Subject
Nabokov and Pedophilia (fwd)
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From: Rodney Welch <RWelch@scjob.sces.org>
> The New York Times on the Web Forum has a discussion devoted to Lolita
-- as a sometime participant, I can assure you the discussion has often
> become quite heated. Suffice to say that a fair number of people
> find Nabokov's masterpiece a work of sheer evil. This will surprise
> no one who as paid any attention to Adrian Lyne's many problems in
> getting his film released.
>
> The following is a recent post from one Forum respondent. I don't know
> his name -- all of us go by the usual nicknames; his is "richardke" --
> and I don't care much for his thoughts on "Lolita." But I was unaware of
the article he cited, and thought it worthwhile to bring it to the
> group's attention.
>
> There is a reference in the last section to "I-8-NY." This is the
> nickname of one especially rabid Nabokov-hater who spewed his venom all
> over the forum for a few weeks, despite many requests to buzz off.
>
> Rodney Welch
> Columbia, SC
>
> richardke:
> I'm coming late to this discussion but I just want to add that in
> researching something completely different, I ran across an article in a
psychoanalytic journal called "Vladimir Nabakov, A Case Study in
> Pedophilia".(The author is Brandon S. Centerwall and the journal
> Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought vol 15, 1992) It was written in a
> heavy-handed kind of let's diagnose the dead style, but some of the
> evidence it cited was interesting. Sadly, I didn't take notes, but I
> recall some evidence that Nabakov himself was sexually mishandled in
> childhood by an uncle and that he wrote a story many years before Lolita,
> in Russian, with essentially the same plot (man marries older woman to
> have sexual access to child).This data is supplied by Centerwall to
> refute Nabakov's statement that he wrote Lolita just because and had no
> special interest in pedophilia. By a strange twist, according to this
> article, an inside out version of this story happened in Nabakov's family
> in his grandparents' generation: a man married a woman to provide cover
> so he could go on having an affair with her mother. Centerwall also plays
> with the idea of Humbert's name. Apparently Nabakov said he could have
> been called anything, Otto Otto, or (and he lists a bunch of other double
> names which I've forgotten) and Centerwall suggests why not Vladimir
> Vladimirovich, which is what Nabakov would be called by friends and
> family. Although Centerwall diagnoses N. as a pedophile, he makes it
> clear he doesn't believe or have any evidence to support the idea that N.
> ever acted on these feelings. Looking at the evidence he does present
> (and there was more of it than I have written in this posting, I just
> can't remember the details of it) I would feel more comfortable saying
> that pedophilia was a compelling interest to Nabakov and he took some
> pains to conceal that (for example by saying that no copies of the
> earlier story existed when acc. to Centerwall he had one in his files).
> For some reason having read this eased my mind considerably about Lolita.
> When I read in the New Yorker that the Jeremy Irons version of the movie
> could not find a distributor in the US, I admit I was not unhappy about
> that. I didn't read every single word that I-8-NY wrote, but the idea
> that we would not celebrate a novel that presented with sympathy the
> thoughts and feelings of a slave owner as he convinced himself that he
> loved one of his slaves all the while raping her in various places on his
> plantation, no matter how funny or cleverly written, did occur to me
> also. It takes some trouble to read a book, but a movie it seems to me
> would attract an audience possibly not accustomed to making the effort
> and would leave people with the impression that society on some level is
> prepared to tolerate child molestation. The idea that Nabakov found
> pedophilia so compelling that he couldn't leave it alone (in his writing,
> I mean, not in his actions) makes it easier for me to read Lolita
> -- it's not a love story, nor a not love story. It's N. pursuing his
> fantasy, and to the extent that we respond to it, it has something to do
> with our own fears and desires as parents and children, or as men and
> women. My idea is that N. wrote Lolita not in favor of pedophilia or
> against it, but because he couldn't get the idea out of his head, so he
> shaped it, in his own Nabakovian way, into a novel. If his novel upsets
> us, it's not necessary to revile Nabakov. THe fact that his novel found
> such a ready audience, that people find it easy to extend their sympathy
> to HH, is what to me seems interesting and worth looking at."
> The New York Times on the Web Forum has a discussion devoted to Lolita
-- as a sometime participant, I can assure you the discussion has often
> become quite heated. Suffice to say that a fair number of people
> find Nabokov's masterpiece a work of sheer evil. This will surprise
> no one who as paid any attention to Adrian Lyne's many problems in
> getting his film released.
>
> The following is a recent post from one Forum respondent. I don't know
> his name -- all of us go by the usual nicknames; his is "richardke" --
> and I don't care much for his thoughts on "Lolita." But I was unaware of
the article he cited, and thought it worthwhile to bring it to the
> group's attention.
>
> There is a reference in the last section to "I-8-NY." This is the
> nickname of one especially rabid Nabokov-hater who spewed his venom all
> over the forum for a few weeks, despite many requests to buzz off.
>
> Rodney Welch
> Columbia, SC
>
> richardke:
> I'm coming late to this discussion but I just want to add that in
> researching something completely different, I ran across an article in a
psychoanalytic journal called "Vladimir Nabakov, A Case Study in
> Pedophilia".(The author is Brandon S. Centerwall and the journal
> Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought vol 15, 1992) It was written in a
> heavy-handed kind of let's diagnose the dead style, but some of the
> evidence it cited was interesting. Sadly, I didn't take notes, but I
> recall some evidence that Nabakov himself was sexually mishandled in
> childhood by an uncle and that he wrote a story many years before Lolita,
> in Russian, with essentially the same plot (man marries older woman to
> have sexual access to child).This data is supplied by Centerwall to
> refute Nabakov's statement that he wrote Lolita just because and had no
> special interest in pedophilia. By a strange twist, according to this
> article, an inside out version of this story happened in Nabakov's family
> in his grandparents' generation: a man married a woman to provide cover
> so he could go on having an affair with her mother. Centerwall also plays
> with the idea of Humbert's name. Apparently Nabakov said he could have
> been called anything, Otto Otto, or (and he lists a bunch of other double
> names which I've forgotten) and Centerwall suggests why not Vladimir
> Vladimirovich, which is what Nabakov would be called by friends and
> family. Although Centerwall diagnoses N. as a pedophile, he makes it
> clear he doesn't believe or have any evidence to support the idea that N.
> ever acted on these feelings. Looking at the evidence he does present
> (and there was more of it than I have written in this posting, I just
> can't remember the details of it) I would feel more comfortable saying
> that pedophilia was a compelling interest to Nabakov and he took some
> pains to conceal that (for example by saying that no copies of the
> earlier story existed when acc. to Centerwall he had one in his files).
> For some reason having read this eased my mind considerably about Lolita.
> When I read in the New Yorker that the Jeremy Irons version of the movie
> could not find a distributor in the US, I admit I was not unhappy about
> that. I didn't read every single word that I-8-NY wrote, but the idea
> that we would not celebrate a novel that presented with sympathy the
> thoughts and feelings of a slave owner as he convinced himself that he
> loved one of his slaves all the while raping her in various places on his
> plantation, no matter how funny or cleverly written, did occur to me
> also. It takes some trouble to read a book, but a movie it seems to me
> would attract an audience possibly not accustomed to making the effort
> and would leave people with the impression that society on some level is
> prepared to tolerate child molestation. The idea that Nabakov found
> pedophilia so compelling that he couldn't leave it alone (in his writing,
> I mean, not in his actions) makes it easier for me to read Lolita
> -- it's not a love story, nor a not love story. It's N. pursuing his
> fantasy, and to the extent that we respond to it, it has something to do
> with our own fears and desires as parents and children, or as men and
> women. My idea is that N. wrote Lolita not in favor of pedophilia or
> against it, but because he couldn't get the idea out of his head, so he
> shaped it, in his own Nabakovian way, into a novel. If his novel upsets
> us, it's not necessary to revile Nabakov. THe fact that his novel found
> such a ready audience, that people find it easy to extend their sympathy
> to HH, is what to me seems interesting and worth looking at."