Here’s what happens when a bookworm like me gets to thinking.

Reading three books at once sparked some connections for me, which I began talking about in a recent post.

The three books are:

• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
• Against Depression by Peter Kramer

Nafisi forms  a study group of young Iranian college women. Lolita is their first selection.

Lolita is a twelve-year-old girl whose real name is Dolores Haze. The narrator, who calls himself Humbert Humbert, kidnaps Dolores and keeps her as his sexual slave for two years.

Here’s the book’s famous beginning:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

The women’s group remarks on Humbert’s renaming of Dolores:

“The first thing that struck us in reading Lolita — in fact it was on the very first page — was how Lolita was given to us as Humbert’s creature…Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own…(p. 36)

The name “Lolita” sounds carefree, flirtatious, light … playful … and condescending.

The Spanish suffix -ita means “little one.” It’s meant to be affectionate, but notice how it also has a trivializing tone to it?

Such a suffix is called a diminutive, and there is definitely something both affectionate, but also diminishing and belittling about the name Lolita.

Why does Humbert Humbert create this name for Dolores?

• Is he trying to rationalize his dark deeds by putting a light-hearted spin on them?
• Is he completely lost in his own fantasy world?
• Is he genuinely (though misguidedly!) trying to make Dolores’s life better?

Meanwhile, the name “Dolores” means “pain” or “sorrow” in Spanish.

Dolores Haze

A cloud of suffering?

Peter Kramer describes depression as a haze. He rejoices with his patient when it lifts:

Lifting is a verb patients use. They speak of depression rising, like a fog. My mind was clouded, they say … For me as well, the gravity of depression is evident in the lightness, the unburdening that I feel when someone I am treating recovers.

Kramer continues to describe depression in a manner that reminds me so much of captive Dolores, whose history has been stolen:

The depressed lack roundedness … their account of their own past life has become repetitive and stale … Depression is the opposite of freedom. (p. 13, my boldface)

And finally Kramer expresses his worry (and I want to be very quick to add that I believe this same dynamic also occurs between women and depressed men!):

Controlling men are drawn to vulnerable women. Many sorts of fragility suffice: low self-worth, drug abuse, social anxiety. But depression is a prime offender.

I wonder how much of literature actually depicts the dramatic dynamics of mental illness?

I’m eager for your perspectives on any of this!

photo of forsythia just about to bloom

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (March 28, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 28 Mar 2010