.
Whatever meanings the classical roots “paid-,”“ped-,” and “paed-,” had to Romans and Greeks (and without doubt these also suffered semantic spread) we must not let them dictate derived meanings in any period of English (or other borrowing languages). When we examine current usage, we find “pederast/pederasty” more often associated with adult male homosexual acts with boys, a fact which tells us little about which earlier root actually begat the English “ped-” prefix. We can’t even be sure whether the borrowing was direct from Greek or Latin (each of which inter-borrowed) or indirectly from the French. Had the accepted emergent English spelling been “paiderast” or “paederast,” that may, just may, provide a better GUESS, but as we all know, the quirks of spelling and transliteration deny us a dogmatic answer. The persistence of the spelling “paedophilia/paedophile” in British English seems to validate the Greek root, leading to the surface (literal) meaning of “love of children.” Yet, clearly, past and current usage has expanded (plumetted!) to mean “disgusting obsession with children below a certain age [of legal consent].”
We can debate many variants within the definition: the age-limit and hence the criminality varies by culture, nation and state. Indeed in some countries, HH, after appropriate Muslim conversions, could presumably have married Lo, and a hand-picked trio of her school pals, and — who knows? — lived happily ever after. But then, what becomes of VN’s novel? No guilt-ridden confessions but HH’s EULOGY to Islamic TOLERANCE? A big HIT in Tehran (nudge-nudge) and Kabul?? Discuss.
The age factor reminds us that both film versions of Lolita violate VN’s definition of “nymphet” (more an ‘attitude’ than a definite age-limit but an upper-limit circa 11/12?) although Adrian Lyne’s 1997 casting of Dominique Swain (aged 16/17) pushed the visual limit nearer to a “screen 12” than did Kubrick’s 1962 Sue Lyon, a 16-year old who played, with VN’s approval, a 14-year old Dolores.
Some usages of “paedophila” imply actual physical abuse of children rather than unhealthy, “unrequited” obsession. E.g., UK law criminalizes the filming/depiction of under-age sex acts, and, it seems, even the transmission and possession of such “lewd, explicit” material. In a recent prominent case, a TV producer/writer defended his large collection of on-line under-age porn on the grounds that he was conducting social research on paedophilia. It was, as I recall, one of those familiar cases where offenses against an under-age but cooperating girl (14) did not surface until long after the victim had passed legal age.
Front page Times2 today: “My Husband the paedophile.” He’s Roger Took, “respected” art-historian/travel writer whose exploits OUT-MONSTER HH with unbelievable depravity against 3 and 9-year old step-granddaughters. He’s in jail for a long time. I mention this to highlight how WIDE ranging is the villainy under the current definition of ‘paedophile’
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 08/09/2008 12:48, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
S.Blackwell: [...] He can't stop exploiting Dolly, who, having escaped him physically, is recaptured by him aesthetically (or just narratively). She has very little voice in HH's text. He has total control over her enduring image (and the necessity of her death means that she can't correct the record: he assures himself the last word).
J.Aisenberg: I've come across this maddening notion... either justifies anything a character does or mystically rots their souls inside out. Isn't this what's underlying Jansy's point about H.H. "only" be in jail for Q's murder? If I understood the point, isn't this why it seems strange then for Humbert to have gone into all that side business about his crimes against Lolita, which to modern readers is really is far more damning than his killing? ...This is an interesting legal and social development, which affects responses to the book, I think.
K.Montserrat: I have one question: Does someone know if these legal concepts you're talking about, were the same 50 years ago, I mean, when the novel Lolita was published in the United States?
JM: On-line dictionaries are a disappointment in that they bring, as Aisenberg and Studdard believe it to be correct, the origin of "pederast" linked to the Greek for "paidos", child .
For example, online entry on pederasty <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pederasty> :"sodomy with a boy," 1609, from Mod.L. pæderastia, from Gk. paiderastia "love of boys," from paiderastes "pederast," from pais (gen. paidos) "child, boy" (see pedo- <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pedo-> ) + erastes "lover," from erasthai "to love." Pederast is 1730s, from Fr. pédéraste, from Gk. paiderastes.
Paidos, as in pediatrics or pedophily, is not the word used in "pederast". Pederasty has no original link with "paidos" in anything I learned in the past. I'll have to find my archives but in Latin, as used by Catullus in an exemplary fashion, it means "bottom" ( any bottom, a boys' or a girl's, adult or still "paidos") I'm sure others can help. It is a very strange misconception ( mine? It could be, online dics have been very impressively authoritativw in their "etymological" information and I speak no Greek)
I vote for S.Blackwell's third hypothesis concerning HH's confessions. After all, we mustn't forget that Lolita is entirely a creation of HH's. As it happens with a work of fiction, to discuss legal variations and interpretation, or varying ages of consent along history, is nice but not necessary to understand the novel itself. "Lolita", by its presentation of exploitation, violence, complaisance, perversion, aso aso ... serves in a most "universal" way, independently of culture or of age. It does stimulate, as only a work of art can do, the development of one's sensitivity to existing legal concepts, social blindness, the need to understand what's happening around us.But, as I see it, the novel Lolita is "self-explanatory": its treasures lie in the novel per se, and in the way we deal with what HH can provoke in every reader.
HH brings to us the portrait of a very powerful twisted mind ( unfortunately easily found anywhere and at all times):Through HH Nabokov effectively demonstrates how such minds function.