Poplar, cave, pig and dog

Fragment of the book "Shifts: Patterns of Nabokov prose"

The Hungarian researcher Zhuzha Heteni wrote in Russian a book, moving the ambition to open "Some closed boxes of the large written table of Nabokov's work." We publish an excerpt where it is discussed why Lolita is not a pornographic novel.

Zhuzha Hetheni. Shifts: patterns of Nabokov prose. SPb.: Academic Studies Press/Bibliors, 2022. Content

If you ask literary critics whether Lolitov can be considered pornographic to be considered a “Lolita”, they will undoubtedly answer negatively - just like John Ray, a fictitious author of the preface to the novel. Ray refutes the accusation of the novel of pornographic and contrasts the concepts of “professional pornograph” (Commercial Pornography) and “erudite”:

... In the whole work, you cannot find a single obscene expression ; I will say more: a healthy filter <...> will be very shocked by the absence of them in Lolita. If <...> the editor would try to dilute or exclude those scenes that <...> may seem “seductive” <...> would have to refuse to print the “Lolita”, because it was precisely those scenes, <...> are actually a structurally necessary element in the development of a tragic novel, which is steadily moving to the fact that only can be called moral apotheosis.

As an argument, Ray states that there are no obscene expressions and scenes in the work that may seem seductive ( Aphrodisiac ), are functional in the development of action moving towards “moral apotheosis”. The problem of this plausible argument - that art can never be pornographic - is that neither art nor pornography have an unambiguous terminological definition. Another argument associated with the separation of high culture and subculture in the theoretical literature of a later time is no less problematic. M. realized that the images in pornographic magazines were not devoid of beauty and artistically processed: the same photograph of the naked Marilyn Monroe on the pages of Life will be perceived by the artistic, in Playboy - frank, and in Hustler - deliberately pornographic, because a predisposed approach and intention play a decisive role in perception. On the other hand, K. Manchester, K. McKinon and R. Dvorkin in several studies indicated that the elements of “hard porn”, the image of violence, violation of laws and morality, even in their extreme forms, are also represented in high culture (of course, not in the rank of ordinary or accepted). The criteria for pornography, as well as the category itself, are subjective and unstable, they change according to the rammane public conventions.

The aesthetic principle, that is, the question of whether it was possible to draw a line of distinction between art and pornography, was considered in the legal context precisely during the publication of Lolita, but not at all about the scandal around its publication, but in connection with the novel by D. G. Lawrence. This is all the more curious that at that time the author was not alive for thirty years, that is, the text, not the views of the author, were discussed. The question of the ratio of text and sex was raised on the occasion of changing the world's first law on obscenity (Great Britain, 1857) centuries ago. In paragraph 4 of the new law, the category of “public benefit” appears: that is, if the work is created “in the interests of science, literature, art or study, or for another generally used goal”, it is justified. Kingsley Emis, who wants to draw literary decency, in the 1959 Lolita analysis, associated the aesthetic principle with moral: if the work is non -artistic, then it is immoral (“Bad as a work of art - that is, and Morally Bad). As you can see, the definitions are still very vague.

In an extensive discussion of communication in texts with supposedly pornographic content, attention is concentrated mainly on two factors: recipient (reader, viewer) and a message itself (at the subject-object of perception). The question of whether the message was deliberately pornographic is canceled in literary criticism due to the insolvency of the intention itself-firstly, one cannot guess about the author’s intention (wanted or did not want to create pornography); Secondly, the interpretation of the work is not in its power. So, based on these factors (the author, the recipient-subject and perception of the artifact), it has not yet been possible to determine the categories and quality of the image of the image.

Legal interpretation says that pornography is what causes excitement. To declare that literature should not cause among other feelings and excitement (Lust, Desire, that is, “lust”, “desire”, “lust”) would not only be difficult, but also meaningless. On the contrary, stimulation of emotional and intellectual empathy is primary among the functions of art. Emotional reactions are naturally accompanied by bodily reactions: it would be strange to displace crying, laughter, sighs and a physiological desire from the framework of decency.

If we argue that pornographic is determined by the perceiving himself, that is, pornography is found by one who has a certain intention to find it, you will have to abandon the general definition due to the subjectivity and the individual's consumption of the perceiving. The Lolita used the simplest objects of phallic form (sausages, a pistol) in the form of obvious metapho-eumisms, known both in literature and in the simplest jokes that can cause erotic associations and appropriate physical reactions in any person-if he is subjectively ready at the moment. Nabokov is always ready to create the simplest and complex semantic games with erotic subtext. As E. Naiman showed, such an ambiguity passes through all of Nabokov’s work.

We deleted from the report of the message as unsuitable for the categorization of the author (intentionalism), the reader / viewer recipient with its subjectivity and the object of communion itself. No one considered, however, the communicative channel that connects them, which, for greater clarity, I would call the field, for it is in the field of influence of all three elements and between them, connected and separate ways. The visualization of this relationship is possible in the form of a triangle, and the field (metaphorical and semantic) I call the space between the lines-flows like a natural or magnetic field. It is necessary to consider mainly determining this field codes, which is, in my opinion, key.

The codes of the canal, that is, this field, in the case of fiction and fine art, are represented by artistic techniques, a special language of art, the recognition and understanding of which becomes possible if the perception occurs with an understanding of an artistic reception. In other words, when the perception of the image is subjected to conscious decoding when understanding that this is an artistic image, even if it causes excitement, it cannot be defined as pornographic. The emphasis here is placed on the activation of consciousness, which is the only way to expose manipulation, such an important element of commercial pornography. Decoding creates a distance that is required to recognize the mechanism of pornography, calculation of the effect.

Imagine watching the film “Hard porn” under this look: a knowledgeable person in art can evaluate actors, stages, effects, realize the machinery and vulgarity of the production, their falsehood - observing and creating a distance. The consumer of pornography, wanting to receive mainly physical pleasure, seeks to overcome the distance and, conversely, everything you can bring closer to himself, closer to the body, closer to business. In this perception, the distance is eliminated and the depicted is perceived as the direct equivalent of life, that is, the secondaryness of the model and the signity of the system are not realized. This will not be done by the consumer, not dedicated to the language of art, non-cognizants.

A conscious reader or observer is also located to believe everything depicted from the first moment of perception, but only as secondary, rather than primary reality. The separation of these two types of perception is easily illustrated by the Bakhta theory of the Carnival, where the most obscene bodies and acts are saturated with the general and coherent system of the popular consciousness of the Renaissance subculture. The uninitiated observer, without access to the codes of this consciousness, will see only vulgar scenes of debauchery corresponding to the concept of pornography. From what has been said it follows that pornography is associated only with the mimic forms of art - believable texts, paintings, photographs and films. (Therefore, there is no pornographic music - Ravel’s “bolero” can be called only erotic.) A mimetical image can be easier to blame for pornography - because of its life -likeness, and an abstract image is unlikely or very conditionally. The mymetic quality of pornographic verbal and visual images brings the category of pornography to copying and, as a result, to Kitch.

Consequently, pornographic and artistic perception is divided by the criteria of application or non -use, recognition and non -knowledge of artistic code. Perception is divided into consumer and decoding. Nabokov worked for the latter: the multi -core "Lolita" is aimed at destroying, the elimination of pornographic stereotypes.

The first technique for the elimination of pornography in Lolita is the aesthetization of rhetoric. Pornography is usually and mainly discussed in two theoretical discourses: in the legislation and in the philosophy of aesthetics (and in literary criticism adjacent to it). It is these two contexts that meet the reader on the first page of the novel: the entire Narratus Humbert Humbert is presented as his written recognition of the court with repeating appeals to the jury, and he (later) gives a lot of precedents from the history of legal practice to justify his pedophilia.

Aesthetic context - rich coding, rich instrumentation, aesthetization of rhetoric of the short first chapter - from the first lines switches the narrative to high registers of romantic lyricism. On the surface of the text, pornography is erased by the fact that the genitals are indicated by metaphors, sexual intercourse is not described, incest incest. Nabokov systematically destroys pornographic stereotypes in the plot: in addition to the obvious vulgarization, romantic cliches (abduction, jealousy, hunting for the object of love and its conquest with words) are introduced. But he is not limited to this.

Nabokov uses the method of mythologization and symbolization of erotic motifs, following the samples of the Renaissance, the era, when under the veil of the image of mythological scenes and characters, under the guise of an appeal to the art of antiquity, a cult of a cheeky attitude to the body appeared (before that deathly with the onset of the official culture of Christianity). The cultural codes of the Renaissance, first of all, the names of Petrarch and Dante, in the text of the Lolita perform the function of removal from the condo of pornographic. The organicity of this aspect is ensured by Nabokov in that he makes his hero a philologist, besides, from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, rich in the mythological past. The mention of Favns, Priap, Venus, Diana, etc. (see the chapter “Island of Kircea ...”) easily fit into the Humbert style. Mythologization also reaches the theory of nymphs as minor seductive girls.

In mythologization, the demonization of the figure of Lolita plays an important role. Demonization is presented in double as: the vulgar stereotype of viciousness is sublimeed by allusions to Lilith. “Humbert was quite capable of having intercourse with Eve, but Lilith was the one he dreamed about,” the narrator writes about himself. The figure Lilith assigns a unambiguous and powerful connotation of death to the girl and connects her with other mythological subtexts, a figure of Persephones and ceremonies (with the adjacent motifs of the poplar, caves, pigs and dogs).