The subject is an outstanding audacity pedophilia. The sulphurous boldness paid off: the wind of morality critics stoked the blaze of notoriety. Yet, only primary readers can see a praise of pedophilia. The narrator and hero, Humbert Humbert, suffers from serious mental disorders. Before knowing (biblically) his Lolita 12 years, he was interned several times: it is mentally ill, depressed and paranoid.
In the 50s, the subject went "to tears." I am confident that in 2011 it would be blocked by both political correctness, father of a single thought impoverishing, and psychosis of pedophilia which sometimes turns into a witch hunt.
One of the themes of the novel is the ambivalence of the dual role of Humbert Humbert, father to both the (adoptive) and lover (passionate). The tragedy becomes touching when we see that except at the beginning where she gives willingly, Lolita does not feel love for her lover, she only suffered. Other women through the narrator's life, they genuinely love but is obsessed with her "nymphescence" in poor sick he is. This ability to move is proper to aeuvre of literary art.
The style is flamboyant. Nabokov has a wealth of stunning vocabulary especially considering that he wrote in English as his first language is Russian. Nowadays, his style appears if maintained that turns valuable, but perhaps he should dust off the translation dating half a century. There was a dip in digressions, aeuvre inevitable in a 500-page pocket-sized.
The story does not lack corrosive humor. The narrator describes vitriolic characters he meets. His aeil is both lucid and slanderous. Here is how he describes his first wife for example:
"Soon, Humbert had on his hands a massive and paunchy baba with a bloated chest, short legs and a brain almost nonexistent. "
And when he describes the "body" medical, with which it is never tender:
"Strange creatures fessues these nurses are always in such a hurry and do so little. "
What is the message? Morality? Nabokov replied: "(...) Lolita contains no moral lesson. To me, a novel exists only insofar as it evokes in me bluntly what I would call an aesthetic pleasure, namely, a state of mind which joins (...) other moods in which art - that is to say, the curiosity, tenderness, love, ecstasy - is the norm. Such books are rare. All others are only occasional twaddle. "End of quote.
