Anthony
Stadlen [quoting -- A. S's link "Playboy often bills itself as America’s most intelligent smut
magazine and Nabokov was certainly one of America’s most intelligent smut
authors."] Did not Nabokov invite just this description by his
bizarre collusion with Playboy? If "Lolita" is a truly moral work, what
was he playing at? To Nabokovians it may betoken some kind of amused
sophisticion, but does it not demonstrate a moral confusion?
JM: When one ascribes "a moral" to Nabokov's
writings (or "moral confusion"), one is positing a "meaning," or an
authorial intention to his novels to be able to interpret
them according to our values and
experiences. Did Nabokov intend to be read from a "solipsistic"
stand-point, that is, in a sterile and
non-judgemental way?
I don't
think so, for he seems to have beene aware of the risks presented by such
a non-interactive positioning (its ethics restricted to
maintaining a strict neutrality and non-judgementality in relation to
his work, as "Art"). By deliberately ignoring society, and a
reader's meddling morality or limitations, he'd be accepting the
mortality and transience of his "infinity of emotions" - for
there'd be no external referent to them ( a common-reader is such a referent and
recipient). Although Nabokov has stated that he wanted to "invent
his ideal reader" (or something like that), I dare to think that he was
desperately poking his readers into establishing with him a true
interaction, be it by love, admiration, even repulsion and hate.
.