The main theme of the novel Lolita

Actually, there is nothing major to reveal. Nabokov said something very awesome. Basically, style and details are everything. What thoughts and what not are just empty nonsense. Wouldn't it be possible for other great authors to look down upon those great ideas and themes?

There are also teachers who teach literature in the original language and will often ask questions such as "What is the author's intention?" or even worse, "What does this person want to say?" . As for me, I happen to be such an author: when I start writing a book, I have no other purpose than to finish the book. When asked to explain the origin and writing process of this book, I have to rely on "inspiration". and the interplay of related plots” are archaic terms. I admit, this statement makes it sound like a juggler trying to explain how one trick works by doing another trick.

The first time I felt the slight pulse of "Lolita" was in Paris in late 1939 or early 1940, when I had an acute intercostal neuralgia attack and could not move the when. As far as I can remember, the initial inspiration was triggered in part by a piece of news in the newspaper. After months of training by scientists, a monkey at the Botanical Garden created the first painting of an animal: the painting was painted with the iron bars of the cage in which the poor animal was imprisoned. There is no written record of the connection between the impulse in my mind and the subsequent thoughts. However, it was these thoughts that produced the blueprint for my current novel, which is a short story of about thirty pages. I wrote it in Russian, the language in which I had written my novels since 1924 (most of which have not been translated into English and all of which were banned in Russia for political reasons). The man in the story is Central European, the unnamed precocious girl is French, and the story is set in Provence, Paris. I asked him to marry the little girl's sick mother, who died soon after. He attempted to seduce the orphan in a hotel room, but failed. So he crashed into a truck and was crushed to death under the wheels. On a moonlit night during the war, I read the story to several people, including Mark, two Socialist Revolutionaries, and a female doctor. However, I was dissatisfied with this novel and destroyed it one day after the first game in the United States in 1940.

About 1949, in Ithaca, upstate New York, a pulsation that had never fully subsided began to disturb me again. The connected plot, accompanied by new enthusiasm and inspiration, asked me to approach the subject again. This time it was written in English. English was the language my first governess spoke. That was in St. Petersburg, about 1903. The precocious girl is now of slightly Irish descent, but is really the same girl, and the basic idea of ??marrying her mother remains; but other than that the work is new and quietly a step up from the full-length novel Already taking shape. ”

Although it should be known that I hate symbolism and allegory (partly due to my feud with Freudian voodoo and partly due to my distaste for literary mystics and social (a generalization invented by scientists), however, one editor, who is usually smart, after reading the first part of "Lolita", described the book as "old Europe seduced young America", while another hastily People who read this book said that "young America seduces old Europe"

I think some readers find the striking words in such novels very provocative. . There are also some genteel people who think that "Lolita" is meaningless because they teach people nothing. I don't read didactic novels and I don't write didactic novels. No matter what John said, "Lolita" is meaningless. "Tower" does not carry moralizing, for me, virtual works only exist if they can bring me what I directly call aesthetic happiness; that is something that can always be connected to art. (curiosity, honesty, kindness, intoxication). There are not many such books. All other books are either poor works of the time, or what some people call ideological literature, and this kind of thing is often also. The poor works of the time were like large pieces of gypsum board, carefully passed down from generation to generation. Later, someone took a hammer and knocked it down hard, hitting Balzac, Gorky, and Mann.

Some reviewers also accused me of being anti-American. This accusation caused me much more pain than the stupid accusation of obscenity and immorality. Because of the issues of depth and breadth (a suburban lawn, a meadow in the mountains), I wanted to set up a lot of North American scenes that would be uplifting, and nothing could be more uplifting than rough and rustic. . However, in terms of vulgarity and rusticity, there is no essential difference in behavior and attitude between Gubei District and New Taipei District. Any proletarian in Chicago can be as bourgeois as a duke. I choose the American Motel instead of the Swiss Hotel. I didn’t choose the English Inn because I wanted to be an American writer and just ask for the same rights that other American writers enjoy. Besides, my Humbert character was a foreigner, an anarchist, except for his precocious puberty. Besides girls, there are many things in which I differ from him. All my Russian readers know that my old world - Russia, England, Germany, France - is as beautiful and as individual as my new world. change.

The above words are all in the postscript. It seems that they were added reluctantly after reading some readers’ reactions.

Besides, for novels, it is not a good thing to have a clear theme. This is mentioned in the "Appreciation of Foreign Novels" in our Chinese textbook. I forgot about it after the exam, as if the theme of classical novels is like that. Like, it seems to be very distinct. The modern novels that developed later tended to... well, the subjects were probably diverse and blurred, and everyone had their own way of speaking. I can't remember clearly and I threw the book away.

I think so, as novels developed later, those who wrote novels also worked hard to innovate. Anyway, I think Lolita is a perfect independent individual. If I have to express something, I think it has thoughts and feelings about time; memories of childhood (it seems that the prototypes of Lolita and Annabell are the ones the author liked when he was a child. His autobiography "Speak, Memory" seems to be I have mentioned this girl, I haven’t seen it for a long time, I guess she has it); the worship of art and beauty; perhaps moral thinking and respect for morality; family relations, children’s education; and the creation of American characters. , it took him about forty years to write about Russia and Western Europe. The author later moved to the United States and naturally hoped that he could be like those local authors. The original sentence is this: "I chose an American motel instead of a Swiss hotel or an English inn because I want to work hard to be an American writer and only ask for the same rights that other American writers enjoy."

The above are just personal thoughts and opinions of one family.

But look at how hard I worked to answer, give me the little red flag