The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated (75 page)

fundament jigging
: buttocks.

a crumpled envelope
: the letter was from Quilty.

chassé-croisé
: side stepping and re-side stepping each other.

“Je croyais … doux
”
: “I thought that it was a
bill
—not a love-note” (a pun on
bill
and
billet doux
).

Deseret News
: an actual newspaper in Utah.

sister Ann
: it will be clear in a moment that H.H. is alluding to Charles Perrault’s (1628–1703) fairy tale about Bluebeard, who murdered six wives. Hoping to be rescued by her two brothers, his seventh wife posts her sister Ann as sentinel; “Sister Ann, do you see anyone coming?” is her constant refrain. She finally does, and the “brutal brothers” slay Bluebeard. See also
Keys
, p. 48. When I was writing this note, I called to my wife in the adjacent room, asking her if she remembered
all the details in
Bluebeard.
“I know the story,” replied Karen, my seven-year-old daughter, running into the room (this was in 1967). I showed her the passage in
Lolita
, and, after helpfully identifying Sister Ann, she read H.H.’s dirge for Bluebeard. “Poor Bluebeard,” she quoted. “
Poor
Bluebeard? He was
awful!
What kind of book
is
this?” For allusions to
Bluebeard
in
Ada
, see pp. 164 and 180, and in
King, Queen, Knave
, pp. 263–264. See
Percy Elphinstone
.

Est-ce que … Carmen
: “Do you not love me any more, my Carmen?” José says this to Carmen in their penultimate confrontation (Chapter Three). José’s very next beseechment is also quoted by H.H. (
Changeons … séparés
). For Mérimée, see
Little Carmen
.

plotting in Basque
: Carmen and José plot in Basque in the presence of her rich, uncomprehending English lover, whom José kills.

Zemfirian
: “gypsy”; H.H.’s coinage, from the heroine of
The Gypsies
(1824, published 1827), the long poem by Russia’s greatest poet, Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837). Another “Carmen” story, its hero Aleko kills both the treacherous Zemfira and her lover (also see
Keys
, p. 49). The poem is also an affirmation of a gypsy’s freedom, which is another reason why H.H. says that the conspiratorial girls are speaking “Zemfirian,” as well as Basque. Carmen is a gypsy too, and in her last moments proclaims this freedom; Ada is cast as Dolores, the fatal gypsy dancing girl in the film
Don Juan’s Last Fling
(
Ada
, pp. 488–490).

double game
: a pun; Nabokov is also playing it by leading the reader on with a
Doppelgänger
situation that parodies itself. See
Introduction
.

father-substitute
: Quilty; a parody of the Freudian “transference” theory, whereby the daughter transfers her affections from her father to another, similar man, thus exorcising her Oedipal tension. Quilty is said to have indulged “snow”—argot for cocaine.

gitanilla
: a diminutive of
gitana
, Spanish for “Gypsy girl,” used often in Mérimée’s
Carmen.
In
Ada
, “Osberg” (Borges) is the author of
The Gitanilla
, a novel reminiscent of
Lolita
(see
Lolita, light of my life
), and several allusions to Osberg and his influence on Van Veen are jokes aimed at the critics who yoke Nabokov and Borges. A revolving paperback stand (p. 371) offers
The Gitanilla
along with several volumes no doubt as racy (
Our Laddies
and
Clichy Clichés
, joke titles aimed at the pornographic works produced by
Lolita
’s first publisher, the Olympia Press).

une belle … en bleu
: a beautiful lady all dressed in blue (a vision of the Virgin). “Visionary” nurse Mary is of Basque descent, and the Hautes-Pyrénées of her ancestors is in the same
département
(state) as Lourdes, where many little French girls have experienced visions of the blue-garbed Virgin, phenomena duly celebrated in the press and popular literature. Nabokov mocks a best-selling romance on the subject in
Bend Sinister
, Chapter Three: “… that remarkable cross between a certain kind of wafer and a lollipop, Louis Sontag’s
Annunciata
, which started so well in the Caves of St. Barthelemy and ended in the funnies” (the object of this parody is Franz Werfel’s
Song of Bernadette
).

a saint
: the lines which follow parody the first half of the fourth stanza of Robert Browning’s “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” (1842):

For a summary of “While brown” gamesmanship, see
Bill Brown … Dolores
. For Browning, see
frock-fold … Browning
and
Pim … Pippa
.

a great holiday
: Fourth of July, 1949. “Independence Day—for Lolita,” said Nabokov.

like some sly fairy
: Frank may also have dallied with
his
Mrs. “Haze” (Hays). His tattoo of an elfin nymphet evokes the novel-length fairy-tale motif. See
fructuate: rare
for a summary. Her nakedness and “flower–crowned head” are in turn evocative of Polynesia.

I would stay in bed all day
: like a king, especially if “
I felt … Polynesian
.” The latter is a reference to the traditional family and clan division of Polynesian society, and the wide–ranging and complicated networks of ties overseen by the head of the clan who on some of the isles is a king over several islands. A good clan chief would certainly look into the disappearance of a daughter. The humor of the reference is also predicated on the importance of their incest taboos, which H.H. would obviously bypass. H.H. has doubtless read Margaret Mead’s omnibus volume,
From the South Seas
(1939).

Mr. Gustave … spaniel pup
: Lolita has told Quilty that H.H. has mistaken him for his uncle (or cousin), Gustave Trapp; Quilty has
known this for some time (see
G. Trapp, Geneva, NY.
). Lolita liked the old lady’s cocker spaniel at The Enchanted Hunters (
here
; commented upon by H.H.,
spaniel … baptized
), which eavesdropper Quilty may have recalled and thus bought her this pup. But one of his three hobbies is “
pets
.” For references to him, see
Quilty, Clare
.

Caddy Lack
: an obvious pun, but young readers, especially in
A.D.
2000, may not know that in the 1947–1952 period the Cadillac was by far the most luxurious American car, and a “status symbol,” though H.H. uses its vulgar diminutive (“Caddy”) to suggest otherwise.

maquette
: a small, preliminary model of something planned, such as a stage set.

telestically
: with the projection of a purpose, with a definite end in view, inwardly expressed.

bemazed
:
archaic
; bewildered, stupefied.

my brother
: Quilty; see
your brother
and
Ted Hunter, Cane, NH.
.

fiend’s spoor
: Quilty’s trail; a “spoor” is the track of a wild animal. The evil selves in Poe and Stevenson Double tales are of course animallike. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1845) it
is
an animal.

comme il faut
: French; good manners, decorum.

Kawtagain
: “Caught again.” Needless to say, there is no such town.

342
: see
342
and
A key (342!)
for the patterned “coincidence.”

N. Petit … Ill.
: abbreviated title of the illustrated French dictionary,
Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré.
Lucette’s “Little Larousse” in
Ada
is a pun on the French
rousse
, “red hair” (p. 368).

a few paces from Lolita’s pillow
: see
someone … beyond our bathroom
.

Ponderosa Lodge
: the return address on the letter received
here
.

Dr. Gratiano … Mirandola, N.Y.
: in the
commedia dell’ arte
, Doctor Gratiano is a philosopher, astronomer, man of letters, cabalist, barrister, grammarian, diplomat, and physician. When the doctor speaks, one cannot tell whether it is Latin or Low Breton, and he frequently delivers
badly mangled quotations in Latin and Greek. His audiences usually must interrupt and thrash him in order to arrest the tide of “eloquence.” The nonexistent “town” Mirandola has nothing to do with Pico, the Italian humanist, Nabokov said; like Forbeson, he was a minor character in Italian comedy. Nor, said Nabokov, did he intend any allusion to Mirandolina, the heroine of
Mine Hostess
, by Carlo Goldoni, Italian playwright. See
Clowns and Columbines … Tennis
.

your brother
: H.H. has already said this of Quilty.

an impossible balance
: a very important passage. The verbal figurations throughout
Lolita
demonstrate how Nabokov appears everywhere in the texture but never in the text, though the impersonator “come[s] damn close to it” (see
a seventh Hunter
), especially in the “cryptogrammic paper chase” on the next two pages. “Trapp” ’s balancing act lucidly describes the performance of both the narrator and his creator, while the “thrashing anguish” also belongs to John Ray’s “old-fashioned readers.”

logodaedaly and logomancy
: to prove that he is versed in
logodaedaly
(the arbitrary or capricious coining of words), H.H. the logomachist creates his own word from
logo
(word) plus the suffix -
mancy
(“divination in a [specified] manner”).

Quelquepart
: French; somewhere. Quilty must be there. See
Aubrey Beardsley, Quelquepart Island
.

fountain pen … repressed undinist … water nymphs in the Styx
: a most liquid passage. An
undine
is a female water spirit who could acquire a soul by marrying a mortal. “But,” added Nabokov, “the main point here is that ‘undinist’ is a person (generally male) who is erotically excited by another person’s (generally female) making water (Havelock Ellis was an ‘undinist,’ or ‘fountainist,’ and so was Leopold Bloom).” Ellis was the first to use the word this way, and H.H.—like Quilty, “an amateur of sex lore”—no doubt has read the section on “Undinism” in
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
, Vol. VII. In Greek mythology, the Styx is the main river of the lower world.

passion … cryptogrammic paper chase
: Quilty is indeed a tease, but so is H.H., who punningly alludes to the “
melancholy truth
” about Quilty’s virtual impotence. Thus H.H. refers to Cue’s “teasing,” his “passion for tantalization” (that is, his main passion), and the “ejaculat[ion]” of “his fiendish conundrum.” The summary word “cryptogrammic” includes “cryptogamic” (“belonging or relating to the
non-flowering plants”), which alludes to his sexuality, as well as his cryptogames. These games may be more gratifying than some, since Quilty’s literary sources are so broadly hinted at in the text.

Arsène Lupin
: the creation of Maurice Leblanc (see
detective tale
). See also
Keys
, p. 12. Most of the allusions in the two-page “paper chase” are also identified in
Keys
, pp. 12–19.
Arsène Lupin contre Sherlock Holmes
(1908) and
Les Confidences d’Arsène Lupin
(1914) are typical of the many Lupin volumes. For Conan Doyle, see
Shirley Holmes
. Hermann, the narrator of
Despair
, wonders, “But what are they—Doyle, Dostoevsky, Leblanc, Wallace—what are all the great novelists who wrote of nimble criminals … in comparison with me? Blundering fools!” (p. 122).

A. Person, Porlock
: in the note which he affixed to “Kubla Khan” (1816), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), the English poet, explains how his dream was interrupted: “At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock.…” H.H.’s “dream” has been interrupted with equal finality by Quilty. In “The Vane Sisters” (1959; in
Nabokov’s Quartet
and
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
), a story about psychic phenomena, there is an eccentric librarian named Porlock, “who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of ‘I’ for the second ‘h’ in the word ‘hither.’ ”

touché, reader!
: H.H. grants that the reader “got” these “easy” pokes; Rimbaud’s poem
Le Bâteau ivre
(see
ramparts of ancient Europe
and
parapets of Europe
) and Maurice Maeterlinck’s play
L’Oiseau bleu
have been transposed (see
Maeterlinck
). H.H. has written a book on “Rainbow” (see
Peacock, Rainbow
for the garbled newspaper report, which Quilty has evidently read).
Schmetterling
is German for butterfly (see
here
), and Maeterlinck was in fact an amateur entomologist.

D. Orgon, Elmira, NY
: Orgon is the husband of Elmire in
Tartuffe
(1664), by Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin [1622–1673]), French playwright and actor. The title character tries to seduce her. “Elmira” is of course an actual town, and the location of a college for women. Quilty was born in New Jersey and educated in New York (
here
), and “D. Orgon” is an accurately transcribed phonetic rendering of the regional accent.