나보코프의 글쓰기 욕망과 소아성애증: 『롤리타』를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to trace Nabokov’s writing on desire and paraphilia with references to Lolita. Nabokov’s reputation was tarnished for writing about paraphilia, This paper will investigate this through Strong Opinion, Speak Memory and Lolita. The purpose of this paper is to provide a bridge between the author’s lived experience and his re-creation of the experience in his writing. We can suppose that Nabokov has a paraphilic character. We can read Lolita as a novel and assume that it expose author’s inner mind. Nabokov mentions his inner mind when he says “an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution ‘English language’ for ‘romantic novel’ would make this elegant formula more correct” in his postscript, “On a Book Entitled Lolita”. The superficial theme of the novel is developed through Humbert’s love for Lolita, but when we delve into the novel’s deeper meaning, we discover that Lolita depicts Nabokov’s nostalgia and his desire to write in English. Nabokov thinks that a novel is a chess game with the reader using puns and word play. Lolita begins with “Lolit, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta” and ends with “my Lolita.” Nabokov wants to focus on Lolita’s name pronunciation rather than to transfer Lolita’s moral contents into a social lesson. Nabokov mentioned “Lolita should make all of us ... apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bring up a better generation in a safer world” in Lolita. The final section (the killing to Quilty) of the novel seems to be about redemption and purification through symbolic destruction.