Commentaires client les plus utiles
|
|
6 internautes sur 7 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
It Will Haunt You!, Mai 9 2005
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins" Lolita...a true look into the depth of a human heart has the pleasure of deeming itself the greatest work of author Vladimir Nabokov. Known to many to be a genius of ink and paper he brings into our lives the controversial yet heart wrenching story of Humbert Humbert's obsession with his young Nymphet lover Dolores Hayes. "Look at this tangle of thorns" On trial for murder Humbert Humbert begins to tell the tale of his doomed passion. He takes us into a the tragic demise of his long lost and still sought after childhood love Annabelle. "4 months later she died of Typhus" To the meeting that would end his search and doom him for eternity. "I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." Lolita is a story of passion and obsession. It is "a meditation on love - love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation" (as it says on the back of my seriously over read copy). In Lolita you will experience every emotion your heart has to offer. You will first hate our dear dashing friend Humbert Humbert, you will then find yourself loving this love that he yearns for, wanting him to have it almost as much as he does and eventually you will pity him with all of the pity the world can provide. And in the end you will pause for a moment to dwell on all that you have experienced. For Lolita is something that will haunt you forever. It pulls you into its creases and shuts a part of you up inside the pages. Make sure to pick up a copy of this great book. Another book I need to recommend -- very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "THE LOSERS CLUB: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, funny, entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.
|
|
|
2 internautes sur 2 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
Selfishness and stupidity cause more pain than evil can, Oct. 18 2008
In the field of erotic literature, this novel has probably touched the awareness of the public more than any other, to such an extent that the once innocuous name of Lolita has become another name for youthful feminine charm and sexuality, to put it mildly.
Those are the historical facts, but what of the novel's merits? What is most definitely is not is pornographic: it doesn't contain a word of even mildly bad language, nor is it a trashy series of sex scenes featuring a girl of that name. In fact - surprise, surprise if you've never read it - Lolita doesn't even contain a girl called Lolita.
Writing in the first person, Nabakov does not directly tell the story of his famous heroine, but that of Humbert Humbert, a man obsessed with the memory of his dead childhood girlfriend, Annabel, to such an extent that his life is dominated by her loss. As his teens pass, and then his twenties, he fails to mature beyond his loss. When he meets a girl of twelve, Dolores Haze, who resembles his lost love, he attempts to posses her, body and soul, and in his obsessed mind he re-names her "Lolita." The final result is that both he and Dolores are destroyed, along with several other characters.
Is it a sad story of an unfortunately obsessed man, who should perhaps be pitied as much as condemned? No, for there is more to it than that. Is it a simple story? No, for Nabakov is not a simple writer, telling a plain story of black versus white. If he were, then Dolores would be a naïve and innocent girl, and Humbert an absolute villain.
But Nabokov is not a limited moraliser, wagging a solemn preacher's finger at a wrong-doer seeking his evil way in a world of innocence. Instead he examines the complexities of both love and lust, for Humbert finds that his hidden, furtive desire has met its mate, as he discovers that Dolores has an open, natural tendency to depravity to match his. Moreover, most of the characters that the two are in contact with are flawed, and some are so self-deceiving and tacky that the reader may be drawn into preferring Humbert's admitted lechery, and the reader, not allowed to deal easily with absolutes in a simple situation of right and wrong, is made to journey in an intriguing world of comparisons.
Whereas Dolores's nature is a mixture of easily given love and defensive cynicism - she rapidly falls in love with the handsome, exotic Frenchman - Humbert is cowardly, conceited and stupid, with a talent for bungling everything he attempts, from emotional relationships to violent crime, a failing that he does not notice.
Failing also to see that Dolores is attempting to seduce him, he seeks to trick here into a physical intimacy that she would have awarded him willingly. As his stupidity becomes more apparent, so does his indifference to the well being of others, as he accepts marries a woman he detests to gain control of Dolores, and later contemplates murdering her.
But all his desperate, bungling manoeuvres fail, until to his surprise - Dolores casually offers herself to him, after revealing that she has already had a lover.
Technically this is the climax of the novel, and here Nabokov ends the first of the two books into which it is divided. Some critics say that the latter half is too long, and I agree with them, remarking however that it may merely seem to long, due to being the record of a highly unpleasant relationship.
At about this time, the death of her mother gives Humbert total control of Dolores. He has achieved his great ambition, but he proves utterly incapable of living with his success. Dolores, sullen at the wandering life that they adopt, but entirely dependent on Humbert, strives not to regain her freedom, but for the two to lead some kind of stable life. But Humbert, living in a world of his own, composed of ecstasy and fear - he has gained Dolores, but is terrified of discovery - fails to listen to her, or realise that the actuality that he has gained is living Dolores, not imaginary Lolita.
Trapped in his conceited self-image - he is a pedantic scholar, who has produced no work of his own, but imagines himself a sophisticated artist - he fails to communicate with Dolores, or lower himself from his pretensions to her simpler, healthier attitude to life - "speak English!" as she says at one point - and he destroys what remains of her love for him.
As Dolores grows older she is able to gain more control over her affairs, and she tortures him as he has tortured her, and eventually escapes him. After several years of agonised search Humbert finds her again. Dolores, prematurely aged by hardship, is no longer the cute nymphet that he lusted for, but Humbert still loves her. He has finally achieved a maturity of sorts. He gives her a needed gift of cash, and the two part forever. Later both are destroyed by exterior forces.
However, Nabokov is not such a sentimentalist as to make Humbert's redemption complete, and it is by a further lunatic act that he causes his own end.
Graham Worthington, author, Wake of the Raven
|
|
|
1 internautes sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
1.0étoiles sur 5
A tale of two parts, Oct. 27 2002
Par Un client
This book is a tragedy; not in the standard literary sense, but in a comparison of Part One and Part Two. Part One has an urgency and emotion to it rarely encountered in fiction. Part Two is a dull romp across the country, with blood and irrational action dominating the final pages.In Nabokov's notes at the end of the novel, he writes that publishers thought Part Two was too long. They were right. He should have published just Part One as a novella, and left the magic stand alone.
|
|
|
Commentaires client les plus récents
|