"It struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate—dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss some thing she and an older friend,…I and Annabel,…might have discussed…She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outbursts of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible” (284).
This passage is a recollection of a realization by Humbert that he had about his and Lolita’s relationship, and he is now telling his readers about it. Humbert realized that he did not really know that much about Lolita, which I figure is because he never felt the need to because she was always just his fantasy girl. He speaks of many things that he describes in grand language that could be in Lo’s mind, and states that they were forbidden to him. He also tells us that he realized that they could not hold a normal conversation, like many other pairs of people that he names would be able to. He says that they couldn’t discuss “anything of a genuine kind”. I think it’s important to take note of all these moments where Humbert realizes things of this sort, like the times he notices he is hurting Lolita, and when he says he knows what they are doing is wrong, these can maybe help us understand more about what he does and why.
Q: If Humbert had come to these sort of realizations earlier, might things have turned out differently?
No comments:
Post a Comment