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Re: Article: Hafid Bouazza on LOLITA in Hollands Diep
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Dear Jansy,
With all due respect for my brother Abdellah, but it was I who wrote the
article and he who translated it. My thoughts may not be his, nor my
interpretations his (and he has contributed to this site much longer than I
have). For the rest: I come to the same conclusion as you do: 'In the final
analysis it is the *writer* Vladimir Nabokov [emphasis added, HB] who gives
us genius and a moral dilemma - besides a masterpiece.'
2010/4/6 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
> *A&H.Bouazza*, *write about HH's** “Lolita was safely solipsized,”
> considering that this "neologism implies that outside of Humbert’s will
> Lolita has no consciousness of her own... [she was his] 'own creation,
> another , fanciful Lolita – perhaps more real than Lolita'. Philosophically
> speaking, this is the exact opposite of solipsism!" The " 'epiphany' above
> the small mining town" may be disregarded, "because Brian Boyd has already
> shown how deceptive it is." **In conclusion: "The question that
> preoccupied Nabokov remains: crime and art. Humbert is a pedophile and a
> murderer, but is he also an artist? We encounter the same theme in Despair
> and Laughter in the Dark. Is mastery of the word also the word’s mercy*?"
>
> *JM*: In "Lolita," Humbert's feels that his mind has been split in two
> because, although "taboos strangulated" him, there were those
> psychoanalysts who "wooed me with pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. The
> fact that to me the only object of amorous tremor were sisters of Annabel's,
> her handmaids and girl-pages, appeared to me at times as a forerunner of
> insanity." However, inspite of a sort of post-modernist dismissal of an
> "arc of the character," there is no denying that HH's words sound true when
> he recognizes that, if it cannot be proven that "in the infinite run it
> does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze
> had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven
> (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my
> misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art."
> HH's flash of sanity doesn't last long, since Nabokov is far too sane to
> stake his beliefs in this kind of "arc," or in his mastery of the word,
> outside the realm of his articulate art ( ie, he was not a solipsist and *
> he* is the artist).*
>
> ...........................................................................
>
> * Ian McEwan's "Atonement" has the narrator, Briony, express the most
> undivided and extreme form of "artistic solipsism," that surprises
> the reader with a double turn of authorial intervention...
> Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en> Contact
> the Editors <nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com> Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
With all due respect for my brother Abdellah, but it was I who wrote the
article and he who translated it. My thoughts may not be his, nor my
interpretations his (and he has contributed to this site much longer than I
have). For the rest: I come to the same conclusion as you do: 'In the final
analysis it is the *writer* Vladimir Nabokov [emphasis added, HB] who gives
us genius and a moral dilemma - besides a masterpiece.'
2010/4/6 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
> *A&H.Bouazza*, *write about HH's** “Lolita was safely solipsized,”
> considering that this "neologism implies that outside of Humbert’s will
> Lolita has no consciousness of her own... [she was his] 'own creation,
> another , fanciful Lolita – perhaps more real than Lolita'. Philosophically
> speaking, this is the exact opposite of solipsism!" The " 'epiphany' above
> the small mining town" may be disregarded, "because Brian Boyd has already
> shown how deceptive it is." **In conclusion: "The question that
> preoccupied Nabokov remains: crime and art. Humbert is a pedophile and a
> murderer, but is he also an artist? We encounter the same theme in Despair
> and Laughter in the Dark. Is mastery of the word also the word’s mercy*?"
>
> *JM*: In "Lolita," Humbert's feels that his mind has been split in two
> because, although "taboos strangulated" him, there were those
> psychoanalysts who "wooed me with pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. The
> fact that to me the only object of amorous tremor were sisters of Annabel's,
> her handmaids and girl-pages, appeared to me at times as a forerunner of
> insanity." However, inspite of a sort of post-modernist dismissal of an
> "arc of the character," there is no denying that HH's words sound true when
> he recognizes that, if it cannot be proven that "in the infinite run it
> does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze
> had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven
> (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my
> misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art."
> HH's flash of sanity doesn't last long, since Nabokov is far too sane to
> stake his beliefs in this kind of "arc," or in his mastery of the word,
> outside the realm of his articulate art ( ie, he was not a solipsist and *
> he* is the artist).*
>
> ...........................................................................
>
> * Ian McEwan's "Atonement" has the narrator, Briony, express the most
> undivided and extreme form of "artistic solipsism," that surprises
> the reader with a double turn of authorial intervention...
> Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en> Contact
> the Editors <nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com> Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/