In the mind’s eyesight, Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita lives in a new of endless nymphets and time predetermined, of iced crystals and glass. But reality is mobile phone and unfrozen, and try as he may to decline it They would. H. will recognize the impermanence in the external community through it is mirror projection into his mind. As a result, H. L. struggles to freeze period behind cup surfaces simply to be foiled by the severe mirror expression of transient reality.
Humbert Humbert’s misunderstanding of “Our Cup Lake, ” truly “Hourglass Lake, inches reveals his desire to cease the movement of time as well as the obstruction of this dream by the stark reminder of actuality reflected in mirrored floors. H. They would. dreams of an “enchanted island” of “entranced time” by which all nymphets reside, permanently unaffected simply by age (Nabokov 16-17). This longing to freeze time is emphasized by They would. H’s thoughts of iced water. In the event surging, rushing water advises the persistent motion of the time, then snow and crystallization evokes it is cessation. Indeed, before browsing Lake, They would. H. imagines it as “glazed using a linen of emerald ice” (54). By this distante lake, L. H. dreamt of having a “quiet little orgy” with Lolita after feigning the loss of his “wrist watch” to flee from Charlotte (54). The losing of his timepiece further highlights H. H’s wish for the disappearance of your time. Later when he takes glasses for whiskey and soda pop, he feels of the ice cubes as “little pillow-shaped blocks¦ pillows to get polar plush bear, Lo” (97), he wants a frozen Lo, an eternal nymphet Lo untouched simply by temporality, “emprisoned in¦ crystal sleep” (123). The addition of liquid into the cup produced “rasping, tortured sounds as the warm water loose [the ice cubes] within their cells” (97). Thus, H. H. is actually predilection pertaining to crystallized, glassy surfaces and his aversion to flowing normal water depict his desire to halt the spike of time.
However , his fantasies of your energy immobilized will be shattered by mirrors, which constantly remind him of reality’s temporality. Hourglass Lake is a “curious Mirage” (56). A apparence itself is usually “an optical effect that may be sometimes viewed at sea¦ that may have the appearance of¦ a mirror in which distant objects are seen upside down. “[1] Therefore Hourglass Pond emerges as a mirror and, far from being freezing, resides in fact in “great heat” (81). The fluid, heat, and inverted reflection quality of Hourglass Pond reveals that to be the extremely opposite from the crystallized Our Glass Pond H. L. envisioned in his mind. It is true evocative name additional accentuates the temporality of reality that opposes H. H. ‘s internal freezing glass fantasies. Furthermore, although in his dreams he loses his wrist watch in order to tryst with Lolita, in reality his wrist watch continues to be on and correctly intact, undamaged by the going waters since it is “waterproof, inches within the mirror lake, They would. H. are unable to physically ruin or break free time (89). Thus magnifying mirrors in reality diametrically oppose H. H. ‘s internal fantasies and reveal to him the impossibility of his desires for frozen time.
They would. H. is actually memories of Lolita in cinematographic terms reveal additional his yearning to halt time. Motion pictures will be formed from the projection of sunshine through a a glass lens upon a reel of film onto a screen. The replaying of film suggests a infringement in time, a reliving of past images that intrude into the present. Glass images thus recurs in the contact lens and shows again They would. H. is struggle to protect still occasions behind glass surfaces. Inside the despair of remembering beauty of Lolita’s rugby stroke, this individual laments, “I could have shot her! I possibly could have had most her cerebral vascular accidents, all her enchantments, immortalized in portions of celluloid, ” she’d be ageless behind the glass zoom lens of the film projector (232). When he closes his eye he sees an “immobilized fraction of her, a cinematographic still” (44) as though she is a “photographic photo rippling after a screen” (62), film creates the illusion of movement by the speedy succession of frames, although like his aversion to moving water, H. H. here wants “segments, inch “still[s], ” a “photographic picture, ” the individual, unmoving broken phrases that freeze out her, he doesn’t wish the tip of time.
But once more, mirrors negate his dreams and pressure him to confront reality. He admits his fight to freeze period by changing time with space: “I substitute time terms to get spatial ones” just as this individual substitutes cinematographic time with stills (16). But even so, control of time eludes him, mirror reflections, even if they are photographic stills, inevitably expose age. L. H. creates, “I may have the reader observe ‘nine’ and ‘fourteen’ because the boundaries ” the mirrory seashores and positive rocks ” of an captivated me island haunted by these nymphets of mine” (16). Mirrors constitute the boundaries of H. They would. ‘s fantasies. Most noticeably, one would have no realization of self-aging or the physical, exterior change of self with no mirror reflection. External fact of the personal exists independent from internal perception right up until a mirror projects what is outdoors into the mind. Hence, mirrors force L. H. to view not only the ephemerality of nymphets yet also his own fatality. As he goes by a “dead” town with out Lolita, he sees a “display of artificial expensive diamonds reflected within a red mirror” and a “lighted green clock” to remind him of ever fleeting time and another crystal of phony permanence (282). In the end, the “crystal” of his watch “was removed but it ticked” (304). His symbol of the time halted, the crystal, disappears and period surges on.
Finally, H. They would. ‘s inside world of timeless nymphets and immortality stands at kampfstark odds while using external fact of fugacity that magnifying mirrors project into his consciousness and power him to find out. However , in writing Lolita, this individual vies for dominance against this external transience. He tasks his inside reality out into external space and fights to materialize the everlastingness that is his whole mental globe.
