'Love at First Sight, at Last Sight, at Ever and Ever Sight': Scrutinizing Lolita's Body

This article examines some of the more disquieting strains in Nabokov's Lolita. It argues that the novel's field of vision is structured in a way that links Humbert's gaze with his filmic and photographic imagination. More general reflections on the nature of cinematography and photography lead to a reconsideration of Lolita's premature death as a literalization of the more sinister implications of Humbert's artistic aspirations. Humbert's modernist quest for knowledge is shown to coincide with a cinematic and photographic discourse that engulfs Lolita in a semantic web of death. It will be argued that Lyne's recent cinematic adaptation of the novel lacks precisely in its omission of these morbid undertones.