Read The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated Online
Authors: Vladimir Nabokov
The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated (64 page)
Ces matins gris si doux
: French; “Those gray mornings, so soft …”
rumor; roomer
: a homophone. In
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
, the narrator speaks of “mad Sebastian, struggling in a naughty world of Juggernauts, and aeronauts, and naughts, and what-nots” (p. 63).
Is it Fate
: “McFate” is quietly introduced; see
McFate, Aubrey
and
Aubrey McFate … devil of mine
.
“
And behold
”
: Lolita completes her mother’s “Lo,” and H.H. later twists the epithet (
Lo to behold
).
her class at … school
: in
Pnin
, young Victor Wind sees in the glass headlight or chrome plating of a car “a view of the street and himself comparable to the microcosmic version of a room (with a dorsal view of diminutive people) in that very special and very magical small convex mirror that, half a millennium ago, Van Eyck and Petrus Christus and Memling used to paint into their detailed interiors, behind the sour merchant or the domestic madonna” (pp. 97–98). Like
Who’s Who in the Limelight
(pp. 31–32) and the “cryptogrammic paper chase” (pp. 250–51), the “poetic” class list serves as a kind of magical mirror. The list is
printed on the back of an unfinished map of the United States, drawn by Lolita, suggesting the scale of the gameboard on which the action is played. The image of the map secreted in the
Young People’s Encyclopedia
prefigures their journeys (on which H.H. will “finish” the map by showing Lolita the country), just as the class list prefigures and mirrors an extraordinary number of other things.
Beale
: the Beales’ father
kills Charlotte Haze
, and they are the first of no less than five sets of twins or twinned names in Lolita’s class (the Beales, the Cowans, the Talbots, and the
incestuous Mirandas
), a microscopic vision of the doubling (H.H. and Quilty) and mirroring that occurs in the roomy interior of the entire book (including Ray’s Foreword), where even
cars have their twins
; “
the long hairy arm of coincidence
” is said to have its unpredictable “
twin limb
”; Mrs. Haze is
echoed by the widow Mrs. Hays
; and obscure women of science mirror one another in spite of the almost 300 pages separating them (Blanche Schwarzmann: “White Blackman,” and Melanie Weiss: “Black White”; see
here
).
Double names, initials, and phonetic effects prevail throughout
Lolita
, whether the twinning is literal (Humbert Humbert, Vanessa van Ness, Quilty’s Duk Duk Ranch, and H.H.’s alternate pseudonyms of “Otto Otto,” “Mesmer Mesmer,” and “Lambert Lambert”); or alliterative (Clare Quilty, Gaston Godin, Harold Haze, Bill Brown, and Clarence [Choate] Clark); or trickily alphabetical (John Ray, Jr.: J.R., Jr.). The double consonants of the almost infinite succession of humorously alliterative place names and points of interest H.H. visits are thus thematically consistent (Pierre Point, Hobby House, Hazy Hills, Kumfy Kabins, Raspberry Room, Chestnut Court, and so forth). Numbers even adhere to the pattern; H.H. imagines Lolita’s unborn child “dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020
A.D.
” (
here
). The name of “
Harold D. Doublename
” represents a summary phrase, but the annotator’s double initials are only a happy coincidence. For more on mirrors, see
a mirror
.
Carmine, Rose
: see
Aubrey McFate … devil of mine
.
Falter
: German; butterfly—and a companion of “Miss Phalen” (
phalène
: moth [
Miss Phalen
]) and the playwright “Schmetterling” (butterfly [
Schmetterling
]). For a summary of the entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.
Fantasia
: a corrected misprint (
s
instead of
z
in the 1958 edition). She is married
here
(the “Murphy-Fantasia” wedding party).
McFate, Aubrey
: a vagrant auditor, rather than a member of the class (see
Aubrey McFate … devil of mine
), though the reader may not realize it for four more pages. McFate’s appearance in the middle of the class list undercuts the inviolable “reality” of much more than just the list. By placing the McFate allusions back-to-back
here
and
here
, Nabokov gives the reader a fighting chance to make the association, and to realize its implications. It would be “easier” on the reader, of course, if the class list came
after
the second instance
(notes
living vacationists
and
Bill Brown … Dolores
limn similar effects). McFate’s first name suggests Aubrey Beardsley (see
Aubrey Beardsley, Quelquepart Island
), the “decadent” Art Nouveau artist (1872–1898) quite out of fashion when
Lolita
was written, and reveals another mother lode of verbal figurations: the invented town of “Beardsley,” its school and college, and Gaston Godin (see
Gaston Godin
). The self-reflexive authorial identification with Beardsley is, among other things, a serious literary joke aimed at the unfriendly critics, then and now, who consign Nabokov the gilt-edged prose stylist to Aubrey’s party—the artistic dandies, the guilt-free Decadent School.
The Beardsley schools themselves may reflect and refract three actual institutions of learning in Wellesley, Mass. Professor Patrick F. Quinn, who taught English at Wellesley College (1949–1985), points to several links between Beardsley and the three women’s schools in town (letter to the annotator, June 30, 1975). Dana Hall, a private secondary school, was for many years exclusively female, as was Pine Manor Junior College (it moved, c. 1970), and could be the prototypes for the Beardsley School. Wellesley College, where Nabokov taught in the forties, has a Founders Hall, which is “
Maker Hall
” in
Lolita
. For about eighty years, Wellesley offered a required, yearlong Bible course, an unusual feature for an elite college; in
Lolita
, the
course offering
has been transposed to the Beardsley School. Professor Quinn, by the way, is a distinguished Poe scholar. For Poe, see
Lo-lee-ta
.
Windmuller
: Louise and her father appear
here
; he
here
.
bodyguard of roses
: classmates “Rose” and “Rosaline” serve as Lolita’s rosy page-girls. The rose is of course the flower traditionally associated with gems, decorations, wine, perfume, and women of great charm and / or virtue. Lolita is continually linked with the flower. See
Aubrey McFate … devil of mine
. See also
Keys
, p. 118.
Is “mask” the keyword?
: yes, because the masked author has just been mirrored, as it were, in the class list; see the Introduction and Chapter Twenty-six (
Heart, head—everything
).
charshaf
: a veil worn by Turkish women.
Irving
: the reader may wonder why H.H. is sorry for “
Flashman, Irving.
” “Poor Irving,” said Nabokov, “he is the only Jew among all those Gentiles. Humbert identifies with the persecuted.” See
spaniel … baptized
.
ullulations
: or
ululation
; a loud, mournful, rhythmical howl.
ribald sea monsters
: the intrusive
bearded bathers
. “Annabel” and H.H.’s seasickness refer to Poe’s poem. See
Lo-lee-ta
.
“
Mais allez-y, allez-y!
”
: French; “But go ahead, go!”
Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann
: mentioned by John Ray. See
Blanche Schwarzmann: schwarz
.
libidream
: H.H.’s portmanteau of “libido” and “dream.”
Dorsal view
: belonging to, or situated on or near the back of an animal. The phrase is not a sentence, and it is followed by several other fragments. Style is definitely at issue here, in a chapter that deliberately mocks a jejune or degenerating prose—the clichés of popular “feminine” fiction; the half-baked writing of the diarist; verbal laziness of
any
kind that figuratively places Shakespeare in parentheses.
manège
: French; tactics.
tennis ball … my … darling
: Nabokov pairs the Poe allusion with a tennis ball because it is in the tennis scene that H.H. best captures
her beauty
—Shakespeare out of parentheses, if you will and so to speak.
HAPTER
12
pederosis
: H.H.’s description of his condition. Although rare, the term exists; from the Greek
paid-
, meaning “child,” plus
erōs
, “sexual love” (akin to
erastbai
: “to love, desire ardently”), plus Latin suffix, from Greek,
-ōsis
, an “abnormal or diseased condition” (e.g.,
sclerosis
).
Pedophilia
is the more common word for H.H.’s malaise.
Aubrey McFate … devil of mine
: the devilish “force” responsible for H.H.’s misfortunes is invoked in locations [P
ART
O
NE
]
c11.1
,
c25.1
,
c27.1
, [P
ART
T
WO
]
c16.1
,
c16.2
,
c25.1
. When H.H. perceives Quilty—the worst aspect of his McFate—as a “red-beast” or “red fiend,” Nabokov is parodying that archetypal Double, the Devil. Red is Quilty’s color, just as rose is associated with Annabel (
Roches Roses
) and Lolita; her classmate’s name, “
Rose Carmine
”, defines the two
motifs nicely. Its significance, however, has nothing to do with “symbolism”; the red and rose stipplings are the work of the author, rather than McFate, and add some vivid touches of color to the anthemion (see
I have only words to play with
). Once pointed out, the color motif need not be identified further; but the reader is reminded again that Nabokov is no “symbolist.” After reading the first draft of these Notes, Nabokov thought that this point had not been made clear enough, and, moved too by the annotator’s loose play with some “red” images, wrote the following for my information, under the heading “A Note about Symbols and Colors
re
‘Annotated
Lolita.
’ ” It is included here because I think it is one of the most significant statements Nabokov made about his own art. He writes:
There exist novelists and poets, and ecclesiastic writers, who deliberately use color terms, or numbers, in a strictly symbolic sense. The type of writer I am, half-painter, half-naturalist, finds the use of symbols hateful because it substitutes a dead general idea for a live specific impression. I am therefore puzzled and distressed by the significance you lend to the general idea of “red” in my book. When the intellect limits itself to the general notion, or primitive notion, of a certain color it deprives the senses of its shades. In different languages different colors were used in a general sense before shades were distinguished. (In French, for example, the “redness” of hair is now expressed by “
roux
” meaning rufous, or russet, or fulvous with a reddish cast.) For me the shades, or rather colors, of, say, a fox, a ruby, a carrot, a pink rose, a dark cherry, a flushed cheek, are as different as blue is from green or the royal purple of blood (Fr. “
pourpre
”) from the English sense of violet blue. I think your students, your readers, should be taught to
see
things, to discriminate between visual shades as the author does, and not to lump them under such arbitrary labels as “red” (using it, moreover, as a sexual symbol, though actually the dominant shades in males are mauve—to bright blue, in certain monkeys).… Roses may be white, and even black-red. Only cartoonists, having three colors at their disposal, use red for hair, cheek and blood.
See
Orange … and Emerald
for further remarks on color.
Miss Phalen
: from the French
phalène
: moth. For the entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.
HAPTER
13
friable
: easily crumbled or pulverized.
parkled
: H.H.’s coinage.
safely solipsized
: see
solipsism
. An important phrase (see second half of
not human, but nymphic
). The verbal form of
solipsist
is of course H.H.’s coinage—a most significant portmanteau suggesting that Lolita has been reduced in more than size, as H.H. comes to realize. Although H.H.’s “moral apotheosis” is expressed at the end of
Lolita
, hints of it are fleetingly glimpsed early on, shortly, when H.H. addresses the nymphet’s solipsized condition: “
What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another, fanciful Lolita—perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness—indeed, no life of her own
.”
corpuscles of Krause
: after the German anatomist: minute sensory particles occurring in the mucous membranes of the genitalia. An author’s error has been corrected (
s
in Krause instead of
z
in the 1958 edition).
seraglio
: the portion of a Moslem house reserved for the wives and harem.
Drew his .32
: the revenge murder of Lolita which
doesn’t
take place; see
here
.
