Lolita

“But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!” 

The Foreword, written by John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., gives the reader permission to read the novel by acknowledging that Humbert Humbert may write beautiful prose, but he writes about truly reprehensible behavior. Humbert’s goal in telling his story is to justify his behavior by comparing it to literature, art, and history. By writing beautifully, Humbert means to make his behavior appear to be an act of love instead of an act of sexual violence toward a young girl and murderous violence to another fellow pedophile. 

“Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity, or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such coevals of hers as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where Lolita plays with her likes.” 

Humbert offers the reader a definition of a “nymphet.” To Humbert, nymphets are based on classical literature and myth; in reality, they are Humbert’s invention. These young girls mix childishness with womanhood, and Humbert is drawn to Lolita because she embodies this trait, not because she is attractive or graceful. Humbert’s definition evolves throughout the novel, which emphasizes the fact that the true definition of a nymphet is based entirely on the perceptions of a young girl’s abuser. 

“I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake ‘primal scenes’; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual predicament.” 

Humbert describes his pleasure at toying with the psychiatrists at one of his sanatorium stays. This passage demonstrates both Humbert’s distaste for psychiatrists and Humbert’s narcissism, as he manipulates people for his own amusement.