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

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that the book conjures up. It talks of the "desperate
honesty that throbs through [Humbert's]
confession",
of the "supreme misery" betrayed perhaps by his very
jocularity, thus hinting that there is more to
Humbert's memoir than may at first meet the eye.
The shock and the moral indignation evoked by the
concern for the child Lolita come very near the moral
scorn which is so effectively ridiculed both in the
Foreword and by Humbert himself, but much in the memoir
indicates that it is in fact quite an inadequate
reaction, and that the sadness of it all lies much
deeper. There is also much in the memoir to betray
the misery which the Foreword hints at.
"Is 'mask' the keyword? " Humbert asks at one
point (53). If one takes into account what has just
been said, it is possible to see the very way in
which he deals with his past and which prejudices
one against him, the very jocularity and flippancy
of his style, as the "mask" behind which Humbert
takes refuge to cover up his misery, and as a means
Of putting an ironic distance between himself and
his
anguish.
What it is that earns Humbert the privilege granted
him by Nabokov, that makes John Ray talk of him in
sympathetic terms and also causes the critics to speak
up for him, can be appreciated only when Clare Quilty's
role is analysed and seen in relation to Humbert's own.
Quilty is certainly a real enough person. He has a
house and friends; he is known as a playwright; Stegner
points out that "he exists in photographs, which do