September 01, 2013

Inspiration


"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita    

Writing a love novel may seem easy, but writing a shocking love novel in the modern age is not. People have read about true love in Shakespeare, and about the adulterous adventures of married women with Flaubert. This is why I appreciate Nabokov's innovation, his metaphors, sense of humor and love sentences.
Although it is a scandalous novel, Humbert Humbert (H.H.)'s passionate love for Lolita is as naïve as the platonic love of teenagers and declares "I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever . . . Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's".

Dolores Haze, Lolita, made him lose his mind. H.H. is accurate in discovering every detail of his nymphet, but he cannot see the poetry in her name. It literally means Pain and Fog. Humbert’s love makes him feel pain, because it is a morally wrong romance, but he cannot see that, his vision is blurred because of her.

When H.H. can finally recognize the consequences of his actions he is ashamed and lets us imagine that he could be a painter. “There would have been a lake. There would have been an arbor in flame-flower . . . a tiger pursuing a bird of paradise . . . a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child".

True love never dies. Lolita is a grown woman now, but “You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight . . .  I loved her more than anything I have ever seen or imagined on earth”.


Humbert Humbert writes the story of his misunderstood love life, because he needs to keep Lolita alive. This is why “one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations . . . And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita”.

I dedicate this post to Vladimir Nabokov, the inspiration of my life.
I am a tiger. I am a bird of paradise.