![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In our cultural mythology, love doesn’t just conquer all, but it justifies all sorts of bad behavior, too. In fact, the novel offers - among much else - a critique of the privileged status that Western society has accorded to romantic passion since the Middle Ages. Through the power of Nabokov’s art, the book’s narrator, a middle-aged man fixated on a pubescent girl, does all he can to present himself as the besotted victim in a doomed romance. Consider an example from recent literature: I find Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” funny, complex, beautifully written, endlessly rereadable. In the arts, this can result in near hysteria at the discovery of sexism, racism or exoticism in the masterpieces of earlier ages. Absolutism, whether political, aesthetic or religious, leads to favoring those who conform to our beliefs and condemning everyone else. ![]()
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