The twenty-year stay of Nabokov in America, which began May 25, 1940, was associated with a typical emigrant life issues. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge taught at Stanford and Cornell University, he taught Russian language and literature, as he himself said, “the sons and daughters of the industrial America” (Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, 47). Summer leisure time he spent traveling through the vast continent, without ceasing to write, and catch butterflies, which was associated with it work in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.
No matter how Nabokov insisted during the last 20 years of his life, that he was not Russian but American writer, this is probably the only one of his masks. In his interview, Nabokov once said: “America is the only country, where I feel intellectually and emotionally at home” (Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, 83). Still, it should be remembered that for 20 years, Nabokov returned to America only twice, and his “exile” was voluntary. Frankly speaking, “Lolita” has given Nabokov the opportunity to leave teaching and, eventually, to leave America.
While the most controversial image of Lolita provoked criticism, the whole novel has been read as a sharp satire on the American way of life. Special emphasis was given on “the defeat of the dreamer-hero in a clash with corrupted America” (Nabokov: The Russian Years, 37). The novel is also marked with “the criticism of the middle-class consumerism” (Nabokov: The Russian Years, 38). Whatever caused the reluctance of Nabokov to return to the United States, it should be noted that he sharply denied charges in “anti-Americanism” of “Lolita”. In the “Afterword to the US edition 1955”, he wrote: “When “Lolita” is accused of anti-Americanism, it saddens me so much more than a stupid accusation of immorality” (Lolita, 367).
In “Lolita”, the description of America is made from the outside, as it is seen and described it by the foreigners. Moreover, in “Lolita”, Nabokov said he did not want to “Cast a shadow on the American backwoods” (Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, 103). He calls America “lyrical, epic, but never Arcadia” (Lolita, 83), despite the beauty or even the fact that it looks a lot like his Russia. Europe must be dearer and nearer to Nabokov.
Humbert Humbert, whose father was a “Swiss citizen, half French and half Austrian with Danube roots” (Lolita, 16), but whose mother was an English woman, moved to America. He was looking for a new and better life, for material well-being. Humbert escaped from the “monstrous duality” (Lolita, 23) of his life, but, in principle, it was not that important. What is important is that, from Europe, for the main character and for the other characters, America appeared to be a magical edge of the Earth. Furthermore, what is even more important is that eventually everyone is disappointed. Humbert Humbert`s vision of America as of a country with “pink children and huge trees” (Lolita, 73) also turns out to be untrue. In other words, the vision by Humbert Humbert of America as of a “kingdom by the sea” falls into pieces together with the “nymphet” charm of “Lolita” (Lolita, 323).
Life, naturalness, in short, everything that makes America attractive to the Europeans, is gone. Conceptual landscape draws people in and deforms them, driving them into the standard frame. Art is supplanted by vulgar craft, memory - by cliché (“it is a modern hut, which boldly imitates an old hut, where Lincoln was born” (Lolita, 188)).
Apart from it, the education is replaced by a set of rules for practical behavior. Beardsley School is described as follows: “We do not particularly seek to ensure that the student become bookworms or are able to rattle off the names of all the European capitals - which still no one knows - or to know by heart the years of forgotten battles” (Lolita, 165).
Humbert Humbert together with Lolita moved south, to Florida, deviated to the West, to the Pacific coast; and then - to the North, to the Canadian border; and returned to the starting point - New England. Everywhere around the country they are facing the same: “We came to know the curious roadside species, Hitchhiking Man, Homo pollex of science, with all its many sub-species and forms; the modest soldier, spic and span, quietly waiting, quietly conscious of khaki's viatric appeal” (Lolita, 196-197).
We can also note a passing, subtle evaluation and comparison (in the favor of Europe). It is a sweet memory: “I slowly ate a spoon of soup and wiped my lips with a pink piece of paper (oh, cool, fine table linen in my Mirana!)” (Lolita, 114).
There are many such examples: “Elphinstone was, and I hope still is, a very cute little town. It was spread like a maquette, you know, with its neat greenwool trees and red-roofed houses over the valley floor and I think I have alluded earlier to its model school and temple and spacious rectangular blocks” (Lolita, 302). But at the same time, one cannot ignore the phrase: “We have not generally seen anything. And today, I find myself thinking that our long journey just desecrated with a winding strip of mucus a beautiful, trustful, dreamy, enormous country, which was retroactively reduced to a collection of tattered post-cards” (Lolita, 305). We'll come back to this contradiction, and now let us turn to the image of the main heroine.
“One intelligent in all respects reader, leafing through the first part of “Lolita”, defined its theme as follows: “Old Europe corrupting young America”, while the other reader saw in the book “young America, corrupting old Europe" (Afterword to the US edition 1955 of Lolita, 370). Thus, it is possible to say that the beginning of the ambiguous interpretations of the novel was laid down by Nabokov himself. Lolita is defined as the “ideal consumer, the subject and the object of every vile poster” (Lolita, 153), she was “turned to by advertisings” (Lolita, 154). She is the embodiment of the American popular culture. The American culture, like Lolita, combines “straightforwardness and deceit, grace and vulgarity” (Lolita, 132). All that is said about Lolita, is associated with the operation of the mass consciousness, of stereotypes and patterns of behavior. Lolita symbolizes the “infantilism of civilization” (Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, 54).
Nevertheless, Lolita is not so much the victim of mass culture, as its offspring. This is indicated in a feedback by Charlotte Haze, when she says: “My capricious girl sees herself as a star of the screen. All I can see in her is a healthy, strong, but amazingly ugly teenager. That, I think, is the root of all our troubles” (Lolita, 83).
Charlotte is defined by Humbert Humbert as “a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich” (Lolita, 50). An unknown man says to Humbert Humbert about Lolita that her mother was a famous actress, who died in a plane crash.
Lolita and her peers behave “boldly and defiantly” (Lolita, 74), they no longer have anything from Marlene Dietrich, as she was in the “Blue Angel”. Lolita knows in advance that if Humbert Humbert wants to kiss her, she “will allow, and even close my eyes, according to all the Hollywood rules” (Lolita, 95). However, America is equally responsible and not responsible for the phenomenon of mass culture. There is nothing in our national character that makes us particularly vulnerable.
Therefore, the novel may be interpreted in a symbolical way, not only as a clash between Europe and America, but as the opposition between elite and mass culture as well. The entire novel is nothing more than carefully constructed sets and decorations.
Confirmation is also found in the text, and, in fact, in the words of Nabokov in the “Afterword to the US Edition 1955 of Lolita”: “Driven by technical considerations I built a number of north-American decorations. I needed an inspiring environment. There is nothing in the world more inspiring than philistine vulgarity” (Lolita, 373).
No wonder that Humbert Humbert has such a mixed origin. The American (and not only American) pseudonym of “Lolita – Dolores” stands for the whole world, so hated by Nabokov: “Cast-grid world of cause and effect, in which national and geographical signs are only of secondary importance” (Nabokov: The Russian Years, 122). A dull world, subject to certain rules and to no violations. Such world is artificial.
Finally, I shall remind you about the mentioned description of the town of Elphinstone, presented as the decorations of average quality. Five years after the beginning of his journey, Humbert Humbert is back to Ramsdel. Nothing has changed there since then, everything is still the same. “The veranda was a lodge and I was nothing but an actor "(Lolita, 353). This phrase of Humbert Humbert is particularly important because in it he recognizes that he ceased to be a creator.
The dull world, subject to certain rules, which does not allow any violations, becomes a toy and breaks. In the novel, there is no real life as well as there are no real characters, with the exception of Cincinnati. Everything else is just a game decorators, a game of tricks and images, filling the creative consciousness or, rather, the creative delirium. With the end of the game, the story breaks off.
Arriving to the conclusion, it can be said that there is no any real American to speak about in the novel “Lolita”. We just have to deal with certain part of theatricality, when the scene and the atmosphere of the novel do not matter, but line up like decorations against which the action unfolds, which can be moved, in fact, anywhere.
All things considered, in this essay I have analyzed the image of America, created by Vladimir Nabokov in “Lolita”. Apart from it, I have also argued that the main idea behind the novel is the tragedy of Humbert Humbert on the scenes of American landscapes. The key conflict is represented by the struggle of a wise human with cheap popular culture. Along with that, I have stated that, by choosing to give up, Humbert Humbert has lost his own battle and that was his tragedy.
Works Cited
Boyd, Brian. Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1990. Print.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1991. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Vintage, 1955. Print.
Rampton, David. Vladimir Nabokov. A Critical Study of the Novels. Cambridge: Cambridge
