The Light, The Darkness

As one of the most important and original writers in the 20th century, Nabokov had made great achievements in novels, poetry and drama. He got equal parts of praise and condemnation because of his masterpiece Lolita, which triggered controversial discussions in the academic circle. A number of scholars have made studies on this novel in terms of its themes, structure, style and artistic techniques. However, it is still rare in the literary circle to dig out his time conception from the perspective of death.This thesis is divided into three chapters: (I) a discussion on the theory of subjective time, including the thought of Bergson and Husserl; (II) a brief survey of death in Lolita and (III) different time conceptions of Nabokov. The First Chapter mainly reviews on the concept of "inner time", including the thought of Bergson and Husserl. Bergson maintained that the time is durable, while Husserl pushed Bergson's thought forward, stressing that time is not only durable, but also flows in form of "retention" and "protention", and forms the "temporal field" eventually. Chapter Two gives a survey of death in Lolita: the first section is mainly about the death of Humbert' s mother, which is the root of Humbert's tragedy; the second section of this chapter introduces the death of Annabel and Lolita, illustrates the relationship between the death of Annabel and that of Lolita; the third section is the death of Humbert and Quilty, explaining the death of Quilty is the ruin of "looking-glass self as for Humbert. Chapter Three is about my own understanding of Nabokov's time conception. Immersed in Europe for years, Nabokov was greatly influenced by Bergson who viewed time as durable and Husserl who considered time is a temporal field. The first section of this chapter tries to prove time is durable in Lolita according to the death of Annabel and the memory covered on Lolita by Humbert, hence the death is spread in duration. The second section here is to illustrate the death of Humbert's mother is the center of circle for all deaths, expanding to the death of all the heroes. Therefore, her death is spread from a point to the whole space in Lolita.The thesis concludes that Lolita contains Nabokov's time conception represented by three levels of "death", and the novel thus deepens the readers' recognition of time and arouses their contemplation on the serious ideologies like the meaning of life, death and existence.