underlying its presentation. In style, structure, prose and critical acclaim, Lolita rises above its objectionable subject matter and achieves the status of great art.
The novel informs us in the beginning of HumbertÆs former passion for a pubescent girl named Annabel Leigh. The reminiscences of Humbert over Leigh serve as foreshadowing of later encounters between Humbert and Lolita, but they do much more. They also lay the foundation for HumbertÆs motivation to seduce Lolita and his utter lack of control in doing so. LeighÆs memory, a time of lost innocence, a time of sexual and sensual freshness, is HumbertÆs prime motivation in seducing Lolita, a chance of recapturing that innocence and freshness. The passages describing Humbert and Leigh are some of the most passionate and erotic ever written without descending once into pornography. Nabokov achieves this feat in part through analogy, by giving us depictions of the female as enchantress and the male as hunter.
Through characterization Nabokov also distinguishes his content from pornography and transcends it into art. Almost as if Nabokov knew the debate over art versus pornography that Lolita might create, he uses characterization to make distinctions between pornography and art aesthetic. Nabokov does not deny in the novel that HumbertÆs passion for Lolita embodies sexual desire. However, HumbertÆs obsession with Lolita also embodies an appreciation for aesthetic beauty û an almost transcendent and artistic appreciation of the beauty of form and innocence of being of undefiled youth. Undefiled youth does not just refer to sexual defilement either, it also refers to myriad injuries and humiliations one experiences by HumbertÆs age, ones that often rob one of innocen
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