Buzzati and Nabokov: It is not about desire

Abstract

Dino Buzzati's Un Amore has been largely defined as a consequence of the progressive development of the phenomenon of “lolitism,” and a few years before, Nabokov's Lolita had been accused of being an example of pedophilia. While both female characters are archetypes of “nymphet,” defiant, sexually promiscuous, capricious, and, above all, skilled in manipulation, the relationship progresses through a labyrinth of absence and deprivation. However, in order to place the novels in a proper perspective, we must avoid any intrusion into the authors’ private sexuality, and search for the aesthetic phenomenon thereby implied. Written from the male's perspective, women are a riddle but their age offers a key to understanding: youth's artful image can grant the illusion of immortality before death.