A. Stadlen's arguments about HH and Humpty
Dumpty humoristically indicate that "Humbert's fall, like
Humpty's, like Finnegan's, is the Fall of Mankind. But the Fall is a Christian
notion. Judaism does not have Original Sin [ ]
"Lolita" may have no moral in tow, but this is because it itself is the
pilot not the piloted, being moral through and through, the paradigmatic moral
and negative-theological discourse of our age. Disprove that! It's a possible
hypothesis.." However, part of his assertions seem to mingle informations
derived from common-sense reality and established dogmas, with those
that are purely fictional (a very Nabokovian trait) - like the
philosophical implications related to "the Fall." (I always thought that
biblical Adam's and Eve's disobedience and hybris, later imaged in Lucifer's
fall, were related to the theory of the Original Sin and were still
valid for Christians and for Jews.)
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to bring up an instance from
"Pale Fire" (CK's note to line 549) in which we find Shade and Nabokov
discussing sin, in the context of "obsolete terminology."
kinbote: Is
it fair to base objections upon obsolete
terminology?
shade: All
religions are based upon obsolete
terminology.
kinbote:
What we term Original Sin can never grow
obsolete.
shade: I
know nothing about that. In fact when I was small I thought it meant Cain
killing Abel. Personally, I am with the old snuff-takers: L’homme est né
bon.
kinbote: Yet
disobeying the Divine Will is a fundamental definition of
Sin.
shade: I
cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the
right to deny.
kinbote:
Tut-tut. Do you also deny that there are
sins?
shade: I can
name only two: murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain.
Nowadays words like "honor" and "dignity" like
"sin" seem to be losing their former impact. Would they be obsolete, too,
in John Shade's eyes? (V.Nabokov, elsewhere,* mentions "a norm," not sin or
morality).
I agree with A.Stadlen's and J.Aisenberg's ideas,
following J.A's quotes from "Lolita,"about HH having made up the information
concerning the paternity of Lolita. (there are many other discrepancies in
the plot related to it).
..................................................................................................................................................
* For Nabokov “a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords
me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic
bliss” (Lolita, Afterword, page 314), described as "a sense of being somehow,
somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity,
tenderness, kindness) is the
norm