PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Humbert wanted the relationship restored after having stolen---by his own admission---Lolita's childhood, which could never be restored.  Like other men who prey upon women in this way, Humbert never seemed to realize the utter selfishness of his motive.  Lolita found love with a man who did not need to dominate, or to force her into submission, and she died in childbirth bearing the child (which was stillborn) of their love.  Humbert's pathetic idolization of her was an idolization, instead, of his own crass selfishiness; which, like other men similar to him, he cannot admit and will not repent of.  I think his death, from thrombosis, was Nabokov's coy way of indicating that, despite the total impression of Humbert, through the novel, as a first class jerk, he did have a heart.  He simply, like others of his ilk, loved himself more than the so called love of his life.  

Your epigram is quite a compact analysis of the novel.  I have read several very tedious essays on it in my time, and I wish they had moved with the same speed as your poem above.