Humbert Humbert is a vampire. No, really. I meant to say that. Humbert Humbert is a vampire. This conclusion (from a certain perspective) is as obvious and as inevitable as the innocent, ubiquitous butterfly that takes the long and fluttering journey through all of Nabokov’s novels. I can see your winces; I can hear your questions. You say: And what perspective is that? How can one possibly say that Humbert Humbert, that lovable (and perhaps I use that word too freely) pedophile of Nabokov’s Lolita, can be equated somehow with supernatural, blood-sucking, undead creatures of the night?



The answer is simple. I read both Lolita and Dracula at the same time. Over a period of about a month or so, I picked up both Stoker’s supernatural thriller and Nabokov’s gruesome (another adjective that seems misplaced) love story at different intervals and finished them roughly the same time. The sheer erotic barrage of both novels simultaneously had done their toll to my imagination. The stories bleed together— if I let them, yet sometimes I can’t stop them— slowly coalescing in my mind into one strange, hybrid monstrosity, not altogether Nabokov, not altogether Stoker, not altogether my own overworked imagination. I guess in the following essay I’ll attempt to sort through both of the novels, to prove their coincidental similarities, to prove that yes, Humbert Humbert is a vampire; to prove (on the other side of the coin) that Dracula (himself!) is a mere sexual predator; to dislodge this unholy union of seemingly disparate novels from my imagination.



Okay. The first thing I want to cover is a little experiment. I recall, from an essay I once read on William S. Burroughs, a method of writing called “cutting” (I may be wrong on the exact term). This is where the writer takes half a page lengthwise from two separate works, puts them together, and then tries to write some sense into it. I think that putting a page of Dracula and a page of Lolita together might give the gentle reader some sense of the similarities between the two works. Maybe. It may also just be pointless chaos. So, without further ado, here is a hybrid seduction scene(Lolita p.133 left, Dracula p.51, 52 right):



“Her hair was against my collarbone. ‘There are kisses for us all,’ said a vampiress/Lolita as she woke up. We lay quietly, with my eyelashes in an agony of delight, we gently kissed. Her kiss, as she advanced and bent over me, had some rather comical refinements. Soon her breath was upon me. Sweet it was, and made me conclude she had been sent the same tingling little lesbian. No Charlie boy could have been as savory, but with a bitter underlying taste which made me conclude general offensiveness, as one smells in blood. She surveyed me, eyelids looked out and saw my underlip glistened, my dissolution was near as the fair girl went on her knees and suddenly burst into a rough glee. There was a deliberate voluptuous mouth to my ear— but it was quite thrilling and repulsive, and as she whispered words of hot thunder and licked her lips like an animal, till she laughed, and brushed the hair off the moonlight. The moisture shining and gradually there was the odd sense of a living tongue as it lapped the white sharp dream world, where everything was in her head as the lips went below and I realized what she was suggesting. I could hear the churning blood game she and Charlie had played upon her teeth and lips, and could never. Her features twisted. Then the skin of my throat. “You have never...” she started when the hand nuzzled her for a while. “Lay off that soft whining,” she said, hastily removing her brown supersensitive skin, she was very curious of the way the two sharp teeth, just touching for a long time— were all caresses. My eyes were in a languorous ecstacy. The act of love was either romantic slosh or a beating heart. ‘You mean,’ she persisted. Now a mad sensation swept through me as she continued, ‘you never did it when you were a kid?’ There was a storm of fury in her voice. ‘Never,’ I answered and saw the Count’s strong hand grasp her. ‘Okay,’ said Lolita. With his giant power he... However, I shall not bore the reader too much with his giant power, a white toothed modest account that I did perceive the fair cheeks blazing red with modern co-education. I imagine such a wrath and racket and so forth had utterly put to shame the demons of the pit. I saw the stark act merely as part of the pit. His eyes were positively unknown to adults. What adult’s face was so deathly pale? And it was no business of hers. My life...”



At a few points and with very little connecting work from me, the hybrid scene makes sense. Not entirely, but definitely at a few points.



Putting the two works together like this, one can learn a few things. One is that, judging from the relative ease in which I connected the two scenes using such a chaotic method, both Stoker and Nabokov are both speaking the same general language. That exact language being a bit of mystery. I of course don’t mean English. I mean the abstract language of style. Is it the simple eroticism that connected them? Both scenes were seduction scenes. In one, Humbert is trying to prove to the jury that it was he who was first seduced by Lolita, and not the other way around. In the other, Jonathon Harker gives the account in his journal of narrowly avoiding seduction and damnation by a group of three fem fatal vampires, consequently being rescued by old Count Dracula himself. The combined work becomes more poetic than Dracula and more visceral than Lolita. But by doing this little exercise I can see the similarities of the sexual charge of both works even more clearly.



The authors of both novels protected themselves through the voices of their characters. The easier method would have been like Nabokov’s The Enchanter, by telling a similar story from a 3rd person perspective. The Enchanter is the same general idea as Lolita, that of a pedophile marking his prey, the prey being guarded by the obstacle of the mother, then the pedophile overcomes the obstacle and captures his prey. This novella however, is somehow incomplete; it has a hollow feel to it. One is not immersed in the Humbertish world of Lolita. One cannot empathize with the central character.



No wonder Nabokov decided to retell a different story; thus, Humbert Humbert was born. But with a good first person account comes an almost instinctual urge for the reader to equate author and narrator. We think, somewhere in the back of our minds, how can he know so much about the terrible mind of a pedophile? Why does he invest so much energy in making Humbert so real? In terms of Lolita, this unfair to Nabokov. It was his philosophy that the author must make worlds with his art. And he has created the world of Humbert through the very eyes of Humbert, and this pedophile has his own agenda, has his own way of sugar-coating words; he is, after all, talking to a jury. So the reader is left wondering: is Nabokov protecting himself or is Humbert protecting himself? Or a little of both? Clearly the issue of identifying Nabokov with Humbert was an issue, as we can learn from Stacy Schiff’s essay on Mrs. Nabokov “The Genius and Mrs. Genius”:



“Most famously, Lolita would have never been born without Mrs. Nabokov. The book returned the favor: if she had not existed at the time of its American publication, her husband would have had to invent her, so strongly did people identify Humbert Humbert with Vladimir Nabokov. At publication parties, admirers told Mrs. Nabokov that they had not exactly expected the author to show up with his white-haired wife of thirty-three years. ‘Yes,’ she would respond, smiling, unflappable. ‘It’s the main reason why I am here.’”



Writing about sex can be a dangerous thing. We all have different views about sex, and these are strongly tied to the moral codes (if you will) in which we were all raised. Various themes of sex and sexuality can be funny for some, art for others, a method of autoeroticism for some, and still horrifying to others. The author has little to no control over whose hands exactly their precious book would fall into. I know, for example, if some misguided soul would give my mother a copy of Lolita to read... well, let’s just say she wouldn’t get past the first fifty or so pages before tossing the book in the trash. My point is that, combining the volatile nature of the subject and the prudish nature of the American public in the fifties (or even now for that matter), it is no wonder that Nabokov was so careful with exactly how he phrased certain passages. It all works well enough, because Humbert Humbert had to be careful as well, as he was addressing a jury.



What interests me most about the novel Lolita is the skill in which Nabokov uses to keep the reader interested. I don’t think any other writer in the world could do it quite so well. Here we have a first person narrative of a character with a (to say the least) dubious sense of a morality. Here is a vampire; here is a monster. Here is a pedophile. But somehow Nabokov keeps us interested, so entrenched in the world according to Humbert, that we even find ourselves relieved when something “good” happens to him, like Charlotte Haze getting hit by a car after she discovered his terrible secrets. We think right along with Humbert; it is undoubtably Humbert’s world. There is more here than a growing sense of morbid curiosity that other, perhaps lesser, authors would attempt to instill in order to keep the reader’s interest. It is not a simple narrative about a pervert trying to justify his appetites. In many ways it is a story of requited love. It is a justification to a jury, it is a monster justifying his actions in an attempt to save his soul.



Normally, many people wouldn’t read a simple account that’s meant to shock the reader into interest. I don’t think Nabokov is presenting overtly shocking material. And what is shocking is covered up with magnificent language. It is simply a story of a man’s struggle to get what he wants out of life, in this particular case a singular nymphette named Lolita. We don’t really want to see him get his prey, but step by step I was glad (in the beginning) of the obstacles being hurtled by Humbert: getting away from the fat French wife, the removal of Charlotte, etc. I guess in case of this story (to coin a cliched aphorism): “it’s not the destination, but the journey...” I had to consciously stop myself from rooting for Humbert at several points.



The novel might bring up the question of morality and censorship in stories. What is going too far? We’re curious to see Nabokov dance his way to the end of the book, to see if he crosses the line. This, coupled with almost ironically beautiful language, fuels the novel, and gives it great inertia. Nabokov is consciously careful with his narrator’s descriptions, just as his narrator is careful with his descriptions to mask what is really happening and gain the sympathy of the jury, of the reader.



In some regards, Stoker’s Dracula has the same type of care. This novel was finished a year or two after the fiasco of Wilde’s immorality trial, in which that great author’s own work, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was used as evidence by the prosecutor to prove that Wilde was a A) a homosexual and B) a pervert. Five years after it was written Wilde stood trial for homosexuality which was then a very serious criminal offence. It should be noted that Stoker was a friend of Oscar Wilde; Stoker was probably writing his novel at the same time his friend was being sentenced. Dracula was much less bold than The Picture of Dorian Gray, Stoker put a barrier between himself and the sexuality of his book while Wilde’s book was intensely, almost arrogantly, personal; he inserts his own words into the mouths of his characters. In Dracula, the narrative is told through a series of journals, phonographic records, letters, newspaper clippings, etc. This makes the novel technically a first person account, yet does not cause that little voice to rise up in the readers mind which cause us to equate author to narrator. Stoker, like Nabokov, protects himself by burying the reader in his style.



I don’t think Stoker did this consciously, however. It was a sort of artistic insight, an instinct not to make the same mistakes (can we call them mistakes?) that Wilde did. Unlike Wilde or Nabokov, Stoker was a prude himself, a stodgy old Victorian with mutton chops, an imperialist, a conservative Tory, and generally a square. He wrote Dracula as one who relates a terrible nightmare to his co-workers, without a bit of self psycho-analyzation, even if the imagery is rife with symbols (sic) of his own repressed kinks and general worries about the coming prurient modern world.



For example, there are several passages regarding the New Woman (a late Victorian term for feminist), in which Lucy or Mina (Stoker’s idea of the perfect woman) criticize or belittle:



“Oh, but I am tired! If it were not that I have made my diary a duty I should not open it tonight. We had a lovely walk. Lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some dear cows who came nosing towards us in a field close to the lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us. I believe we forgot everything, except, of course, personal fear, and it seemed to wipe the slate clean and give us a fresh start. We had a capital ‘severe tea’ at Robin Hood’s Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow-window right over the seaweed covered rocks of the strand. I believe we should have shocked the ‘New Woman’ with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless them!”



Mina, Stoker’s ideal woman who is saved, in the end, from the violation of Dracula, is an incredibly hollow character not only by modern standards, but even by the standards of the Victorian period in which Stoker wrote. He uses her merely to put a barrier between himself and his conservative views and to take the edge off of the general spiciness of the novel.



And what exactly is this general spiciness? Let’s face it, both Nabokov’s an Stoker’s novel deal with rape. Its is perhaps obvious in Lolita, yet not so much in Dracula. The pedophile is a particular kind of rapist, one that is perhaps most reviled in today’s society. Coming at this motif from a tragic-comedic perspective is undoubtably the work of a genius. The vampire is also an extreme kind of rapist. Let me interject a dictionary definition of rape:



Rape (rap) n. 1. The crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, esp. sexual intercourse. 2. The act of seizing and carrying off by force; abduction. 3. Abusive or improper treatment; violation.— tr.v. raped, rap ing, rapes.



In a figurative sense, vamping some gal is forcing sexual intercourse. If one wants to adhere more to the letter of the definitions, Dracula rapes Lucy and Mina by abducting them, by improper treatment, by strange violation. The vampiric rape is even more extreme, as the sexually charged violation not only weakens the victim but also transforms them from women to a horrific mirror of the rapist. They absolutely and permanently ruined. They lose their sexuality. They are no longer women at all.



Humbert, vampirically, ruins Lolita. In the end, he finds her, pregnant and poor and married and about to move to Alaska. Her innocence is ruined. Her nymphette status gone, and in its place is a huge belly. His Lolita is gone, destroyed, a ghost, a memory. All because of his debauched journey across America with her, all because of his love, or perhaps his lust. Consider the following passage, in which Humbert Humbert, the rapist, the vampire, sees for the first time in years the result of his love/lust:



“Couple of inches taller. Pink-rimmed glasses. New, heaped-up hairdo, new ears. How simple! The moment, the death I had kept conjuring up for three years was as simple as a bit of dry wood. She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her head looked smaller (only two seconds had passed really, but let me give them as much wooden duration as life can stand), and her pale-freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless cotton dress and sloppy felt slippers.



“‘We—e—ell!’ she exhaled after a pause with all the emphasis of wonder and welcome.



“‘Husband at home?’ I croaked, fist in pocket.



“I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at ever and ever sight.”



The transformation from child to ruined, pregnant woman seen through the eyes and the world of Humbert, is especially repulsive. To his credit though, and what perhaps saves Humbert’s soul, is the fact that even though she has grown into repulsive womanhood, he still loves her (“it was love at first sight, at ever and ever sight”).



So we see that even monsters can love. Humbert Humbert can. Even Dracula can. It is their redemption. It is hinted near the beginning of the novel, by the Count’s own words, when his disappointed (in not have Harker for supper) femme fatal minions snap at him:



‘You yourself never loved; you never love!’ On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. The Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:—



‘Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him, you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! Go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.’



So, a little recap of the similarities. Both novels are deal with rape. Both novel’s monsters are sophisticated Europeans who prey on innocents and destroy them utterly in end, even if that was not the end goal. Both novels are almost ironically erotic. Both novels bury the reader in language and style in order to either protect themselves or to simulate their characters protecting themselves. Can the reader understand now why I’ve mixed them up?



Similarities abound, but I’d be remiss if I did not point out a few differences as well. The less obvious differences mainly show a different authorial goals and skills. As I intimated earlier, Stoker was probably not aware of exactly what he was doing. His novel was influenced immensely by the changing times. It was a conservative reflex of punishment to the New Women and the coming of modern ideas. This is not say that he was so bitter that he consciously or unconsciously wanted to rape and violate feminists and modern thinkers. But Stoker was a small man, living most of his life in the shadow of his idol, Henry Irving. He was staunchly a backward thinking Victorian who witnessed the birth of the forward thinking modern world. And it scared him. Out of this repressed fear Dracula, the first modern horror novel, was born.



Nabokov and his Lolita are a different matter entirely. Nabokov’s arrogance is legendary. He lived under no shadow but his own. The novel reflects the writing genius at the height of his power. It is obvious that every word is exactly how he wanted it, and he is very conscious of the myriad stated or implied meanings throughout the novel. The point of Dracula was to tell a visceral ghost story, yet a thousand other meanings sprang up beneath the surface, without the author’s conscious effort; the point of Lolita was to (perhaps) justify the soul of a monster, and a thousand other implications spring up with the specific, conscious effort of the author. But to discuss the “point” of a novel is a dangerous business, just as to say that a novel is “pointless” is essentially saying nothing at all. I must confess that I do not know the exact point of Lolita, it is not the kind of work that reveals itself to the reader in some obvious way. I’m sure that this artistic obfuscation was intended.



I guess what I’m trying to say here is that Nabokov knew exactly what he was doing. Stoker sort of lucked into it; he stumbled on a nerve in his own psyche and pursued it with his novel, which somehow managed to touch a nerve in the minds of others; so much so, that Dracula remains one of the most recognized figures of literature today. Through the lense of the vampire, we can see the nature of evil in a different light.



So, as I said in the beginning: Humbert Humbert is a vampire. He is the dark, accented European. Don’t be fooled by the first person account, he is a mysterious force preying upon humanity, or, at least, the female youth of humanity. The glorious, inhuman nymphettes. But we must pity the vampire and his strange appetite; vampirism is a curse none of us want. The dark appetite does not necessarily equate the monster with pure evil, for being purely evil means there is no hope for redemption, and I believe that Mr. Humbert gains a kind of redemption in the end. Justify his actions as he might, I sense that even he, the nightmare, the monster, the defiler, doesn’t even believe that what he does is excused from the wrath of “McFate.”

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Created Jan 29, 2003 at 10:38am • Submit your own review...