Chapter 22 flamboyant prose

Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my desire.my sin, my soul.Lo-Li-ta: The tip of the tongue slides down three steps and taps the teeth three times.Lo, Li, Ta. In the morning she was Lo, plain Lo, four feet ten, wearing only one sock.In slacks she was Lola.At school she is Dolly.She was Dolores when it was officially signed.In my arms, she became Lolita. Did you have such an experience before meeting her?Yes, indeed there are.As a matter of fact, if I hadn't fallen in love with a little girl one summer, there would never be Lolita at all.In a principality, close to the sea.Oh when?I have as many years as I have that summer.Lolita can be as old as she is.The murderer is always smooth-talking and literary.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Evidence No. 1 is the envy of the angel, who received a false report, innocent and naive, with noble six wings.Look at this whole mess of nonsense. Vladimir Nabokov (1955) The supreme principle of fictional style is no principle—except that each writer prescribes for himself.Repetition and simplicity satisfied Hemingway's artistic purpose; transformation and embellishment achieved Nabokov's goal, especially in .The novel is in the form of a statement of defense, with gorgeous rhetoric and brilliant writing.Respondent had a particular fascination with a certain type of teenage girl whom he called "nymphets," and this fascination led him to commit a series of criminal activities.The book sparked controversy when it was first published and continues to do so because of its portrayal of a child abuser and murderer as eloquent and seductive. "Murderers are always eloquent and full of literary talent."

Of course, there is a lot of repetition at the beginning of the novel, but it is not content word repetition, which is different from Hemingway's works discussed above.Here it is mainly parallel sentences and repetitions of similar sounds-in fact, a kind of repetition in poetry. (Another term for gorgeous prose is poetic prose.) For example, in the first paragraph, alliteration is repeated, like setting off fireworks, and the "I" and "t" sounds burst out one after another. A crazy tribute to the lover's name: light, life, loins, tip, tougue, trip, Lo, Lee, Ta. Each of the four passages cited exhibits a distinct type of discourse.The first paragraph is emotional eruption, a series of exclamatory sentences, finite verbs are omitted. —Using several metaphors together at the beginning, it seems extravagant and luxurious, and the wording is elegant: "The light of my life, the fire of my desire, my sin, my soul" (alliteration).Another simile, that of sliding the tip of the tongue down and tapping the teeth, is more vulgar and humorous, and it focuses attention on an organ that expresses both eloquence and greed, and the two have always been closely related.

The second paragraph is reminiscing about the past, with a gentle tone.A succession of identically structured clauses lists the name of the beloved, like a profane litany: "She is Lo...she is Lola...she is Dolly...she is Dolores...but In my arms, she becomes Lolita." This section can be accompanied by music. (It was actually staged as a stage musical, but with ill-fated fate. Nabokov dryly noted in his diary that it was "a nice little failure.") Even if we don't know the story, see Up to this paragraph, from the mentioned Lolita's height, socks and school, etc., it will also be hinted that Lolita, as the target of lust, is just a little girl who is underage.

The third paragraph adopts another strategy, which is more colloquial, answering a certain person's question in the form of a dramatic monologue: "Did you have such an experience before you saw her?" The answer is yes, with poetic redundancy Feeling: "Yes, indeed there is." The court language "in terms of facts" clearly tells us that the next paragraph will enter the court scene. (Humbert is said to have written his own defense while awaiting trial.) "Oh when?" The riddle-like answer to this question highlights the disparity in age between Humbert and Lolita.

The narrative focus of this passage stems from inquiries about cause and effect ("If it weren't for... there would be...") and the identity of the "first girl."What makes the style even more poetic is that this plot is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem "Annie Pol Lee": me and her are kids In this kingdom by the sea. Our love is greater than all, Me and my Annie Pol Lee. love so much seraphim Also jealous of us. According to Humbert's explanation and excuse, the reason for his obsession with girls is that he once had a beloved girl named Annie Pole, and the girl died before their love was perfected.Edgar Allan Poe's poem is a morbidly sentimental elegy on the subject: the poet blames a jealous angel for taking his beloved from this world, leaving him to lie beside his lover's grave for comfort.Humbert is extremely immoral, he seeks other girls to be Annie Pole's substitute.The adjectives "misinformed, simple, noble-winged" he used when describing angels are rich in demonic mockery.His insinuation, too, smacks of blasphemy by insinuating that his pain is comparable to wearing a crown of thorns. (This practice of linking one text to another is called intertextuality, and deserves an entire section.)

People continue to be amazed at Nabokov's mastery of a language that was not yet his native tongue.Perhaps it was this, however, that enabled him to discover and use with ease the full repertoire of English prose. One of the early exponents of "flourishing" in English fiction was the Elizabeth I writer John Leary—indeed, it doesn't hurt to call him the first.Leary's Eupheus: An Anatomy of the Wit (1578) was so popular at the time that the noun "euphuism" and its adjective entered the English language.Here is an example of this style: Bright colors are easy to fade, sharp knives are easy to curl, delicate clothes are easy to attract moths, and fine materials are easy to be polluted.Eupheus possessed all these qualities, his brain was wax-like, impressing everything; Wisdom conquers one side, or false shame provokes troubles; boastful talk and rhetoric in front of friends; fashion - whims, disregarding consequences; reason is like salt to him, salty and unpalatable, thrown into the water, so that he can do whatever he wants and indulge. .

A few brief excerpts are clever and entertaining to read; but over several pages, the uniformity of style displayed would tire modern readers.The same sentence patterns and voices are repeated over and over again, and the narrative tone of the characters and the author is the same.This style of writing is entirely literary and belongs to written language.What is missing from the English-language novel, but has been added after and before Eupheus, are human voices, or voices of multitudes, in various dialects, with varying rhythms and registers.This is a modification of orthodox literary rhetoric, injecting new vitality into it.This item will be discussed in detail later in the section "Narratives: Different Tones" (section 27), but the next section will first discuss: intertextuality.