Week #5 Literature Excerpt

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."

I was 13 years old when I read these first lines to the novel, "Lolita" by Valdamir Nabakov. I was on vacation in Florida with my mother and my cousin and was looking for a book to read on the flight home. I read the first two paragraphs and something in me told me that I needed to buy this book. Even through the exhaustion of a week long trip, I read the book in two days. Being so young at the time, I understood what I was reading and the way the words were put together and the eloquence of the writing touched me deeply. I knew I was reading a story of a girl about my age and her much older housemate turned stepfather turned lover. Being older now, I still can't get this book out of my head. I read it at least once every year or so just to go back and be taken away by the beauty of Nabakov's writing. Because, although this is a story of a young girl having an unnatural relationship with a much older man, it is really a story of love. After reading this story, I realized how much Humbert (the older man and main character) truly loved this girl, Lolita. He cared for her as he had cared for the first initial girl to steal his heart when he was Lolita's age. He consummately searched for the girl from his past, even though his age progressed and time moved on. If you don't have time to read the book, you should at least give the movie a try. Adrien Lyne's version with Jeremy Irons, not the 1960s version with James Mason.