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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307474674 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | PRH Grupo Editorial |
| Publication date: | 11/10/2009 |
| Edition description: | Spanish-language Edition |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Sales rank: | 669,582 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Language: | Spanish |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
April 23, 1899Date of Death:
July 2, 1977Place of Birth:
St. Petersburg, RussiaPlace of Death:
Montreux, SwitzerlandEducation:
Trinity College, Cambridge, 1922Read an Excerpt
1
Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entrañas. Pecado mío, alma mía. Lo-li-ta: la punta de la lengua emprende un viaje de tres pasos paladar abajo hasta apoyarse, en el tercero, en el borde de los dientes. Lo. Li. Ta.
Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, cuando estaba derecha, con su metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura, sobre un pie enfundado en un calcetín. Era Lola cuando llevaba puestos los pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos fue siempre Lolita. ¿Tuvo Lolita una precursora? Naturalmente que sí. En realidad, Lolita no hubiera podido existir para mí si un verano no hubiese amado a otra niña iniciática. En un principado junto al mar. ¿Cuándo? Aquel verano faltaban para que naciera Lolita casi tantos años como los que tenía yo entonces. Pueden confiar en que la prosa de los asesinos sea siempre elegante. Señoras y señores del jurado, la prueba número uno es lo que los serafines, los mal informados e ingenuos serafines de majestuosas alas, envidiaron. Contemplen esta maraña de espinas.
2
Nací en París en 1910. Mi padre era una persona amable y tolerante, una ensalada de orígenes raciales: ciudadano suizo de ascendencia francesa y austríaca, con un toque del Danubio en las venas. Revisaré en un minuto algunas encantadoras postales de azulado brillo. Poseía un lujoso hotel en la Riviera. Su padre y sus dos abuelos habían vendido vino, alhajas y seda, respectivamente.
A los treinta años se casó con una muchacha inglesa, hija de Jerome Dunn, el alpinista, y nieta de dos párrocos de Dorset, expertos en temas insólitos: paleopedología y arpas eólicas, respectivamente. Mi madre, muy fotogénica, murió a causa de un absurdo accidente (un rayo durante un picnic)
cuando tenía yo tres años, y, salvo una bolsa de calor en mi pasado más remoto, nada subsiste de ella en las hondonadas y valles del recuerdo sobre los cuales, si aún pueden ustedes sobrellevar mi estilo (escribo bajo vigilancia), se puso el sol en mi infancia: sin duda, todos ustedes conocen esos fragantes resabios de días suspendidos, como moscas minúsculas, en torno de algún seto en flor o súbitamente invadido y atravesado por las trepadoras, al pie de una colina, en la penumbra estival, llenos de sedosa tibieza y de dorados moscardones. La hermana mayor de mi madre, Sybil, casada con un primo de mi padre que la abandonó, servía en mi ámbito familiar como gobernanta gratuita y ama de llaves. Alguien me dijo después que estuvo enamorada de mi padre y que él, despreocupadamente, sacó provecho de tal sentimiento en un día lluvioso y se olvidó de ella cuando el tiempo aclaró. Yo le tenía mucho cariño; a pesar de la rigidez –la profética rigidez– de algunas de sus normas. Quizás lo que ella deseaba era hacer de mí, si llegaba el caso, un viudo mejor que mi padre. Tía Sybil tenía ojos azules, ribeteados de rosa, y una piel como la cera. Escribía poemas. Era poéticamente supersticiosa. Estaba segura de morir no bien cumpliera yo los dieciséis años, y así fue. Su marido, destacado viajante de artículos de perfumería, pasó la mayor parte de su vida en Norteamérica, donde, andando el tiempo, fundó una fábrica de perfumes y adquirió numerosas propiedades. Crecí como un niño feliz, saludable, en un mundo brillante de libros ilustrados, arena limpia, naranjos, perros amistosos, paisajes marítimos y rostros sonrientes. En torno a mí, el espléndido Hotel Mirana giraba como una especie de universo privado, un cosmos blanqueado dentro del otro más vasto y azul que resplandecía fuera de él. Desde la fregona que llevaba delantal hasta el potentado vestido con traje de franela, a todos caía bien, todos me mimaban. Maduras damas norteamericanas se apoyaban en sus bastones y se inclinaban hacia mí como torres de Pisa. Princesas rusas arruinadas que no podían pagar a mi padre me compraban bombones caros. Y él, mon cher petit papa, me sacaba a navegar y a pasear en bicicleta, me enseñaba a nadar y a zambullirme y a esquiar en el agua, me leía Don Quijote y Les Misérables, y yo le adoraba y le respetaba y me enorgullecía de él cuando llegaban hasta mí los comentarios de los criados sobre sus numerosas amigas, seres hermosos y afectuosos que me festejaban mucho y vertían preciosas lágrimas sobre mi alegre orfandad.
Iba a una escuela diurna inglesa a pocos kilómetros de Mirana; allí jugaba al tenis y a la pelota, sacaba muy buenas notas y mantenía excelentes relaciones con mis compañeros y profesores. Los únicos acontecimientos inequívocamente sexuales que recuerdo antes de que cumpliera trece años (o sea, antes de que viera por primera vez a mi pequeña Annabel) fueron una conversación solemne, decorosa y puramente teórica sobre las sorpresas de la pubertad, sostenida en la rosaleda de la escuela con un alumno norteamericano, hijo de una actriz cinematográfica por entonces muy celebrada y a la cual veía muy rara vez en el mundo tridimensional; y ciertas interesantes reacciones de mi organismo ante determinadas fotografías, nácar y sombras, con hendiduras infinitamente suaves, en el suntuoso La beauté humaine, de Pinchon, que había encontrado debajo de una pila de Graphics, encuadernados en papel jaspeado, en la biblioteca del hotel. Después, con su estilo deliciosamente afable, mi padre me suministró toda la información que consideró necesaria sobre el sexo; eso fue justo antes de enviarme, en el otoño de 1923, a un lycée de Lyon (donde habría de pasar tres inviernos); pero, ay, en el verano de ese año mi padre recorría Italia con Madame de R. y su hija, y yo no tenía a nadie a quien recurrir, a nadie a quien consultar.
3
Annabel era, como este narrador, de origen híbrido; medio inglesa, medio holandesa. Hoy recuerdo sus rasgos con nitidez mucho menor que hace pocos años, antes de conocer a Lolita. Hay dos clases de memoria visual: mediante una de ellas recreamos diestramente una imagen en el laboratorio de nuestra mente con los ojos abiertos (y así veo a Annabel: en términos generales, tales como «piel color de miel», «brazos delgados», «pelo castaño y corto», «pestañas largas», «boca grande, brillante»); con la otra evocamos de manera instantánea, con los ojos cerrados, tras la oscura intimidad de los párpados, nuestro objetivo, réplica absoluta, desde un punto de vista óptico, de un rostro amado, un diminuto espectro que conserva sus colores naturales (y así veo a Lolita).
Permítaseme, pues, que, al describir a Annabel, me limite, decorosamente, a decir que era una niña encantadora, pocos meses menor que yo. Sus padres eran viejos amigos de mi tía y tan rígidos como ella. Habían alquilado una villa no lejos del Hotel Mirana. El calvo y moreno señor Leigh, y la gruesa y empolvada señora Leigh (de soltera, Vanessa van Ness). ¡Cómo los detestaba! Al principio, Annabel y yo hablábamos de temas periféricos. Ella cogía puñados de fina arena y la dejaba escurrirse entre sus dedos. Nuestras mentes estaban afinadas según el común de los preadolescentes europeos inteligentes de nuestro tiempo y nuestra generación, y dudo mucho que pudiera atribuirse a nuestro genio individual el interés por la pluralidad de mundos habitados, los partidos de tenis, el infinito, el solipsismo, etcétera. La dulzura y la indefensión de las crías de los animales nos causaban el mismo intenso dolor. Annabel quería ser enfermera en algún país asiático donde hubiera hambre; yo, ser un espía famoso. Nos enamoramos inmediatamente, de una manera frenética, impúdica, angustiada. Y desesperanzada, debería agregar, porque aquellos arrebatos de mutua posesión sólo se habrían saciado si cada uno se hubiera embebido y saturado realmente de cada partícula del alma y el corazón del otro; pero jamás llegamos a conseguirlo, pues nos era imposible hallar las oportunidades de amarnos que tan fáciles resultan para los chicos barriobajeros. Después de un enloquecido intento de encontrarnos cierta noche, en el jardín de Annabel (más adelante hablaré de ello), la única intimidad que se nos permitió fue la de permanecer fuera del alcance del oído, pero no de la vista, en la parte populosa de la plage. Allí, en la muelle arena, a pocos metros de nuestros mayores, nos quedábamos tendidos la mañana entera, en un petrificado paroxismo, y aprovechábamos cadabendita grieta abierta en el espacio y el tiempo; su mano, medio oculta en la arena, se deslizaba hacia mí, sus bellos dedos morenos se acercaban cada vez más, como en sueños; entonces su rodilla opalina iniciaba una cautelosa travesía; a veces, una providencial muralla construida por un grupo de niños nos garantizaba amparo suficiente para rozarnos los labios salados; esos contactos incompletos producían en nuestros cuerpos jóvenes, sanos e inexpertos, un estado de exasperación tal, que ni aun el agua fría y azul, bajo la cual seguíamos dándonos achuchones, podía aliviar. Entre otros tesoros perdidos durante los vagabundeos de mi edad adulta, había una instantánea tomada por mi tía que mostraba a Annabel, sus padres y cierto doctor Cooper, un caballero serio, maduro y cojo que aquel verano cortejaba a mi tía, agrupados en torno a una mesa en la terraza de un café. Annabel no salió bien, sorprendida mientras se inclinaba sobre el chocolat glacé; sus delgados hombros desnudos y la raya de su pelo era lo único que podía identificarse (tal como recuerdo aquella fotografía) en la soleada bruma donde se diluyó su perdido encanto. Pero yo, sentado a cierta distancia del resto, salí con una especie de dramático realce: un jovencito triste, ceñudo, con un polo oscuro y pantalones cortos de excelente hechura, las piernas cruzadas, el rostro de perfil, la mirada perdida. Esa fotografía fue hecha el último día de aquel aciago verano y pocos minutos antes de que hiciéramos nuestro segundo y último intento por torcer el destino. Con el más baladí de los pretextos (ésa era nuestra última oportunidad, y ninguna otra consideración nos importaba ya) escapamos del café a la playa, donde encontramos una franja de arena solitaria, y allí, en la sombra violeta de unas rocas rojas que formaban como una caverna, tuvimos una breve sesión de ávidas caricias con un par de gafas de sol que alguien había perdido como único testigo. Estaba de rodillas, a punto de poseer a mi amada, cuando dos bañistas barbudos, un viejo lobo de mar y su hermano, surgieron de las aguas y nos lanzaron soeces exclamaciones de aliento. Cuatro meses después, Annabel murió de tifus en Corfú.
What People are Saying About This
Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written...that is, ecstatically.
Reading Group Guide
The questions, discussion topics, author biography, and bibliography that follow are designed to enhance your group's reading of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. We hope they will provide you with ways of looking at-and talking about-a novel that has become a permanent part of the American literary canon, and indeed of the American language, without losing its capacity to dazzle, baffle, and at times shock the unwary reader.
1. Lolita begins with an earnest foreword, purportedly written by one John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., author of Do the Senses Make Sense? (whose initials-- "J.R., Jr."-- echo as suspiciously as "Humbert Humbert"). Why might Nabokov have chosen to frame his novel in this fashion? What is the effect of knowing that the narrative's three main characters are already dead--and, in a sense, nonexistent, since their names have been changed?
2. Why might Nabokov have chosen to name his protagonist "Humbert Humbert"? Does the name's parodic double rumble end up distancing us from its owner's depravity? Is it harder to take evil seriously when it goes under an outlandish name? What uses, comic and poetic, does Nabokov make of this name in the course of Lolita?
3. Humbert's confession is written in an extraordinary language. It is by turns colloquial and archaic, erudite and stilted, florid and sardonic. It is studded with French expressions, puns in several other languages, and allusions to authors from Petrarch to Joyce. Is this language merely an extension of Nabokov's own--which the critic Michael Wood describes as "a fabulous, freaky, singing, acrobatic, unheard-of English" (Michael Wood, The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 5.) --or is Humbert's language appropriate to his circumstances and motives? In what way does it obfuscate as much as it reveals? And if Humbert's prose is indeed a veil, at what points is this veil lifted and what do we glimpse behind it?
4. Humbert attributes his pedophilia (or "nympholepsy") to his tragically aborted childhood romance with Annabel Leigh. How far can we trust this explanation? How do we reconcile Humbert's reliance on the Freudian theory of psychic trauma with his corrosive disdain for psychiatrists?
5. In the early stages of his obsession Humbert sees Lolita merely as a new incarnation of Annabel, even making love to her on different beaches as he tries to symbolically consummate his earlier passion. In what other ways does Humbert remain a prisoner of the past? Does he ever succeed in escaping it? Why is Lolita singularly impervious to the past, to the extent that she can even shrug off the abuse inflicted on her by both Humbert and Quilty?
6. How does Humbert's marriage to Valeria foreshadow his relationships with both Charlotte and Lolita? How does the revelation of Valeria's infidelity prepare us for Lolita's elopement with Quilty? Why does Humbert respond so differently to these betrayals?
7. On page 31 we encounter the first of the "dazzling coincidences" that illuminate Lolita like flashes of lightning (or perhaps stage lightning), when Humbert flips through a copy of Who's Who in the Limelight in the prison library. What is the significance of each of the entries for "Roland Pym," "Clare Quilty," and "Dolores Quine." In what ways do their names, biographies, and credits prefigure the novel's subsequent developments? Who is the mysterious "Vivian Darkbloom," whose name is an anagram for "Vladimir Nabokov"? Where else in Lolita does Nabokov provide us with imaginary texts that seem to lend verisimilitude to Humbert's narrative and at the same time make us question the factuality of the world in which it is set?
8. Humbert Humbert is an émigré. Not only has he left Europe for America, but in the course of Lolita he becomes an erotic refugee, fleeing the stability of Ramsdale and Beardsley for a life in motel rooms and highway rest stops. How does this fact shape his responses to the book's other characters and their responses to him? To what extent is the America of Lolita an exile's America? In what ways is Humbert's foreignness a corollary of his perversion? Is it possible to see Lolita as Nabokov's veiled meditation on his own exile?
9. We also learn that Humbert is mad--mad enough, at least, to have been committed to several mental institutions, where he took great pleasure in misleading his psychiatrists. Is Humbert's madness an aspect of his sexual deviance or is it something more fundamental? Can we trust a story told by an insane narrator? What is Humbert's kinship with the "mad" narrators of such works as Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground and Gogol's Diary of a Madman?
10. What makes Charlotte Haze so repugnant to Humbert? Does the author appear to share Humbert's antagonism? Does he ever seem to criticize it? In what ways does Charlotte embody the Russian word poshlust which Nabokov translated as "not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive?" (Cited by Alfred Appel, Jr., in The Annotated Lolita. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970, pp. xlix-1.)
11. To describe Lolita and other alluring young girls, Humbert coins the word "nymphet." The word has two derivations: the first from the Greek and Roman nature spirits, who were usually pictured as beautiful maidens dwelling in mountains, waters, and forests; the second from the entomologist's term for the young of an insect undergoing incomplete metamorphosis. Note the book's numerous allusions to fairy tales and spells; the proliferation of names like "Elphinstone," "Pisky," and "The Enchanted Hunters," as well as Humbert's repeated sightings of moths and butterflies. Also note that Nabokov was a passionate lepidopterist, who identified and named at least one new species of butterfly. How does the character of Lolita combine mythology and entomology? In what ways does Lolita resemble both an elf and an insect? What are some of this novel's themes of enchantment and metamorphosis as they apply both to Lolita and Humbert, and perhaps to the reader as well?
12. Before Humbert actually beds his nymphet, there is an extraordinary scene, at once rhapsodic, repulsive, and hilarious, in which Humbert excites himself to sexual climax while a (presumably) unaware Lolita wriggles in his lap. How is this scene representative of their ensuing relationship? What is the meaning of the sentence "Lolita had been safely solipsized" [p. 60], "solipsism" being the epistemological theory that the self is the sole arbiter of "reality"? Is all of Lolita the monologue of a pathological solipsist who is incapable of imagining any reality but his own or of granting other people any existence outside his own desires?
13. Can Humbert ever be said to "love" Lolita? Does he ever perceive her as a separate being? Is the reader ever permitted to see her in ways that Humbert cannot?
14. Humbert meets Lolita while she resides at 342 Lawn Street, seduces her in room 342 of The Enchanted Hunters, and in one year on the road the two of them check into 342 motels. Before Lolita begins her affair with Clare Quilty, her mother mentions his uncle Ivor, the town dentist, and sends Lolita to summer at Camp Q (near the propitiously named Lake Climax). These are just a few of the coincidences that make Lolita so profoundly unsettling. Why might Nabokov deploy coincidence so liberally in this book? Does he use it as a convenient way of advancing plot or in order to call the entire notion of a "realistic" narrative into question? How do Nabokov's games of coincidence tie in with his use of literary allusion (see Questions 4, 15, and 16) and self-reference (see Question 7)?
15. Having plotted Charlotte's murder and failed to carry it out, Humbert is rid of her by means of a bizarre, and bizarrely fortuitous, accident. Is this the only time that fate makes a spectacular intrusion on Humbert's behalf? Are there occasions when fate conspires to thwart him? Is the fate that operates in this novel--a fate so preposterously hyperactive that Humbert gives it a name-- actually an extension of Humbert's will, perhaps of his unconscious will? Is Humbert in a sense guilty of Charlotte's death? Discuss the broader question of culpability as it resonates throughout this book.
16. Quilty makes his first onstage appearance at The Enchanted Hunters, just before Humbert beds Lolita for the first time. Yet rumors and allusions precede him. Does the revelation of Quilty's identity come as a surprise? Is it the true climax of Lolita? How does Nabokov prepare us for this revelation? Since the mystery of Quilty's identity turns this novel into a kind of detective story (in which the protagonist is both detective and criminal), it may be useful to compare Lolita to other examples of the genre, such as Poe's The Purloined Letter, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, or Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced, all of which are alluded to in the text.
17. Among our early clues about Quilty is his resemblance to Humbert (or Humbert's resemblance to him). This resemblance is one of the reasons that Lolita finds her mother's boarder attractive, and we are reminded of it later on when Humbert believes for a brief time that Quilty may be his uncle Trapp. How does Quilty conform to the archetype of the double or Doppelgänger? In its literary incarnations, a double may represent the protagonist's evil underself or his higher nature. What sort of double is Quilty? Are we ever given the impression that Humbert may be Quilty's double?
18. If we accept Humbert at his word, Lolita initiates their first sexual encounter, seducing him after he has balked at violating her in her sleep. Yet later Humbert admits that Lolita sobbed in the night--"every night, every night--the moment I feigned sleep" [p. 176]. Should we read this reversal psychologically: that what began as a game for Lolita has now become a terrible and inescapable reality? Or has Humbert been lying to us from the first? What is the true nature of the crimes committed against Lolita? Does Humbert ever genuinely repent them, or is even his remorse a sham? Does Lolita forgive Humbert or only forget him?
19. Humbert is not only Lolita's debaucher but her stepfather and, after Charlotte's death, the closest thing she has to a parent. What kind of parent is he? How does his behavior toward the girl increasingly come to resemble Charlotte's? Why, during their last meeting, does Lolita dismiss the erotic aspect of their relationship and "grant" only that Humbert was a good father?
20. As previously mentioned, Lolita abounds with games: the games Humbert plays with his psychiatrists, his games of chess with Gaston Godin, the transcontinental games of tag and hide-and-go-seek that Quilty plays with Humbert, and the slapstick game of Quilty's murder. There is Humbert's poignant outburst, "I have only words to play with!" [p. 32]. In what way does this novel itself resemble a vast and intricate game, a game played with words? Is Nabokov playing with his readers or against them? How does such an interpretation alter your experience of Lolita? Do its game-like qualities detract from its emotional seriousness or actually heighten it?
21. The last lines of Lolita are: "I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita" [p. 309]. What is the meaning of this passage? What does art offer Humbert and his beloved that sexual passion cannot? Is this aesthetic appeal merely the mask with which Humbert conceals or justifies his perversion, or is the immortality of art the thing that Humbert and his creator have been seeking all along? In what ways is Lolita at once a meditation on, and a re-creation of, the artistic process?
Foreword
The scope of Nabokov's story is as much about his relationship as a European, with this new, young, exciting country of America. Humbert Humbert, a rather weak and misguided man, steps outside our society's morality and for that he is punished. There are many levels on which to view the film. This script is merely the map of the film's landscape. It is a film which I believe should rest among the best of American cinema. It should be judged for what it is by a mature audience. Art, and I include cinema in that, should make us question and test our values and make us understand why we have the laws we do.
