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Article: Hafid Bouazza on LOLITA in Hollands Diep: 2
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Hafid Bouazza [to 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.' "
JM: Hafid, accept my apologies. Your are totally right and I shouldn't have placed your initials together when I addressed you (the author of the original article) and your brother (who posted both original and translation). The theme, the part related to solipsism, present in your commentary, came right at a time I'd been working on it, through James Bonney's thesis relating solipsism in Nabokov's Lolita (private tyranny) and in VN's former novels (public tyranny). As you may well realize, philosophical solipsism lies outside my field of competence. As a psychoanalyst, I'm used to terms like egocentrism, narcisim, altruism, psychosis, perversion, autistic states, aso. All of these are related to an individual's apprehension of an "external reality."
A few comments about "Lolita" and HH's solipsization:
In the beginning of ch. 32 (AL,I) HH wrote: "... in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving..." Had it been possible for the words "I firmly decided to ignore" to have been expressed by someone else in the novel, "solipsism" in fiction and psychopathological acumen would have been harmonized. The Freudian theory holds that a pervert has a split mind: he simultaneously recognizes and ignores a conflictual fact which he cannot bring himself to solve (he doesn't need to consciously and wilfully "ignore it" before he acts out his fantasy); a neurotic deals with conflicts by repressing one part of what he's perceived, and is conscious of only the other part. However, since Humbert Humbert is a fictional character, Nabokov's rendering of HH's "deliberate" solipsism (the neologism HB mentioned) is quite fascinating:
At the end of ch. 31 we learn that Humbert cannot accept spiritual comfort, from a Catholic priest, after he realizes that his Lolita shall remain "polluted". He wants to pay for his sins, for as long as he lives, should her condition not be altered by his having been granted God's pardon. Human law and ordinary morality don't abide by absolute grace, as it is offered by St.Peter's church (they are closer to Saint Paul's vision, in his letters to the Corinthians - quoted by VN in Pale Fire - concerning the particular sin of inducing innocent people into sin*), and we find that Humbert, quite surprisingly, seems to admit that, like a criminal who must pay for his crimes, he must pay for the harm he has inflicted on Lolita. These lines are pretty amazing:
"... under the guidance of an intelligent ... confessor, to whom, in a moment of metaphysical curiosity, I had turned over a Protestant's drab atheism for an old-fashioned popish cure, I had hoped to deduce from my sense of sin the existence of a Supreme Being... Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her....I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art. To quote an old poet: The moral sense in mortals is the duty/ We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty."
..........................................................................
* I wonder I Humbert Humbert's rejection of a divine pardon isn't related to Nabokov's childhood experience with the Orthodox Church, instead of the Roman faith.
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JM: Hafid, accept my apologies. Your are totally right and I shouldn't have placed your initials together when I addressed you (the author of the original article) and your brother (who posted both original and translation). The theme, the part related to solipsism, present in your commentary, came right at a time I'd been working on it, through James Bonney's thesis relating solipsism in Nabokov's Lolita (private tyranny) and in VN's former novels (public tyranny). As you may well realize, philosophical solipsism lies outside my field of competence. As a psychoanalyst, I'm used to terms like egocentrism, narcisim, altruism, psychosis, perversion, autistic states, aso. All of these are related to an individual's apprehension of an "external reality."
A few comments about "Lolita" and HH's solipsization:
In the beginning of ch. 32 (AL,I) HH wrote: "... in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving..." Had it been possible for the words "I firmly decided to ignore" to have been expressed by someone else in the novel, "solipsism" in fiction and psychopathological acumen would have been harmonized. The Freudian theory holds that a pervert has a split mind: he simultaneously recognizes and ignores a conflictual fact which he cannot bring himself to solve (he doesn't need to consciously and wilfully "ignore it" before he acts out his fantasy); a neurotic deals with conflicts by repressing one part of what he's perceived, and is conscious of only the other part. However, since Humbert Humbert is a fictional character, Nabokov's rendering of HH's "deliberate" solipsism (the neologism HB mentioned) is quite fascinating:
At the end of ch. 31 we learn that Humbert cannot accept spiritual comfort, from a Catholic priest, after he realizes that his Lolita shall remain "polluted". He wants to pay for his sins, for as long as he lives, should her condition not be altered by his having been granted God's pardon. Human law and ordinary morality don't abide by absolute grace, as it is offered by St.Peter's church (they are closer to Saint Paul's vision, in his letters to the Corinthians - quoted by VN in Pale Fire - concerning the particular sin of inducing innocent people into sin*), and we find that Humbert, quite surprisingly, seems to admit that, like a criminal who must pay for his crimes, he must pay for the harm he has inflicted on Lolita. These lines are pretty amazing:
"... under the guidance of an intelligent ... confessor, to whom, in a moment of metaphysical curiosity, I had turned over a Protestant's drab atheism for an old-fashioned popish cure, I had hoped to deduce from my sense of sin the existence of a Supreme Being... Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her....I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art. To quote an old poet: The moral sense in mortals is the duty/ We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty."
..........................................................................
* I wonder I Humbert Humbert's rejection of a divine pardon isn't related to Nabokov's childhood experience with the Orthodox Church, instead of the Roman faith.
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/