''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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critics have made her, and from what has been said
one can also gather some first indication of why
Laughter in the Dark must end tragically for Albinus
while Lolita is after a1158 (and as the title indicates)
Lolita's story.
It was said above that the style of Humbert's memoir
adds to the ambivalent and grotesque effect. With
its comic qualities, its constant playful and parodistic
handling of words and styles and forms, with
its playing with and abusing of, the reader's conventional
expectations and reactions, its flippant comments
on incidents that would ask for some serious
treatment, it evokes amusement. The other reaction to
it -
incompatible with amusement -
is indignation be-
cause it seems to be so wholly unsuited for what it
relates.
At the same time Humbert's tone and style is an
indication of something behind the trompe l oeil
which is formed by the surface events. Nabokov talks
about Humbert Humbert and Hermann, the hero of Despair,
in his Foreword to that novel and says that while
"Hell shall never parole Hermann", "there is a green
lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander
at dusk once a year. "59 For an explanation of why this
privilege should be granted him (after all Nabokov
calls him "a vain and cruel wretch" elsewhere
60),
one
can first turn to the Foreword by John Ray and then
again to Humbert's memoir.
The clearly parodistic passages apart, the Foreword
talks of the "tendresse" and "compassion" for Lolita