The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated (71 page)

Oui, ils sont gentils
: French; Yes, they are nice.

toiles
: French; canvasses (paintings).

“Prenez … savourer
”
: “Please take one of these pears. The good lady who lives across the street gives me more than I can relish.” (Gaston’s French is pedantic and his prose properly decadent, especially in the following.)

“Mississe Taille Lore … j’exécre
”
: “Mrs. Taylor [phonetically rendered to indicate Gaston’s foreign accent] has just given me these beautiful flowers which I abhor.”

au roi!
: check!

“Et toutes … bien?
”
: “How about all your little girls? Are they all right?”

sale histoire … Naples, of all places
: the first phrase is French; compromising episode (sexual in nature), and it
should
have happened in Naples, once notorious for its willing young waterfront males, some of
them prostitutes. The association of G.G. and H.H. is another “false scent” in the game, a trap for the reader who believes the psychiatric diagnosis of H.H.
here
(“ ‘potentially homosexual’ ”). Several Freudians of my acquaintance
do
interpret nymphets as substitute boys.

my schoolgirl nymphet had me in thrall
: H.H. is echoing Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1820), from the stanza that describes the dream the narrator has after the Belle Dame has lulled him to sleep in her “elfin grot”:

H.H. the self-pitying dissembler here notes how his enchantress—technically, a witch—is draining him of his humanity as well as money: “
With the human element dwindling
. …” La Slavska, the stage and cinema songstress of “The Assistant Producer” (1943), “was a Belle Dame with a good deal of Merci” (
Nabokov’s Dozen
, p. 77).

painted roses
: the smallest details cohere; see
bodyguard of roses
.

Treasure Island
: the children’s classic (published 1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson. See
R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano
.

Whistler
: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Anglo-American painter and etcher. The famous painting of his mother is actually titled “Arrangement in Grey and Black.”

cars … bars … barmen
: the fripperous internal rhymes burlesque Belloc’s “Tarantella” (
do you remember, Miranda
): “And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers …” H.H. is paraphrasing his own verse; a complete version appears, in all its majesty,
here
.

Star
: the newspaper’s name was not italicized in the 1958 edition; the error has been corrected.

time leaks
: spent with Quilty. For an index to his appearances, see
Quilty, Clare
.

sly quip … Rigger
: The Right Reverend Rigger (in some versions “Reverend MacTrigger”) figures in an old limerick that begins, “There was a right royal old nigger.” “His five hundred wives / Had the time of their lives,” and the rest is too obscene to appear here. But see Joyce’s
Ulysses
, where Bloom quotes it (1961 Random House ed., pp. 171–172). For a summary of Joyce allusions, see
outspoken book: Ulysses
.

Arguseyed
: “observant”; from the hundred-eyed monster of Greek mythology, who was set to watch Io, a maiden loved by Zeus. In
Laughter in the Dark
, Albinus meets his fatal love in the Argus cinema, where she is an usher (p. 22). “My back is Argus-eyed,” says the speaker in “An Evening of Russian Poetry” (see
“Humbert Humbert”
). In
Pale Fire
, one of the aliases of the assassin Gradus is “d’Argus”; Hermann in
Despair
envisions “argus-eyed angels” (p. 101); the title character in
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
“seems argus-eyed” (p. 95); Ada and Van dread “traveling together to Argus-eyed destinations” (
Ada
, p. 425), and Van, in search of the nature and meaning of Time, drives an “Argus” car (p. 551).

celebrated actress
: an allusion to her resemblance to Marlene Dietrich;
here
.

ne montrez pas vos zhambes
: French; do not show your legs (
jambes
phonetically spelled to indicate an American accent—a recollection of Charlotte; see
ne montrez pas vos zhambes
).

Edgar
: in honor of Poe; see
“Edgar”… “writer and explorer”
and
Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter
. For a summary of Poe allusions, see
Lo-lee-ta
.

hygienic evening in Providence
: at that time Providence, R.I., possessed a large redlight district.

Avis Chapman
: “When naming incidental characters,” said Nabokov, “I like to give them some mnemonic handle, a private tag: thus ‘Avis Chapman’ which I mentally attached to the South-European butterfly
Callophrys avis
Chapman (where Chapman, of course, is the name of that butterfly’s original describer).” For entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.

save one … names are approximations
: Mona Dahl. Because she was Lolita’s accomplice in deceit, a cover (or quilt!) for Quilty, H.H. takes his vengeance by revealing Mona’s name to the world.

Ball Zack
: Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), French novelist.

my Lolita
: this brief chapter sounds an urgent chord in what might be called the “true love” theme. The succinct “Latin” locution (see
the writer’s ancient lust
) is sounded in location [P
ART
O
NE
]
c09.1
,
c11.1
,
c11.2
,
c15.1
,
c19.1
,
c19.2
,
c21.1
,
c27.1
,
c27.2
,
c29.1
,
c30.1
, [P
ART
T
WO
]
c02.1
,
c03.1
,
c03.2
,
c04.1
,
c09.1
,
c12.1
,
c12.2
,
c14.1
,
c20.1
,
c22.1
,
c23.1
,
c28.1
,
c28.2
,
c28.3
,
c32.1
,
c34.1
,
c36.1
,
bm1.1
. “
My unique Lolita
,” “
my lone light Lolita
,” and “
my conventional Lolita
” vary the pattern.

“Why, no,” I said
: the comma after
no
was omitted in the 1958 edition; the error has been corrected.

teachers’
: the apostrophe was omitted in the 1958 edition.

Miss Horn … Miss Cole
: the first letters of the teachers’ names have been transposed. “Corrected,” the names combine to form an obscene verb. For their anagrammatic colleagues, see
Lester … Fabian
.

The Hunted Enchanters
: “the author” is Quilty (see
here
), though Pratt has the title wrong (
The Enchanted Hunters
, after the hotel and the nympholepts, common and uncommon varieties [see
The Enchanted Hunters
]). She is figuratively correct, however, since Quilty
is
hunting the enchanter (Lolita), and it is apt that Pratt, her keeper, should make this accurate “error.” For a summary of Quilty allusions, see
Quilty, Clare
.

She is in Mushroom
: the very astute reader of
Who’s Who in the Limelight
knows this already; see
The Strange Mushroom
, where the plant is identified as a phallic symbol.

girls’
: the apostrophe was omitted in the 1958 edition.

Reynolds
: Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), English painter. “The Age of Innocence” portrays a very young girl alone under a tree, in the wrong room here (“smelly” Mushroom).

Baker
: George Pierce Baker (1866–1935) gave a famous course in playwriting at Harvard, and his
Dramatic Technique
(1919) was a popular text.

Dr. Ilse Tristramson
: Tristram[n] was the famous hero of Celtic legend, and the love of Tristram and Iseult has often been celebrated. The story of Tristram is in Sir Thomas Malory’s
Morte D’arthur
(1485), Books Ten through Twelve. Matthew Arnold treated the theme in “Tristram and Iseult” (1852), Swinburne in “Tristram of Lyonesse” (1871), and Tennyson in “The Last Tournament” (1871). “
Tristram in Movielove
,” notes H.H. Tristram’s sons are the poets of love. The punning name of the physician who examines Lolita is in the spirit of a novel that is both a love story and a parody of love stories; but, more than that, it acknowledges Laurence Sterne, whose involuted and a-realistic
Tristram Shandy
(1767) might be called the first modern novel (for the
Shandy
reference, see also
Keys
, p. 96). The aesthetic kinship of Sterne and Joyce and Nabokov, which has nothing to do with “literary influence,” is strong enough to call both
Ulysses
and
Lolita
“Tristram’s sons.” “I love Sterne but had not read him in my Russian period,” said Nabokov (
Wisconsin Studies
interview). See
I cannot … starling
for another Sterne allusion and
Heart, head—everything
, where H.H.’s verbal play evokes Sterne.

caloricity
: “the physiological ability to develop and maintain bodily heat.”

Venus febriculosa
: Latin; “slightly feverish Venus.” Lolita’s malady in mock-medicalese. See
boat to Onyx or Eryx
for other references to the Roman goddess of love and beauty. See
here
and
here
for allusions to Botticelli’s famous painting of her.

Doris Lee … Frederick Waugh
: The Doris Lee (1905–1983) painting under discussion is called “Noon.” It shows a man with his hat over his face, asleep on a haystack, while in the foreground a girl and another man are making love beside a haystack (reproduced in
Life
, III, September 20, 1937). All of these artists are realistic painters, quite out of fashion in the nineteen-fifties. Grant Wood (1892–1942) is well-known for his meticulous renderings of eminently American subjects, especially for “American Gothic” (1930)—“good title for book”—the coolly sardonic portrait of a Midwestern farm couple. The subject matter of Peter Hurd
(1904–1984) is primarily Southwestern, including his portrait painting (his name became legend in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson refused a Hurd portrait of him, calling it the “ugliest thing I ever saw”). Reginald Marsh (1898–1954) indefatigably chronicled the common (if not low) life of New York City, in a style more graphic than painterly (a misprint in his name has been corrected [
s
instead of
c
in the 1958 edition]). Frederick Waugh (1861–1940) concentrated on marine subjects. Like their maker (see
Why blue
), Nabokov’s characters usually know a good deal about art and express their opinions freely. As an entomologist, Nabokov valued exactitude, but as a novelist and critic he scorned brilliant technique put to banal use. In
Pnin
, Mr. Lake thus teaches “That Dali is really Norman Rockwell’s twin brother kidnaped by gypsies in babyhood” (p. 96).

Elizabethan
: that epoch’s play-within-the-play is relevant here, for
The Enchanted Hunters
functions in the same manner (as do other “playlets” mentioned
here
, though the latter are of less significance). See
her class at … school
and the Introduction,
here
.

Diana
: Roman moon goddess, patroness of hunting and virginity; identified with the Greek Artemis.

suggested the play’s title
: the title was of course suggested by Lolita’s enchantment of H.H. and Quilty; their conversation at the hotel is
here
. As happens so often in the universe of Nabokov’s fiction, the title reflects or refracts a motif distant in time but not in space, insofar as “the poet … is the nucleus” of everything (
Speak, Memory
, p. 218). The year of his death, Sebastian Knight “is said to have been three times to see the same film—a perfectly insipid one called
The Enchanted Garden
” (
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
[1941], p. 182). See Introduction,
here
,
here
, and, for typical examples,
“Humbert Humbert”
,
powdered Mrs. Leigh … Vanessa van Ness
,
Argus-eyed
, and
Blue
.

Hansel and Gretel
: the three “playlets” are adaptations of fairy tales that have to do with deception or enchantment.