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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The story resides in the introspection...", August 16, 2004
That insight, about introspection itself constituting the story, is made by Dmitri Nabokov in an essay appended to The Enchanter. As many have noted in so many words, "The Enchanter" lacks Humbert Humbert's appeal. Still, Nabokov permits us to see in the enchanter, perhaps more succintly than in Lolita, the introspective anxiety of an outwardly ordinary man driven mad by his single-minded obsession with an eternally adolescent female, at least eternal younth "was the carnal postulate." He can neither ignore her as as an object of his desire, nor bring himself to rationalize adequately her hold on him. Indeed, he can empathize with her disgust as he envisions himself through her eyes, a "monstrosity, some ghastly disease." The book's opening sentence, a question, signals the ordeal that is about to unfold, "How can I come to terms with myself?" And, the answer is that he cannot; he cannot gain the distance he needs from his moral framework. He is both sinner and judge; without control,insane and yet damned as a morally responsible soul.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A soft portrait of what would become Lolita, May 1, 2005
After nearly completing my first year in Law School, I decided that I needed a break from case reading. Thankfully, Nabokov was there to provide a welcome respite from the tedium of my case books.
The Enchanter is a short book, almost not worthy of publication independently, nevertheless it provided me with a brief repose of a perfect magnitude. In this short novella the protagonist is a proto-Humbert who is embryonic in almost every respect. We do not know his name, his history, profession, origin or the raison d'etre for his fatal obsession. For this reason the reader will find it harder to humanize the attrocious acts that he engages in. Similarly, the object of the unnamed protagonist's desire is no Lolita; rather then present us with the beguiling temptress, or the iconic nymphet of Nabokov's latter novel, we are left with a somewhat fungible, inchoate and forgettable young girl. The story follows a somewhat predictable path towards the eventual destruction (is it what he was seeking?) of the protagonist.
There are a few reasons why this novella is worth four stars. First, the brief size of the novella allows the busy or casual reader a little taste of Nabokoviana without the conmesurate investment in time by the reader. Secondly, all of our favorate Nabokov traits are present to some extent in the text. The word play, the beautiful imagery, and the defectless prose-poem quality of his writing are given expression in the pages. Finally, the climax and denoument of the novella executed prefectly. Each scene inevitably leads to the next and appears to offer only one conclusion. The end of our anti-hero is satisfiyingly conveighed.
In conclusion, the serious reader can (almost) never go wrong with Nabokov and The Enchanter does not disappoint. If you have a spare hour and desire some beautiful writing pick up this short volume.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Moral Imperative..., September 11, 2008
...but is it my own lack of a philosophically absolute morality, or Nabokov's ambiguity, that makes The Enchanter such an uncomfortable book to read? I will confess, to establish my critical credibility, that I have transgressed the Mosaic commandments about my neighbor's wife and, yes, also his maidservant. I didn't get to throw the first stone at Bill Clinton or wife-betraying John McCain for their sleazy behavior. But some behaviors do disgust me, outrage me, enflame me with vengeful wrath. Sexual violence toward children is so creepy that I'd throw away my objections to capital punishment for it. The Enchanter is a novella about the obsession of a middle-aged man with barely pubescent girls, in which the protagonist schemes slyly for months to gain access to such a girl, in the role of her widowd step-father, in order to seduce her and shape her to his fantasies. In the end, his hateful self-control fails and he tries to rape her. She screams, the "world" intervenes, and the hopeful pederast throws himself before a truck in the dark.
There, I've told the story, spoiled the denouement, haven't I? But as always with Nabokov, it's the language that matters anyway, the wily tricks the master plays with our sympathies and susceptibilities, the bitter taste in the mouth this story leaves in the form of the realization that any of us might be as depraved and loathsome to ourselves as the nameless protagonist of The Enchanter. That's one possible reading, anyway, and the one offered by Nabokov's son Dimitri, who translated the novella from Russian to English. Is it my reading? Only provisionally, at best. The vividness of the sexual details and of the sadistic finale seem altogether too artful, so that I fear "somebody out there" will be enjoying them a bit too freely. (There I go, throwing the stone after all.) It's one thing to formulate an acceptable answer to the question of 'what Nabokov meant by such a tale.' It's another to be troubled by the question of 'why Nabokov chose to write such a tale.'
Notice that I've made no mention of a connection between this novella, written in Europe, and a much more famous novel written later in America. Let's leave it that way, with the understanding that many of the same perplexities will arise.
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