The "Seva Ascendes" bit that surely everyone sweared at

You are reading Lolita. You vow to the masterful writing, even as you cheerfully grimace at the necessity of researching some word every other page. The guy even seems to enjoy sending you on multiple destination voyages that somewhere end in dirty, dirty places and meanings.

And then you come to this bit:

"Seva ascendes, pulsata, brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa, clatterans, populus in corridoro. Hanc nisi mors mihi adimet nemo! Juncea puellula, jo pensavo fondissime, nobserva nihil quidquam"

And no amount of erudition can preclude a deluge of colorful expletives. Personally, I can more or less intuit about half of what is there. So I'll say it with all the respect and admiration in the world: Nabokov sucks.

So here (be advised, some of it is gibberish resembling a word in some or various languages):

"Sap ascends, pulsates, burning, itching, most insane. Elevator clattering, pausing, clattering, people in the corridor. No one but death would take this one from me! Slender little girl, I thought most fondly, observing nothing at all."
- (lifted, more or less, from Alfred Appel's annotated version)

Wonderful, exasperating book.

Deleterious and rape culture

Deleterious: Noxious, harmful, pernicious.

What the book I just finished is. It doesn't even deserve naming. I don't want to give even the morbid curiosity factor of publicity.

It passed as a romance. It was a horror story.

Guy with an ax to grind blackmails his ex into a dirty weekend. Serious, lose you job and livelihood blackmail. He's mistaken about the charge, which is actually irrelevant, unless you think it makes it even worse. She accepts. She's scared and stupid. She should have sued his ass for harassment and taken a restraining order. But hey, she enjoyed, so it's not so bad!

Hear that? That is actually an ironic tone, and the whistling is just my ears as my head explodes. I'm that boiling raging mad. This is me going nuclear.

Because THAT, that up there, was rape. And that thing made of paper and ink, that piece of shit with pages that should never be called a book, is a perfect example of the kind of things that build and prop a rape culture.

She takes him back at the end, marry, are happily ever after.

The guy forced her into a dirty weekend. WTF??!!

Me: You think that's swoon worthy? That a guy find you so irresistible he forces you to shack with him?2: Well, he's very handsome and hot, and great in bed, and rich. And she enjoyed it.
Me: *blink* Worths fail me.

If you are a woman as baffled as I feel, then there is still hope for our sex. Right now my respect for it has fallen a few notches. Whether you are or not, check Shannon Hale's article on what is and builds a rape culture. It's pretty enlightening, and the discussion diversified and interesting.