Final Paper

Solipsistic Nabokov: The Imagination of Narrators and Their Characters

D.H. Lawrence once warned that one should, “never trust the teller, trust the tale.” This advice is particularly important to heed when reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire or Lolita as the narrators of both tales are highly unreliable. They are not as much flat out liars who change the stories in order to trick their readers but instead the story to the narrators exists less on the pages of the novel and more within the imaginations of their narrators. It is in this imagined sense of reality that the narrator’s perceptions are distinguished as examples of solipsism.
Solipsism is a theory that has several related meanings, however, in its most basic sense; solipsism is the perception that one’s own mind is the only thing which is known to exist. Anything else is uncertain, as it may only be a creation of the mind. With this understanding, the self becomes the only object of importance, for one’s mind is perceived as the only thing known for sure to exist. Those who have solipsistic attitudes are often labeled as egomaniacal or narcissistic, since they put their own desires above all else. Such solipsists habitually refuse to take others into consideration in their actions since they are unable to confirm that others actually exist.
Nabokov seems to develop both Lolita and Pale Fire using the theory of solipsism in both of his main characters as well as in the texts themselves. Like his use of varying themes, Nabokov applies solipsism in layers throughout both works. On one level, readers are led to the solipsistic belief that the only truth in each text is that the mind of the narrator exists and the story they tell is most likely a construct of the narrator’s mind. On another level, the reader becomes aware that they can no longer trust that the narrator’s mind exists as they come to the realization that the narrator himself is construct of yet another imagination. Both the narrators, Humbert Humbert and Charles Kinbote, exist in realities created within their own minds interpreting their stories to fit their own desires. In this way the reader trusts that the narrator is real yet questions his story. As one explores Nabokov’s writing further, the assumption that the narrator exists becomes suspect as they are revealed to be just as imagined as their stories.
Humbert’s narration presents his own solipsism as he remains completely internalized throughout almost the entire story, within his own mind and thoughts, turning events and characters into fictionalized forms of their actual selves. Dolores Haze, an overall ordinary young girl, becomes the nymphet Lolita, a reconstruction of Humbert’s lost love Annabel Leigh. In this way we understand that the narrator’s story is unreliable as he is a highly solipsistic character. Yet the novel also shows the reader that it is possible the very narrator we rely on for the story is a figment of imagination himself. Humbert beseeches the audience to allow him to exist in their minds, imploring “Please, reader; no matter your exasperation with the tenderhearted, morbidly sensitive, infinitely circumspect hero of my book, do not skip these essential pages! Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me” (Lolita, 129) As the text itself becomes an exercise in solipsism, the reader must allow Humbert to exist in their minds, as nothing can be proven to exist outside the mind. Humbert’s only chance at reality is to have his reader allow him to dwell in their imagination. Lolita the novel has now become like Lolita the character, simply a figment of an imagination.
“Humberts world is completely internal, a world of language and fantasy” (Stringer-Hye). The character Lolita appears in the pages of the novel as such a figment of Humbert’s mind that she hardly exists within the text. She is given very little dialogue and only Humbert’s perceptions of her are described. She could be a construct of Humbert’s mind. In reality her name is Dolores Haze, yet to Humbert she is made into something else--a nymphet named Lolita. Humbert’s mind creates Lolita in order to recover the love he shared with Annabel Leigh. He notes that “I broke her spell by incarnating her in another” (Lolita, 15) and saying that “In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain girl-child. In a Princedom by the sea” (Lolita, 9).
The reader seems to enter into a solipsistic state in which the only part of the narration that seems clear is that it is coming from the perspective of Humbert Humbert. It becomes increasingly apparent that it is uncertain how much of Humbert’s narration is real and how much is crafted by his own mind. Ellen Pifer comments on this in Nabokovs Novel Offspring: Lolita and Her Kin when she observes that “Like the goddess Athena who sprang fully formed from Zeus’s brow, Lolita is a mythical being. A figment of Humbert’s dreaming mind, the fantasized nymphet can claim no earthly genealogy or surname.” (Pifer, 85) Humbert himself acknowledges this when he is first about to kiss her and change her forever, saying that it “was the beginning of the ineffable life which, ably assisted by fate, I had finally willed into being” (Lolita,113). Although Humbert credits “fate” as well, a method which also removes blame from him, he also concedes that the situation is one that he has created. Harriet Hustis compares this moment to Boudillard’s ideas on simularcrum noting that in this case Humbert is simulating or pretending to have something that is not real but is instead desired. She writes:
“Humbert doesn't have Dolores' consent to his ‘game’: she doesn't know that she is his ‘nymphet,’… Moreover, Dolly Haze doesn't have an innocent, bumbling Humbert on her hands: this is no ‘backfisch foolery’--and Humbert knows it. As Baudrillard acknowledges, simulation complicates the distinction between ‘the real’ and the ‘not-real’ in ways that go beyond mere pretending: pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the 'true' and the 'false,' the 'real' and the 'imaginary.' Nymphets are, in essence, simulations--by Humbert's own admission, they inhabit an ‘intangible island of entranced time’" (Hustis, 93).
The seduction of “Humbert the Humble” by the nymphet Lolita is simulated within the mind of Humbert. In reality the situation is more likely to be a pedophile taking advantage of a young girl but because of the solipsistic nature of the novel we are only given the simulacrum of the mind and are therefore left questioning the validity of the facts given.
Humbert, by the end of the novel, is forced to see Lolita as a real person who exists outside of his fantasies and mind when he sees her as an adult who is married and pregnant. At this point in the novel she is no longer Lolita to Humbert. He must revert his image of her back into a real person, as he calls her by her real name Dolly Schiller. Since she is no longer the fantasy he wants she is turned back into a real character, yet Humbert’s solipsistic nature remains. When Lolita, now Dolly, tries to talk to Humbert, he notes that “She groped for words. I supplied them mentally (‘He broke my heart. You merely broke my life’)” (Lolita, 279). The reader is forced to accept this as Lolita’s response yet it is in fact only the imagined words provided for her by Humbert.
Humbert uses this simulation of Lolita to excuse his actions to an extent, reasoning that since she exists within the confines of his mind then no real crime can be committed against her. As long as Lolita remains fictionalized so too do his crimes against her. Humbert describes the scenario in which he reaches sexual climax after Lolita sits with her legs on his lap; she becomes a character in his mind instead of a real girl. To Humbert in this moment she is Eve with her “Eden-red apple,” and so to him she now takes responsibility for their fall from grace. This is another example in which Humbert’s solipsism releases him from guilt. In his complete preoccupation with his own desires and his fictionalization of Lolita, he does not find himself guilty of any trespass since he is completely enclosed within his own mind. “Thus had I delicately constructed my ignoble, ardent, sinful dream; and still Lolita was safe--and I was safe. What I madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful Lolita--perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness--indeed no life of her own. The child knew nothing. I had done nothing to her” (Lolita, 62). It is after this encounter in which Lolita becomes someone who Humbert does not recognize as real but instead as someone with “no will, no consciousness” and “no life of her own” that he declares “Lolita had been safely solipsized”(Lolita, 60).
Humberts mind appears to create much of the world around him as he fictionalizes characters and inserts his own dialogue into the voice of others. It becomes clear that the story he tells is unreliable due to his solipsism, but the reader hold firm to the understanding that Humbert and his mind concretely exist. As he tells the reader though that “I shall not exist if you do not imagine me” this all changes, Humbert exists now only in the mind of the reader and the only reality becomes the text itself as everything else seems to be a product of an imagination.
Like Humbert in Lolita, throughout Pale Fire, the narrator, Charles Kinbote, i.e. Charles the Beloved, i.e. Professor Botkin, is so immersed and trapped within the boundaries of his own mind that he is unable to ever transcend them. Kinbote invents an entirely new identity and life for himself all within the confines of his mind. His solipsism is so concentrated that his own identity becomes unreliable as it is a construct of his imagination. Professor Botkin imagines himself to be Charles Kinbote who believes himself to be the exiled king, Charles the Beloved of Zembla. Although the external clues to his solipsism are provided throughout the novel, his mind does not allow him to recognize them. At one point in the novel he is confronted by a discussion in which he should see himself yet doesn’t:
“ ‘That is the wrong word,’ he said. ‘One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention. That’s merely turning a new leaf with the left hand.’ I patted my friend on the head and bowed slightly to Eberthella H. The poet looked at me with glazed eyes. She said: ‘You must help us, Mr.Kinbote: I maintain that what’s his name, old- the old man, you know, at the Exton railway station, who thought he was God and began redirecting the trains, was technically a loony, but John calls him a fellow poet.’ ‘We all are, in a sense, poets, Madam,’ I replied” (Pale Fire, 238)
Kinbote’s solipsism becomes so constraining that he is both unable in one sense to recognize himself in this conversation yet he also praises himself as he refers to his “brilliant invention.” The reader in this situation is given the scenario only from the viewpoint of Kinbote’s creative imagination.
This solipsism as a narrator is also seen in his interpretation of John Shades poem as his complete immersion within his own thoughts and preoccupations can be distinguished. Lines of the 999-line poem which appear to be written about the death of Shade’s daughter Hazel are distorted in the view of Kinbote to resemble a story about “a distant northern land” called Zembla and its dethroned King Charles the Beloved, whom Kinbote would have the reader believe is him. Kinbote interprets line 149: “One foot upon a mountain top” into a ten-page story about the escape of Charles the Beloved from Zembla. Like Humbert’s description of Lolita, the reader could presume that to Kinbote the poem “had been safely solipsized.”
Kinbote further “solipsized” the world around him in his interpretation of John Shade’s death. In reality John Shade’s killer is Jack Grey, an escapee from the hospital for the criminally insane who intends to kill Judge Goldsworth. Yet through Kinbote’s narration, he is an extremist from Zembla named Gradus who intends to kill Kinbote (or Charles the Beloved). It is the narrator’s mind that has constructed not only Gradus’ intended victim but also Gradus himself.
Many critics examine the solipsistic nature of the story by questioning to what lengths imagined realities exist within the text. While the character of Kinbote or Botkin’s solipsistic nature becomes apparent throughout the story, the texts solipsistic nature becomes apparent throughout its critics. While Kinbotes reality exists only in his imagination, the books second layer of solipsism appears when it is suggested that he himself is only a construct of another characters imagination. Brian Boyd asserted that Kinbote was in fact an imagined character manufactured by the mind of John Shade, he then later asserted that instead the text was produced by the ghost of John Shade and then retracted this theory in favor of the idea that the ghost of Hazel Shade was responsible. Up until this argument the existence of the narrators mind, crazy as he may be, was accepted. With the question of whether or not Kinbote exists or not as a figment of Shades imagination, the text again becomes the only reality that the reader can rely on, not the narrator or his narration. Nabokov creates a larger form of solipsism where just as the stories can be viewed as a fictional construct of the mind, so can the narrators on whom the reader relies.
In all novels characters are on a basic level imagined- Dorothy exists on the pages of Wizard of Oz, yet the reader in both of these texts is never sure if Lolita or Kinbote even exist on the pages of the novel. While Dorothy is real in the imaginary realm of Oz, Lolita and Kinbote in a sense become doubly imaginary, being both fictional inside and outside the novel, not only are they fictional in the fact that they are in a novel but they are also fictional within the novel as they are constructs of their narrators minds. Nabokov used solipsism in the two texts in the same way that he used almost every theme in all of his texts, as a game played with the reader. The reader is taken on an investigation through the murky waters of the narrators solipsistic mind, attempting to decipher reality from imagined.