« Ce qui donne pointe à la sauce » : désir et délire sécuritaire dans Lolita de Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract

Desire, which stirs the passions of hope and fear, also remains under constant threat of extinction by their extremes - security and despair. Such, in broad terms, is the analysis Descartes presents in Les Passions de l'âme (1649), an analysis that arguably affords a great deal of insight into the dynamics of desire in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. In a profoundly disturbing twist, Humbert Humbert's obsession with security, more than a mere symptom of his perversion, turns out to be an general tendency of desire as such. Consistent with the Cartesian model, the desiring subjects of Lolita - character, narrator, writer, and reader alike - are thus torn between the imperatives of security and a passion that would throw caution to the winds. Safety first or safety last ?