Prof.dr.

Rodica Mihaila
American Literature
2009-2009
VLADIMIR NABOKOV (1899-1977)

-Transition from Victorian novel to modernism and from modernism to postmodernism:

Biographical details relevant to his work:

-Exilic, cosmopolitan identity anticipating a post-national world (like Rushdie, Ishiguro,
Derek Walcott): Germany, France, England, US, Switzerland
-English novels: Pnin, Lolita (55, 58) Pale Fire 1962(postmodern); Ada (67)=most
ambitious
Central theme: man’s life in dream or art playing around the edge of reality until the
reality burns in unsubstantial fire (Hassan); no longer the rel. imagination-reality, but he
transfigures reality until total annihilation.
-A fantasist of the absolute
-A self-delighting mind (modernist): the cerebral quality (even in his exploration of
bizzare sexuality); prodigious wit and learning (plots tend to become rare)
-Use of language: the absurd, parodic patterns of language, play upon words
(postmodern); emphasis on sound and shape (repetition, alliteration, juxtaposition, foreign
words=modernist) – intensely lyrical, writes ecstatically to transfigure reality.

-Naokov revolts against his adversary , "history" , by creating an art which is against time
Ada or Ardor : A Family Chronicle -1969
- explores the incestuous love of a sister and brother who seem mirror images of each other
throughout their 50 years affair. For Van Veen , the brother , the world's best fiction
becomes the measure of reality. He fills his chronicle with literary illusions , puns and
multiple perspectives to which he has the key. His self-proclaimed magnus opus "The
Texture of Time"is also his weapon against the passage of time. Through him , Nabokov
not only circumvents the politically tormented time of his youth and his own precarious
existence , but returns to the prerevolutionary literature of Chateaubriand , Flaubert ,
Tolstoy and Chehov.
- His reliance on other literatures connects him to the modernist writers - Joyce , Eliot
- A literary allusion - put to different use ( to obscure the present and to replace it , not to
heighten it ).

Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male (Paris 55; US 58)

-Structure: 1. Foreword by John Ray, 2 parts (central love story ending in possession;
the world of America, L’s disappearance, detective plot of pursuit (crime and punishment)),
Nabokov’s On a Book entitled Lolita –anticipeaza Pale Fire –metafiction, illusion of the
reader (pe scurt subiectul : in a psychopathic ward of a prison awaiting trial for murder ,
37y.o. Humbert Humbert writes out his life story. He was born in Paris in 1910. He is
obsessed by a passion for nymphets (9-14 years old girls). Coming from Europe to the US ,
he meets and marries the widowed Charlotte Haze whose daughter , Dolores Haze , is 12y.o.
He considers murdering Charlotte to be near Lolita , but she dies in an accident. H.H. takes
Lolita on a cross-country junket planning to seduce her only to be seduced by her for she is
no longer a virgin. Lolita escapes from his jelous protection and he learns of her when she is
17 , married and pregnant. She tells him that during her days with him she had loved Clare
Quilty, a famous playwright . Infuriated , H.H. murders Quilty and is jailed , but dies of a
heart attack before his trial.
Death of Quilty= moral warning (he is a pornographer, New Hollywood. Ironically he
is killed by the hero who is also a pervert) but also death solves all problems. Link death and
unsuccessful sexuality (vezi Dreiser)
2.The novel is like a set of essays (answers to questions organized in sections): ex.
Ch.9 in part 2 (189): L’s friends; list of school names (ch.11, part 1)
What kind of a novel is Lolita?
1. juxtaposes a moral and social story (action, plot) and a surface or manner or way
of telling the story that aestheticizes the events.
2. A novel tied to extreme individuality of point-of-view, and to subjectivity (no
longer the modernist objectivity): A point-of-view novel—one of the strongest
examples in lit. (the story is H’s version and each detail is enchanted and
magically captured in his own words); A retrospective narrative of
memory=Memory subjectivizes, poeticizes, transfigures the reality which is
banal, coarse, sordid Am of the 50s
3. A novel linked to language (aestheticism): descriptions, lists, play/games. An
alternative for the novel in a culture dominated by film as main form of story-
telling and entertainment (vezi mai sus paralela cu F.)

From realism to modernism and postmodernism

Lolita=a novel of postmodernist transgression
-the conventions of the realistic novel (veridicity—forward, concrete realm of
evidence:a) cars, taxis, accidents and designs of fate (no rationality like in Dreiser);
b)-each part is written like an essay, a piece of evidence to be used in a trial .
Transgressed in a modernist use of language, wit, learning and irony, cerebreal
quality; and a postmodern use of TRANSGRESSION (subvesion of pre-existing
norms, breaking the law, central transgression=passion for nymphets), the absurd,
parody, extreme subjectivity, centrality of GAMES, treatment of ART
GAMES: the game of chess with Gaston=central image of plays and games in the novel
(postmodernist emphasis of living life according to rules, as man’s only freedom, no
possibility of change)
-rel. bet. playing with words; playing games; toying with persons

Aestheticism in Lolita compared with Great Gatby

LEGATURA INTRE FITZGERALD SI NABOKOV through Lolita:

-born in 1896 and 1899, started publishing at about the same time,
-both juxtapose a moral and social story (action, plot) and a surface or manner or way of
telling the story that aestheticizes the events.
-both make of aestheticism a means of transforming the novel, but N. represents an exilic
identity and the transition to postmodernism, a later moment (died in 1977)
-Aestheticism : with both writers deals with 1.) the Am. Dream (F=corruption, N=always an
illusion, the contrast bet. the New and the Old worlds. Lolita is a comic myth, relation bet.
place and the heroine suggests that the dream existed only in the imagination of the
Europeans. Lolita was no longer a virgin); and 2) with the contrast imagination-reality:
Fitz.=Gatsby lost the capacity of wonder; Nabokov=only the Europeans imagined the dream.
There is no dream.
-aestheticism is manifested in different forms: F. transformed the novel into a visualized film
script: locations, stars, costumes, scene to scene progress (the glamour of Hollywood – in
1927 he became a script-writer in H.); N. aestheticism linked to language: his novel is an
alternative for the novel within a culture where film is the dominant form of story-telling and
entertainment (the novel is tied to extreme subjectivity of memory)—a subjectivity never
achieved in film—a camera looks objectively, records perceptions
-contrast throughout the novel: between the game between Quilty and
Humpert with the games that Humpert plays with Lolita
ART: is also a game, has arbitrary rules (the novel= a board on which…)
Link between art-freedom-play. Homo ludens( man at play) his freedom is “knowing
the rules”

Concluzie: Trecerea de la Modernism la Postmodernism:

-from stream of consciousness to subjectivity of memory
-from modernist aestheticism through language to a ludic quality (games)
-from mythic synthesis to comic myth (irony, self-irony to parodic transgression)
-from art as objective, autonomous to art as play; from impersonality to metafiction
Postmodernist transgression and subversion of pre-existing cultural norms