The Enchanter

      Reading the Enchanter as a predecessor to Lolita was quite the interesting experience. Because I've read Lolita once before, I couldn't help but marvel at how much the story changed from this novella to its more mature novel. I couldn't help but be incredibly surprised at how much active voice can triumph over passive voice in this instance, especially when pertaining to this kind of perverse topic. I mean, both versions of the story deal with a hemophiliac, which is uncomfortable in it's own right, but I'd like to argue that the Enchanter far trumps Lolita in its perversity and overall creepiness. When I read Lolita a few years ago, though appalled by Humbert Humbert's actions, I found myself enticed by the language and active voice of the protagonist. However, though The Enchanter was still full of luxurious prose, I found myself not enticed but incredibly repelled and appalled. The actions of this underdeveloped, unnamed protagonist suddenly doubled in perversity and doubled in being extremely uncharismatic and monstrous. All the charm and wit and charisma of Humbert Humbert had not yet arrived to Nabokov, and this is something that is made quite obvious to the reader. Needless to say, if Nabokov had stopped the story here, one could argue (and will argue) that it would not be the literary classic it is today but instead, a perverse, perverted piece of literature read only for the purpose of making readers squirm. And squirm I did. I've never felt so uncomfortable reading anything in my entire life.

Which brings me to the molestation scene. I can't remember vividly how it went in Lolita, but I definitely don't think that version made the impression this scene did on me.

  "Finally making up his mind, he gently stroked her long, just slightly parted, faintly sticky legs, which grew cooler and a little coarser on the way down, and progressively warmer farther up. He recalled, with a furious sense of triumph, the roller skates, the sun, the chestnut trees, everything– while he kept stroking with his fingertips, trembling and casting sidelong looks at the plump promontory, with it's brand-new downiness, which, independently but with a familial parallel, embodied a concentrated echo of something about her lips and cheeks" (71).

    This passage alone is enough to make anyone feel uncomfortable, though it is just the beginning and could be defined as tame compared to the rest of the scene– especially once one realizes that they are not reading a scene from a horrible Harlequin romance novel but in fact what is beginning to become a sexual encounter with a pre-pubescent girl. There is no doubt that is is well written, and there is no doubt that Nabokov is trying to make his reader uncomfortable. And he succeeds. He succeeds in ways I'm sure he did not think possible. This scene, in my opinion, was the reason he scrapped this novella and went on to write Lolita. Because, though Lolita crosses the boundaries of social norms, this scene pushes those boundaries too far.