Wittgenstein analysis of Nabokov's Lolita

This paper will subject various passages of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to a Wittgensteinian analysis. The basis for this analysis will be Wittgenstein's perceptions of language as contained in Part II of his Philosophical Investigations. In his earlier philosophy, as represented by the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein claimed that there is one language which describes all aspects of reality. However, by the time of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein had arrived at the opinion that reality is much too complex to be encompassed by any one language. Thus, one of the major themes of the Philosophical Investigations is that "the use of language and of the signs which compose it are exceedingly diverse."

In the analysis of language, Wittgenstein emphasized that the meaning of a word or phrase is to be found in its function, or use. In the Philosophical Investigations, this idea is expressed by the statement: "Let the use of words teach you their meaning." According to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word or phrase is to be found in the concept which the word or phrase expresses. Furthermore, the concept of a word or phrase can be revealed by analyzing the way in which the word or phrase is used. Gilbert Ryle clarifies Wittgenstein's position on meaning and use by noting: "The use of an expression, or the concept it expresses, is the role it is employed to perform, not any thing or person or event for which it might be supposed to stand." However,

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the ages of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as 'nymphets.' Humbert then goes on to describe how ordinary girls exist in space, whereas "nymphets" exist in time. This bit of philosophical confusion arises because Humbert's definition of "nymphets" freezes them within a time frame that exists between the ages of nine and fourteen. By contrast, ordinary girls are said to be "incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where Lolita plays with her likes." Humbert creates this unique definition for himself because he hopes to somehow keep Lolita frozen in her adolescent time frame, where she can always meet his ideal criteria as an object for his desire. This hope is expressed in a passage in which Humbert has been encouraged by Lolita's innocent playfulness and imagines that she is responding to his advances. In this passage, the narrator claims that he is not concerned with the animality of "sex" so much as he is with a "greater endeavor": "To

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