The entire novel begins with Humbert's confession to a jury. And the first two paragraphs describe his Lolita.
Humbert: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta." Soul. Lo-L-Ta.")
"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita." ("In the morning, she was Lo, plain Lo, in a sock and straightened four feet ten. She was Lolita in baggy pants. At school In my arms, she's Dolly. When it's officially signed, she's Dolores. But in my arms, she's always Lolita.") What a poignant statement.
When Humbert was thirteen years old, he and his first love, Annabelle, were interrupted by coaxing when they were about to taste the forbidden fruit. Four months later, Annabelle died of typhoid fever. No one is as eternally youthful and beautiful as a girl who died in her teens, and nothing can hold a person's desires and hearts longer than asking for it and not getting it. Humbert's abruptly halted excitement was not re-released until he met twelve-year-old Lolita twenty-four years later. And long-term repression brings not only the release of emotional desire, but also an explosion. There is a line from the movie: [Of his childhood love, Annabel] Humbert: "The shock of her death froze something in me. The child I loved was gone, but I kept looking for her - long after I had left my own childhood behind. The poison was in the wound, you see. And the wound wouldn't heal." the novel reads: "I am convinced that, in a certain sense of magic and fate, Lolita begins with Annabelle I am also convinced that what a person cannot get when he is young, he will spend his whole life seeking compensation.
Humbert, who has been bleak in a stressful and exhausting life for many years, decides to marry for certain moral standards and his own safety. But after getting married, he found that Valeria, who often imitated the little girl's demeanor, was actually bloated and fat, and could not arouse any desire in him. He felt like Mara in the bathtub, only missing the assassination of a young woman with a white neck. In fact, Valeria also had another man, so the two confessed and divorced.
In order to spend a pleasant summer, organize academic notes and work hard, Humbert plans to rent a house in a beautiful town for a while. There, for Lolita, the daughter of Charlotte, the landlord who fascinated him at first sight, he stayed and married Charlotte, who loved him. His crazy love diary was seen by his wife, and he rushed out of the door excitedly, but was accidentally killed by a car. So, in the name of his stepfather, he had Lolita. But on the day that Lolita took possession of him wantonly by playing games, he realized that this was not her first time. Afterwards, Lolita learned that her mother had died, and there was really nowhere to go. She left home with Humbert, and drove a long motel life, all the way west, until Humbert found someone who taught at the university. , Lolita also continued to go to school locally. While Lolita was in school, although Humbert forbade her to associate with boys, he couldn't stand the temptation of Lolita, constantly giving her pocket money and allowing her to participate in comedy performances. Unexpectedly, once Lolita was hospitalized with the flu, she left with a man early the next morning while Humbert was away. No news for three years. In desperation, Humbert suddenly received a letter from Lolita one day, saying that he was married and pregnant, and hoped that his father would send three or four hundred dollars to the emergency. Humbert hurried over and saw Lolita with a bulging belly and pale and puffy face. He felt that the love in his heart had never been extinguished. Humbert has this inner monologue: "I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care.
After the murder, Humbert drove to the top of the high slope. "What I heard then was the melody of children at play. Nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus. "(I heard then It was the melodious sound of children playing. Nothing else. Then I realized that it wasn't that Lolita wasn't around me that was sad and hopeless, but that his voice wasn't in that joyous harmony. )
Humbert was arrested and imprisoned, wrote the book before he died, and ended with his final blessings on Lolita, her husband and children.
Did Lolita love Humbert? I definitely say: no. Lolita seduces Humbert out of a precocious and mischievous nature. They were later together because of homelessness after the death of their mother. But since being with Humbert, Lolita has been accumulating pocket money that Humbert gave her, thinking about leaving one day. There is such a sentence in the film's lines: Lolita said to Humbert: You look one hundred percent better when I can't see you. It can be seen that Lolita doesn't care about him. In the book, when Humbert described his first love for him, he suddenly said something like this: Lolita, if only you had loved me like this!
The book Lo-li-ta
was written and published in the 1950s and has always been regarded as a pedophile novel and was included in the so-called top ten banned books in the world
Today I read the 2005 version translated by Shanghai Translation Publishing House Master Wan and the 1997 movie version. I don't want to comment on how bad the translated version is, nor do I want to overly praise how good the movie version is, and I don't want to argue that this film belongs to family ethics. I don't want to discuss whether men have a little pedophilia subconsciously. I don't think these are the themes of the novel author. If you want a person to be fifteen or fifty years old, what is the need to distinguish between them? Let's just talk about the Lolita in my understanding.
Lolita is a cluster of beating and shining flames in Humbert's heart. It is the resurrection of the lover who could not be found in childhood, and the replacement of the wife who cannot get rid of it in adulthood. The teasing opened up his dull and uninteresting character and ignited his passionless life. It is the fire of desire in Humbert's soul that has been bound by social etiquette for a long time.
Isn't Quilty the Lolita in Lolita's heart? His mature and mysterious magic can take Lolita away from Humbert, who has always been sincere and even suffocated Lolita. Looking back on Lolita's deceit and suffering, she still thinks Quilty was the only man she'd ever had a crush on in her life.
And isn't Humbert the Lolita in Charlotte's mind? Knowing that Humbert is interested in Lolita, she still wants to marry him. I really saw happiness in the eyes of Charlotte, who put her arms around Humbert and said: "Life is so happy." It is precisely because of this that after seeing Humbert's diary, she was helpless and rushed out of the house like a madman and was killed by a car.
I thought, maybe everyone has a Lolita in their hearts. This Lolita can be a charming little goblin who incites your lust, or just a red apple that makes you drool outside the safe circle of practice.
This little goblin may not have you in her heart at all, and this red apple may not be born for you at all, but because of this, the pain of love and separation, together with birth, old age, sickness and death, is listed as one of the seven sufferings of life. Why doesn't Lolita love Humbert? Not because of age. She even fell in love with the older Quilty. The author did not say the specific reasons, but we know that Humbert loved her unreservedly and beyond all others, and this love, Lolita when he was unscrupulous did not understand; this love, Lolita when he followed the rules even more unacceptable.
People say that if there is no desire, then there is no desire. What's the point of life for decades, day after day?
Therefore, Humbert, who can't get Lolita, is desperate. What made him despair was not that there was no Lolita around for the time being, but that he knew that Lolita had a life of her own, and was no longer the homeless little girl who needed to rely on him; and his joy There will never be a Lolita again. So he killed Quilty, who cheated and played with Lolita's feelings, and ended his own life.
I think I can understand Humbert's love and sigh for him, and I can also understand and feel sorry for Lolita's lifestyle and final choice. So I didn't get too entangled in the focus of pedophile and fatherhood. Only love and desire themselves are spoken of here.
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