The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated (69 page)

rapist … therapist
: a slight variation of earlier wordplay; see
psychotherapist … rapist
. In
Ada
, thinkers who speculate on the existence of Terra are called “terrapists” (p. 341).

by Polonius
: the talkative and complacent old man of
Hamlet.
The reference is probably to the warnings he gives his daughter, Ophelia, about the slippery ways of men. See
Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y.
.

Mann Act
: the obvious “dreadful pun” is Mann: man. “Act” was not capitalized in the 1958 edition; the error has been corrected here.

my Lolita … her Catullus
: the Latin love-poem motif; see
Catullus … forever
.

c’est tout
: French; that is all.

thirty-nine other dopes
: forty, including Lo; the same number as the
Ramsdale class
, and the
sleepless nights
—plotted “coincidences” all.

crazy quilt of forty-eight states
: it is appropriate that Part Two’s first allusion to Quilty should be this geographical metaphor, since H.H. and his nemesis pursue each other back and forth across “the crazy quilt.” When all the journeys are ended, he is “
quilted Quilty
” and, once more, “
the crazy quilt
.”

inutile
: French; useless, unprofitable.

Lorrain clouds
: Claude Gelée, known as Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), French painter who settled in Rome and established landscape painting as a respectable form. His open vistas and lyrical evocations of light and atmosphere influenced Poussin, among others. A character in
King, Queen, Knave
(1928) points at something “with the air of Rembrandt indicating a Claude Lorraine” (p. 91), a reminder of the consistency of Nabokov’s vision.

El Greco horizon … mummy-necked farmer
: the famous painter (1541?–1614?), born in Greece, schooled in Italy, resident of Spain. H.H. discovers in Kansas the turbulent Toledo landscapes of Greco and describes the farmer as though he were an “El Greco”—his elongated “mummy neck” is optically distorted in the manner of this artist. Since many early readers, especially the British and French, thought
Lolita
resolutely “anti-American,” Nabokov urged me to note the book’s tender landscape details, and the tribute paid to “
the lovely, trustful, enormous country
.” H.H.’s tributes are of central importance. The
“
moral apotheosis
” correctly sighted by John Ray is congruent with H.H.’s most rapturous
description of the countryside
, though the landscape described
here
remains “two-dimensional” (H.H.’s phrase) because it is essentially unpeopled (the farmer isn’t human)—a purely aesthetic spectacle as opposed to the three-dimensional landscape
here
. There, Nabokov completes the picture as a
novelist
rather than a dandy landscape artist or artificer.

samara
: a dry, winged fruit, usually one-seeded, as in the ash or elm.

ce qu’on appelle
: French; what one calls.

partie de plaisir
: French; outing, picnic.

raison d’ětre
: French; the reason for being, the justification.

John Galsworthy
: English novelist (1867–1933), author of
The Forsyte Saga
(1922).

canthus
: the inner corner of the eye where the upper and lower eyelids meet.

“Kurort” type
: German; health resort, watering place.

roan back … an orchestra of zoot-suiters with trumpets
:
Roan
is a color: chestnut interspersed with gray or white—said of a horse; also a low-grade sheepskin tanned and colored to imitate ungrained Morocco. Zoot suits were a “hep” male fashion of the forties that originated with the Hispanic “pachuco” gangs of Los Angeles in 1942. A zoot suit consisted of a porkpie hat, a wide-shouldered, thigh-length jacket, and billowy trousers that were tapered and “pegged” (bloused) at the bottom. A long watch-chain was optional. The humor of H.H.’s verbal cartoon turns on one’s knowing that a sixteen-piece jazz band contained four or five trumpeters at most. Zoot, the saxophone-playing puppet on
The Muppets
, is not a tribute to fashion but to John Haley (Zoot) Sims (1925–1985), the great tenor saxophonist.

author of “Trees”
: Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918), American poet, best known for the sentimental poem which H.H. refers to here.

bronzed owner of an expensive car
: although Quilty-hunters may find this man suspect, Nabokov said it is definitely not Quilty.

lousy with … flies
: noted Nabokov: “The insects that poor Humbert mistakes for ‘creeping white flies’ are the biologically fascinating little moths of the genus
Pronuba
whose amiable and indispensable females transport the pollen that fertilizes the yucca flowers (see, what Humbert failed to do, ‘Yucca Moth’ in any good encyclopedia).” For entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.

Independence … Abilene
: also a juxtaposition of the “starting points” of successive American presidents: Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969).

lilac … phallic
: H.H. continually reminds us that he has “
only words to play with
.” His
phallic
is built on the semantic constituents of
lilac
and
Pharaonic
(of or pertaining to Pharaoh, the title of the sovereigns of ancient Egypt).

lanugo
: anatomical word; in a restricted sense, the downy growth which covers the young of Otherwise non-hairy animals.

rufous
: a bright russet or brownish-orange hue.

lucerne
: a deep-rooted European herb with bluish-purple flowers; in the United States usually called
alfalfa.

comme on dit
: French; as they say.

hundreds of … hummingbirds
: these are not birds, noted Nabokov, “but hawkmoths which do move exactly like hummingbirds (which are neither gray nor nocturnal).” For entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.

Shakespeare … New Mexico
: not invented; a mining town founded c. 1870 on property that had previously been involved in one of the largest unsuccessful mining speculations of the period in the Southwest. Now a “ghost town,” it is no longer listed in any atlas.

Florentine Bea’s … contemporary
: Dante’s Beatrice (see
Dante … month of May
). A thirteenth-century mummy.

Our twentieth Hell’s Canyon
: see
those calls
.

winery in California … wine barrel
: it exists. Crossing over into Death Valley from Nevada, H.H. and Lolita travel down to Los Angeles and then wend their way northward up the California coast to Oregon (
Crater Lake
). Most of H.H.’s observation’s of “local color”
(Nabokov’s phrase) will not be glossed unless they’re particularly colorful or obscure.

Scotty’s Castle
: an enormous and grotesque structure built in the twenties by Walter (“Death Valley”) Scott, formerly with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. It is only half-completed because he ran out of funds when a mysterious “gold mine” was exhausted.

R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano
: the Scottish writer (1850–1895) followed the woman he loved to California, where he lived for a year (1870–1880). In
From Scotland to Silverado
, James D. Hart, ed. (1966), collects his writing about the state. Stevenson is buried on the volcanic Mount Vaea in Samoa; but H.H., who may or may not know that, is here referring to his honeymoon stay on Mount St. Helena, California, generally thought to be an extinct volcano (it is in fact not one). There is a Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial there, but he left no actual footprint. H.H., having just noted “The ugly villas of handsome actresses,” was no doubt more impressed by the footprints and handprints of movie stars immortalized in the cement pavements outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. For further Stevenson allusions, see
Treasure Island
and
Mr. Hyde
.

Mission Dolores: good title for book
: this book, of course. The mission observed by H.H. exists, in San Francisco.

festoons
: in architecture, a molded or carved ornament representing a festoon (a garland or wreath hanging in a curve). H.H. is observing the coastline of Monterey.

Russian Gulch State Park
: in Sonoma, California; named by Russian colonists.

The Bearded Woman read our jingle and now she is no longer single
: H.H. conflates a series of roadside advertising signs erected by the Burma Shave Company, or invents his own version. “The first form of sequential advertising,” report Sally Henderson and Robert Landau in
Billboard Art
(1981), “the Burma Shave signs spoke to the public in a new way with both humor and wit. The small signs, installed at the roadside in sets of six, took approximately eighteen seconds to read when the car was traveling at a speed of thirty-five miles per hour.” Burma Shave signs dotted the countryside from 1925 to 1963. Lolita would have been more interested in this cognate series: “The Bearded Lady / Tried A
Jar / She’s Now a Famous / Movie Star / Burma Shave.” Weathered old Burma Shave signs turn up today in “antique” stores, bathed in a very warm light indeed. Now that the old roads and their kitsch and clutter have given way to sleek super-highways and standardized conveniences, the once despised diners, gas stations, and one-of-a kind motels of the past have been deemed vernacular art and archeology by grieving nostalgists and students of a democratic culture. Picture-books such as John. Margolies’s
The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America
(1981) and Michael Wallis’s
Route 66: The Mother Road
(1990), may also serve to document the vanishing cross-country quotidian world of
Lolita
and Jack Kerouac’s more romanticized
On the Road
(1957). The photographs in Robert Frank’s
The Americans
(1959) complement H.H.’s most melancholy rooms and ruminations, as he would put it.

Christopher Columbus’ flagship
: the zoo exists, in Evansville, Indiana. Its monkeys—kept out-of-doors on the ship from April to November—continue to be the zoo’s most popular attraction.

Little Rock, near a school
: rereading this passage in 1968, Nabokov called it “nicely prophetic” (the larger “row” over school desegregation, September 1957). For further “prophecy,” see
bearded scholar
.

à propos de rien
: French; not in relation to anything else; casually.

town … first name
: “his” refers to Quilty. Clare, Michigan; an actual town.

species … Homo pollex
: H.H. combines the familiar Latin
homo
, “the genus of mammals consisting of mankind,” with
pollex
, or “thumb.”

viatic
: H.H. sustains his “scientific” vocabulary; a coinage from the Latin root
via. Viaticum
is English—an allowance for traveling expenses—but H.H. has gone back to the Latin word
viaticus
, which specifically refers to the road.

priapically
: from Priapus, the god of procreation; see
Priap
.

man of my age … face à claques
: Quilty, with a “face that deserves to be slapped; an ugly, mischievous face.” For an index to his appearances, see
Quilty, Clare
.

concupiscence
: lustfulness.

coulant un regard
: French; casting a sly glance.

slow truck … road
: see
gigantic truck … impossible to pass
; after an encounter with “Trapp” (Quilty), H.H. finds himself behind such a truck.

natatoriums
: swimming pools.

matitudinal
: H.H.’s coinage, from matin, an ecclesiastical duty performed early in the morning; or, though its usage is rare, a morning call or song (of birds).

mais je divague
: French; but I am wandering away from the point; rambling.

les yeux perdus
: French; a lost look in the eyes.

oh Baudelaire!
: Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), French poet. The image of the dream and the French phrases, “
brun adolescent
” (“dark [brown-haired] adolescent”) and “
se tordre
” (“to undergo contortions” [erotic]), are drawn from Baudelaire’s
Le Crépuscule du matin
, or “MorningTwilight” (1852): “
C’était l’heure où l’essaim des rěves malfaisants / Tord sur leurs oreillers les bruns adolescents
” (“It was the hour when a swarm of evil dreams contorts [or twists] dark [or swarthy] adolescents on their pillows”). For other Baudelaire allusions, see
Reader! Bruder!
and
shorn Baudelaire
. “Poor Baudelaire” is evoked in a variant from Shade’s poem in
Pale Fire
(p. 167); and Kinbote’s gardener aspires “to read in the original Baudelaire and Dumas” (p. 291). The title of
Invitation to a Beheading
is drawn from Baudelaire’s
L’Invitation au voyage
, which is variously evoked throughout the novel. The poem’s opening lines are quoted and toyed with in
Ada
(p. 106).

a famous coach … with a harem of ball boys
: a tennis star of the twenties (1893–1953), as famous in his sport as Red Grange and Babe Ruth were in theirs; winner of the American championship seven times, the Wimbledon title three times, and the U.S. doubles championship five times. In 1946 he was jailed on a morals charge, and H.H. and Lolita meet him after his tragic double life has become public knowledge, and only a few years before his death. Given the context, the prosaic phrase and vocation of “ball boy” becomes a pun. When asked if the deceased player should be identified by name, Nabokov imagined him now “consorting with ball boys … on Elysian turf. Shall we spare his shade?”