I finished reading Lolita for the third time, and it's funny how, although I've liked Humbert Humbert less and less with each read, my admiration for the novel continues to grow...

I've heard it described as Nabokov's "love letter to the English language", which is a nice way of looking at it, I think. The main reason I adore this book is the prose, the way in which every line seems practically perfect. It's easy to get carried away and gush over your favourite books, but I adore Nabokov's writing and with Lolita, often find myself picking it up randomly to re-read certain lines or passages. From that description of their first meeting, "my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses" to that prolonged, tense build-up to the consummation in the Enchanted Hunters, every sentence seems so brilliantly constructed. Even the short, dry stabs of humour ("Nymphets do not occur in polar regions") are stuck in my mind a long time after finishing the book.

Something that I've noticed when reading people's opinions on Lolita on the internet is that although not everyone can be divided up so neatly, there appears to be two separate categories, a clear divide: Those who think that Humbert is a complete monster and that poor Dolores Haze is entirely innocent and those that share the opinion of Robertson Davies ("not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child"). I'm inclined to think that anyone who takes either side hasn't read the book properly. Humbert is basically a pretty horrible person whichever way you look at him - selfish, cruel, and more like Quilty than he would like to believe. He's also, quite clearly, wrong to take advantage of the situation in the way that he does. Lolita is not particularly pleasant either, and the word "manipulative", which seems to be commonly associated with her character, is appropriate. They are both at fault - Humbert more so, but I can't understand how anyone could go to either extreme when deciding who's to blame.

It's only recently that I've begun to appreciate, however, how difficult it is to analyse Lolita. Lolita as in Lo/Dolly/Dolores, that is. Humbert describes in loving detail her physical appearance and her way of speaking, but as we discover at the end of the novel:

my Lolita remarked
"You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own"; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbbiden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions

So Humbert admits that he never truly knows or understands Lolita, in spite of all the time they spend together, and it's because of this that however the reader reacts to Lolita's speech or actions - sympathising with her when she sobs after discovering what has happened to her mother, raising an eyebrow when it is revealed that, "Sensitive gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover", and perhaps hating her a bit when she runs off with Quilty - it is very difficult to form a definitive opinion of her. Someone recently wrote a novel called Lo's Diary, I think, telling the story from her point of view, which was an interesting idea but apparently not a very successful project. Asar Nafisi has said that, "To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own", and I think I'd agree. Humbert, the "monster of incuriosity", narrates the story of their affair with so much care and attention, while the eponymous heroine remains an enigma. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that while we are well acquainted with Lolita, Dolores Haze - not quite the same person - is comparatively remote.

Vanity Fair describes Lolita as the "only convincing love story of our century". Really? Perhaps it's because I read the quote out of context, but I'm really not sure I could agree with that. I'm not sure what I'd call "the only convincing love story of our century", but I'm quite sure that, as much as I love it, it wouldn't be Lolita. And I wonder what Nabokov would make of that label. While I haven't come to a proper conclusion on what the exact nature of Humbert and Lolita's relationship is, I would hesitate to call it "love". Humbert is obsessed, unquestionably in lust, and Lolita has a crush on him at the beginning (which quickly sours, as Humbert himself seems to realise), but even when Humbert says, "You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight" - a gorgeous line from my favourite passage in the book - I'm not sure that I believe him. As an unflinching account of obsession it's very convincing, but as a "love story"? I'd like to meet that Vanity Fair reviewer and ask for an explanation.

Incidentally, when on the subject of that passage:

No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn - even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita.

If I had been more convinced of Humbert's love, if Lolita had been a very different book, that would have to be one of the most strangely romantic sentences ever written. As it is, it's not - it's merely elegantly constructed and poetic in a funny sort of way - but if, if...

I imagine that the sexual aspect is either what repulses or attracts certain readers. My mother didn't want to read it because of the subject matter (I encouraged her to read it and she hated it anyway, but that's another story), and if I'm entirely honest, the whole taboo issue of a sexual relationship between a twelve year old girl and a middle-aged man was what made me first want to read Lolita. Of course, Lolita is so much more than that, and anyone wanting a cheap thrill would be better off with something else. It's erotic without being overtly sexual, something which I admire it for. It feels as though every inch of Lolita's body has been described in-depth, and Humbert spares no detail of his agonising, wakeful night in the Enchanted Hunters, but the sex itself is dealt with in brief, dispassionate sentences. As Humbert says, "I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality", and at that point in the book I can't help but grin, thinking of all the first-time readers, impatient to get to the dirty bits, finishing the chapter and going, "That's it?!"

In this article, the writer comments on how "you must work past its [Lolita's] beauty to recognize how shocking it is". Which is true. Humbert is such a cunning narrator that with my first reading, at least, I was almost completely tricked, taken in by the beauty of language to such an extent that I forgot how on its most basic level, the story of Lolita is really quite disturbing. There are a couple of moments which would, I hope, shock even the most loyal, Jeremy-Irons-fancying Humbert fangirl. For example

...for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other - I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated - to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l'age; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert - or was it green rot? - bizarre, tender, salivating Dr Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad.

I wouldn't encourage reducing books to their most level, necessarily, but I do think it's quite an achievement for a writer to (temporarily, at least) blind you with beautiful language and make you sympathise with a man who is, essentially, a murderer and a paedophile.

Lolita has, more than any other novel, I think, made me appreciate just how beautiful the English language is, and as well as giving me all kinds of bitter, sulky, "I'll never be this good" thoughts, it's also motivated me to try harder, to think more about how the right choice of words, the carefully considered sentence, can make a piece of writing so effective. On this reading of Lolita I had the annotated copy, which I'd recommend to anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of just how clever Nabokov is as a writer. Perhaps too clever, because I remember how with Ada it sometimes felt as if he was too caught up in own intelligence, leaving the reader behind. But Lolita is infinitely more accessible, and while anyone reading it at face value would miss out on a lot, for those who are curious to find out more, it's fun noting all the clever hints, the parallels, the allusions left there for the reader to find. Even the most subtle things can be inexplicably moving. For instance, the note next to the line "She said don't be silly, they would fly to Jupiter and buy a car there" explains:

they are going to Juneau, but to H.H. it might as well be the planet. Jupiter is veiled by haze, and Lolita dies in "Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest".

I love Lolita for too many reasons to list, and I could ramble on ad infinitum about the poetry, the dark humour, the tragedy of the ending, the sensual writing, the vivid, twisted depiction of their travels across America...but my advice to anyone who wanted to read this book would always be: Don't read Lolita for the plot, or for the characters - and certainly don't read it for the sex. Read it, instead, as a lesson in writing and an example of the brilliant things the English language can do.

Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.