When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's u...
When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.
Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years la...
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins.
The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri.
Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses–the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions–which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.
I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth ,..I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita,this Lolita,pale and polluted,and big with another's child,but still gray-eyed..I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her dear wan face..“我望着她，望了又望。一生一世，全心全意，我最爱的就是她，可以肯定，就象自己必死一样肯定…苍白、混俗、臃肿，腹中的骨肉是别人的。但我爱她…她可以褪色，可以枯萎，怎样都可以。但我只望她一眼，万般柔情，便涌上心头......”. (查看原文)
我是中英文交错着看的，纳博科夫的语言绝对经得起“散文体小说”这个称谓的推敲，轻盈，梦幻，跳跃，并给人一种……晨雾般的潮湿感；而主万的译本则完全把这种特质变成了支离破碎，本来的喃喃自语变成了好像智力不健全因而不能完整表达句子的感觉……翻译硬错误更不计其数。。说回内容，有几处相当感人的地方，但同时有一两处（可能因为这几处我正是看的中文）有点over the top，结构安排有感觉，最后杀死Quilty...我是中英文交错着看的，纳博科夫的语言绝对经得起“散文体小说”这个称谓的推敲，轻盈，梦幻，跳跃，并给人一种……晨雾般的潮湿感；而主万的译本则完全把这种特质变成了支离破碎，本来的喃喃自语变成了好像智力不健全因而不能完整表达句子的感觉……翻译硬错误更不计其数。。说回内容，有几处相当感人的地方，但同时有一两处（可能因为这几处我正是看的中文）有点over the top，结构安排有感觉，最后杀死Quilty的场景蛮神的。(展开)
![[美国] 弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫](https://img3.doubanio.com/view/personage/m/public/5f35f31fe1695dbc26003a3a8d9f353a.jpg)
弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫 作者
Alice是女的
上海译文出版社2005版
张不赖
上海译文出版社2005版
夏日飞雪Sara
外语教学与研究出版社2000版
东囡西北
外语教学与研究出版社2000版
郑核桃
译林出版社2000版
曹大宝本宝
上海译文出版社2005版
31 有用 Troubadour 2012-01-23 17:46:05
sometimes I feel that the sole purpose of my life is to prepare myself to read a single book.
40 有用 琴酒 2013-10-20 21:22:20
以前读的时候因为词汇太难放弃了，这遍读还好。重读的原因大概是受纳博科夫回忆这本书的语气所吸引，他总是那么亲切的称呼洛丽塔为“我的小仙女”，像是对待心爱的蝴蝶标本。比小时候读的时候懂了很多，亨伯特对读者的引诱，叙述被压抑的一面，在同情和罪恶之间摇摆。新发现是这本书里的环境描写特别好，有很浓重的拼贴感，但又笼罩在意识和无意识、辩解和天真的角力之下。但最大的乐趣大概是看见亨伯特的法语就想象他的腔调小声把... 以前读的时候因为词汇太难放弃了，这遍读还好。重读的原因大概是受纳博科夫回忆这本书的语气所吸引，他总是那么亲切的称呼洛丽塔为“我的小仙女”，像是对待心爱的蝴蝶标本。比小时候读的时候懂了很多，亨伯特对读者的引诱，叙述被压抑的一面，在同情和罪恶之间摇摆。新发现是这本书里的环境描写特别好，有很浓重的拼贴感，但又笼罩在意识和无意识、辩解和天真的角力之下。但最大的乐趣大概是看见亨伯特的法语就想象他的腔调小声把它读出来。 (展开)
9 有用 Sirius 2018-07-22 18:50:20
年少的时候读过片段，这次才算仔细把英文原著从头读完。作为史上最容易被误读的小说之一，无论是将它看做道德批判还是爱情故事，都是一样陷入了纳博科夫本人构建的陷阱。这次阅读让我再次体认到纳博科夫某种意义上真的是“作者的作者”，所谓“纯文学”的化身。拒绝用文学去“说明”观点，拒绝依循传统教条，而是坚持用强大的互文性和复杂如棱镜、如迷宫游戏般的文本，去探索审美和人性情感、智性的边界。
74 有用 克罗伊 2012-07-15 11:10:39
Nabokov is a master of English vocab, and he is not even a native speaker.
11 有用 7outta6 2011-10-30 13:00:24
我是中英文交错着看的，纳博科夫的语言绝对经得起“散文体小说”这个称谓的推敲，轻盈，梦幻，跳跃，并给人一种……晨雾般的潮湿感；而主万的译本则完全把这种特质变成了支离破碎，本来的喃喃自语变成了好像智力不健全因而不能完整表达句子的感觉……翻译硬错误更不计其数。。说回内容，有几处相当感人的地方，但同时有一两处（可能因为这几处我正是看的中文）有点over the top，结构安排有感觉，最后杀死Quilty... 我是中英文交错着看的，纳博科夫的语言绝对经得起“散文体小说”这个称谓的推敲，轻盈，梦幻，跳跃，并给人一种……晨雾般的潮湿感；而主万的译本则完全把这种特质变成了支离破碎，本来的喃喃自语变成了好像智力不健全因而不能完整表达句子的感觉……翻译硬错误更不计其数。。说回内容，有几处相当感人的地方，但同时有一两处（可能因为这几处我正是看的中文）有点over the top，结构安排有感觉，最后杀死Quilty的场景蛮神的。 (展开)