The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  mauvemail: H.H.’s coinage; mauve is pale pinkish purple.

  “The orange … grave”: a parody of a “poetic” quotation.

  raree-show: a show carried about in a box; a peep show.

  Une petite attention: a nice thought (a favor).

  Incarnadine: flesh-colored or bright pink. This word appears in a stanza from The Rubáiyát; see Wine, wine … for roses.

  eructations: violent belches.

  by Pan!: H.H.’s “by God!” In Greek mythology, a god of forests, flocks, and shepherds, having the horns and hoofs of a goat.

  CHAPTER 18

  soi-disant: French; so-called (also used here).

  a Turk: Charlotte is not quite sure of H.H.’s “racial purity.” Neither is Jean Farlow, who intercepts an anti-Semitic remark (here), nor The Enchanted Hunters’ management (here). See Babylonian blood and spaniel … baptized.

  contretemps: French; an embarrassing or awkward occurrence.

  rattles: the sound-producing organs on a rattlesnake’s tail.

  rubrique: a newspaper section.

  “Edgar”… “writer and explorer”: Edgar A. Poe, whose Narrative of A. Gordon Pym was the product of an alleged polar expedition (see Pym, Roland). For the Poe allusions, see Lo-lee-ta.

  Peacock, Rainbow: Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), English poet and novelist, whose name recalls the “Rainbow,” or Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), French poet. After abandoning literature at the age of eighteen, Rimbaud traveled widely. In 1888 in Abyssinia, where he sold guns, the English called the ex-poet “trader Rainbow,” as Nabokov notes in his Eugene Onegin Commentary (Vol. III, p. 412). For further allusions, see ramparts of ancient Europe, parapets of Europe, touché, reader!, and mon … radieux.

  Lottelita, Lolitchen: H.H. toys with “Lotte,” a diminutive of “Charlotte,” and discerns Lolita in Lotte (“Lottelita”), which is also a phonetic transcription of American idiom and diction (Lot of [Lo]lita). Lolitchen is formed with the German diminutive ending -chen. H.H. no doubt recalls that Goethe’s Werther calls his Charlotte “Lotte” and “Lottchen.” See Charlotte.

  ecru and ocher: ecru is a grayish yellow that is greener and paler than chamois or old ivory. Ocher is a dark yellow color derived from or resembling ocher, a hydrated iron oxide.

  4640 Roosevelt Blvd.… mattress: the firm is Sears Roebuck Co., and the mattress in question will arrive at a grotesquely inappropriate moment at the end of Chapter 24.

  the jovial dentist: Clare Quilty’s Uncle Ivor. Much later H.H. will learn from Lolita herself that Quilty met her through this association. H.H. recapitulates their confrontation: “Well, did I know that he was practically an old friend? That he had visited with his uncle in Ramsdale?—oh, years ago—and spoken at Mother’s club, and had tugged and pulled her, Dolly … onto his lap …” An earlier draft of the novel contained Quilty’s appearance before the ladies. See Quilty, Clare for a summary of his appearances.

  such dainty ladies as Mrs. Glave: from the unusual verb, “glaver;” “to palaver;” “to flatter; wheedle.”

  arrière-pensée: French; hidden thoughts, ulterior motives.

  interrupted Jean: John is about to say “Jews,” and Jean, suspecting that H.H. may be Jewish, tactfully interrupts. See spaniel … baptized.

  CHAPTER 19

  A Guide to … Development: the titles H.H. mentions are by turns invented (Who’s Who in the Limelight; Clowns and Columbines), actual (the other titles here; Brute Force), or close approximations of existing works, as in this instance. A plethora of actual titles circle about this “fool’s book” (e.g., Guide to Child Development through the Beginning School Years [1946]), and Nabokov seems to have created a central, summary title (though the exact title may yet exist). See Know Your Own Daughter.

  CHAPTER 20

  Hourglass Lake … spelled: earlier it was “Our Glass Lake” (see Our Glass Lake and Our Glass Lake). H.H. doesn’t correct “errors” in his “unrevised” draft. Whether right or wrong, both the names are significant, underscoring H.H.’s solipsism (the circumscribing mirror of “our glass”) and obsession with time (“hourglass”).

  the gesture: it inspires the mock quotation, “look, Lord …” as if to demonstrate one’s chains.

  duenna of my darling: the echo of “Annabel Lee” is linked with duenna, “The chief lady in waiting on the queen of Spain” (Webster’s 2nd).

  c’est moi qui décide: French; it is I who decide.

  acrosonic: a noise reaching to or past the sonic barrier. It would seem to be H.H.’s own word.

  shooting her lover … making him say “akh!”: a preview of Quilty’s death. See I shot … said: Ah.’ and a feminine. He may indeed have been “her lover,” however fleetingly; “I knew your dear wife slightly,” Quilty later admits to H.H.

  at first wince: H.H.’s variant of “at first glance.”

  Krestovski: to give them one kind of scare or another; see burley … Krestovski.

  Cavall and Melampus: the Farlows’ dogs. “Cavall” comes from cavallo (a horse), and “Melampus” from the seer in Greek mythology who understood the tongue of dogs and introduced the worship of Dionysus. More specifically, noted Nabokov, the dogs are named after those of a famous person, though he was not certain who owned them. He thought it was Lord Byron, who had many bizarrely named dogs. In any event, these allusions are hardly within the cultural reach of the Farlows.

  Waterproof: the wristwatch. See Waterproof, where H.H. offers this interlude as a central clue to Quilty’s identity.

  old Ivor … his nephew: Clare Quilty. For a summary of allusions to Quilty, see Quilty, Clare.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Ce qui … comme ça”: French; “What drives me crazy is the fact that I do not know what you are thinking about when you are like this.”

  the ultimate sunburst: in Who’s Who in the Limelight, “Roland Pym” is said to have “Made debut in Sunburst” (see Made debut in Sunburst).

  Beaver Eaters: a portmanteau of “Beefeaters” (the yeomen of the British royal guard) and their beaver hats. Some have seen this as an obvious obscene joke, but Nabokov did not intend one. “Moronic and oxymoronic,” he said, remembering the guard’s old reputation for male prostitution (“beaver” is of the female gender, innocent reader).

  CHAPTER 22

  Euphemia: from the Greek euphēmos; auspicious, sounding good.

  olisbos: the leather phallos worn by participants in the Greek Dionysia.

  child of Dolly’s age: “Byron, Marguerite” (see here). For Dr. Byron’s namesake, see Well-read Humbert.

  my pin: a coinage; H.H.’s favorite drink, a mixture of pineapple juice and gin. He also refers to this “pin” here and here.

  CHAPTER 23

  savoir vivre: French; good manners, good breeding.

  alembic: anything used to distill or refine.

  Adieu, Marlene: Dietrich; see Lola.

  CHAPTER 24

  simian: monkey- or apelike. Nabokov is toying with the Doppelgänger convention of an evil self; H.H. should not be “simian” because Quilty is the bad one.

  CHAPTER 25

  Eh bien, pas du tout!: French; Well, not at all!

  Climax: however broad the joke may be, there happen to be seven towns in the United States by this name (as well as a Lolita, Texas). Demon Veen, the father of Ada’s hero, retreats to his “aunt’s ranch near Lolita, Texas” (p. 14), a town which doubtless boasts no bookstore or library.

  stylized blood: everything red is “stylized.”

  argent: archaic; silver, silvery, shining—as in French.

  Vee … and Bea: see Virginia … Edgar and Dante … month of May. For a summary of Poe allusions, see Lo-lee-ta.

  glans: anatomical word; the conical vascular body which forms the extremity of the penis.

  oolala black: pseudo-French epithet for “sexy” black frills.

  anthropometric entry: anthropometry is the science of measuring the human body and its parts.

  glaucous:
a pale yellowish-green hue.

  The Enchanted Hunters: note the plural (H.H., Quilty, and, in another sense, the author). For “enchantment,” see Little Carmen. Quilty names his play after the hotel (here) and adapts an anagram of it for one of his many pseudonyms (Ted Hunter, Cane, NH.); the married Lolita ends up living on “Hunter Road.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Heart, head—everything: “Is ‘mask’ the keyword?” H.H. asked (see “real people”). As his narrative approaches the first conjugal night with Lolita, H.H. is overcome by anguish, and in the bare six lines of Chapter Twenty-six—the shortest “chapter” in the book—he loses control, and for a moment the mask drops. Not until the very end of the passage does the voice again sound like our Hum the Hummer, when the desperation of “Heart, head—everything” suddenly gives way to the resiliently comic command to the printer. In that one instant H.H.’s masking takes place before the reader, who gets a fleeting look into those “two hypnotic eyes” (to quote John Ray) and sees the pain in them. Lolita is so deeply moving a novel because of our sharp awareness of the great tension sustained between H.H.’s mute despair and his compensatory jollity. “Crime and Pun” is one of the titles the murderous narrator of Despair considers for his manuscript, and it would serve H.H. just as well, for language is as much a defense to him as chess is to Grandmaster Luzhin. But even when H.H. lets the mask slip, one glimpses only his desperation, not the “real” H.H. or the manipulative author. As Nabokov says in Chapter Five of Gogol, analogously discussing Akaky Akakyevich and the “holes” and “gaps” in the narrative texture of The Overcoat: “We did not expect that, amid the whirling masks, one mask would turn out to be a real face, or at least the place where that face ought to be” [italics mine—A.A.]. If the printer had obeyed H.H.’s request to fill the page with Lo’s name, we’d have a twentieth-century equivalent of a totally self-reflexive blank or patterned page in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767).

  CHAPTER 27

  redheaded … lad: Charlie Holmes turns out to be Lolita’s first lover.

  moth or butterfly: a reminder that H.H. is no entomologist. See John Ray, Jr.. Nabokov stressed “Humbert’s complete incapacity to differentiate between Rhopalocera and Heterocera.”

  lentigo: a freckly skin pigmentation.

  aux yeux battus: French; with circles round one’s eyes.

  plumbaceous umbrae: Latin; leaden shadows.

  mägdlein: German; little girl.

  Lepingville … nineteenth century: as to the “identity” of this poet, Nabokov responded, “That poet was evidently Leping who used to go lepping (i.e., lepidoptera hunting) but that’s about all anybody knows about him.” See gay … Lepingville.

  backfisch: German; an immature, adolescent girl; a teenager.

  simulacrum: a sham; an unreal semblance.

  psychotherapist … rapist: H.H. calls our attention to the rapist in the therapist. Nabokov similarly employs semantic constituents in Despair, when he poses a sensible question: “What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion?” (p. 46).

  what shadow … after?: in traditional Doppelgänger fiction the reprehensible self is often imagined as a shadow, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Shadow.” H.H. constantly toys with the convention.

  Ensuite?: French; then?

  shadowgraphs: amateur X-ray pictures. The girls made pictures of each other’s bones; not invented, but actual “educational” recreation at “progressive” camps c. 1950.

  “C’est bien tout?”: “Is that all?” The answer “C’est” (“It is”) is incorrect French, a direct translation from English syntax.

  carbuncles: medical; “a painful local inflammation of the subcutaneous tissue, larger and more serious than a boil; a pimple or red spot, due to intemperance.” Originally, a jewel such as a ruby. H.H. is of course referring to the truck’s parking lights.

  magic … rubious: a corrected misprint (“rubous” in the 1958 edition). The rubylike convertible is Quilty’s, a dark red shining in the rain and the night. His appearances are summarized in Quilty, Clare.

  frock-fold … Browning: not a quotation, but an allusion to Pippa Passes (1841), a verse drama by Robert Browning, the English poet (1812–1889):

  On every side occurred suggestive germs

  Of that—the tree, the flower—or take the fruit—

  Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,

  Curved beewise o’er its bough; as rosy limbs,

  Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just

  From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang. [lines 87–92]

  A Dryad is a wood nymph (see dryads and trees). For nymph, see not human, but nymphic. For Browning, see Pim … Pippa, Clowns and Columbines … Tennis, and a saint.

  cocker spaniel: the old lady’s dog. See Mr. Gustave … spaniel pup and spaniel … baptized.

  porcine: swinelike; the pig image is introduced in the first sentence of the previous paragraph.

  not Humberg: H.H. corrects the desk clerk, who has coldly bestowed on him a Jewish-sounding name. The hotel is euphemistically restrictive (see spaniel … baptized). “Professor Hamburg” finds them “full up.”

  Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter: H.H.’s nom de registration is in deference to Edgar A. Poe and his child bride (see Virginia … Edgar). H.H. also uses the “Edgar” elsewhere (see “Edgar”… “writer and explorer” and Edgar). For the Poe allusions, see Lo-lee-ta.

  A key (342!): although H.H. is trying not to lose control of the language, as he did here, he (or someone else) is here managing to tell how H.H. was served by Mr. Swine, who is assisted by Mr. Potts, who can’t find any cots, because Swine has dispatched them to the Swoons (see Chestnut Court). A “key” to the meaning of this extraordinary verbal control is immediately provided by another “coincidence”: the room number is the same as the Haze house number. H.H. will shortly offer a figurative key by placing the number within quotation marks, which is of course the only proper way to treat a fiction (here). “McFate” produces “342” once more; see 342. Such coincidences serve a two-fold purpose: they at once point to the authorial consciousness that has plotted them, and can also be imagined as coordinates situated in time and space, marking the labyrinth from which a character cannot escape.

  Parody of a hotel corridor … and death: parody to H.H. because nothing seems “real” to him on this most crucial of nights; parody to Nabokov because the world within a work of art is “unreal” (see Introduction). But to repeat Marianne Moore’s well-known line, poetry is “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” and Nabokov’s novel is a parody of death with real suffering in it—H.H.’s and Lolita’s.

  a mirror: the room is a little prison of mirrors, a metaphor for his solipsism and circumscribing obsession. “ ‘So that’s the dead end’ (the mirror you break your nose against),” an overwrought H.H. tells Lolita after catching her in a lie (here). See Beale and deep mirrors. “In our earthly house, windows are replaced by mirrors,” writes Nabokov in The Gift (p. 322). His characters continually confront mirrors where they had hoped to find windows, and the attempt to transcend solipsism is one of Nabokov’s major themes. As a literal image and overriding metaphor, the mirror is central to the form and content of Nabokov’s novels; in Ada, it describes the universe, for Antiterra’s sibling planet Terra is imagined as a “distortive glass of our distorted glebe” (p. 18). If one perceives Pale Fire spatially, with John Shade’s poem on the “left” and Charles Kinbote’s Commentary on the “right,” the poem is seen as an object to be perceived, and the Commentary becomes the world seen through the distorting prism of a mind—a monstrous concave mirror held up to an objective “reality.” The narrator of Despair loathes mirrors, avoids them, and comments on those “monsters of mirrors,” the “crooked ones,” in which a man is stripped, squashed, or “pulled out like dough and then torn in two” (p. 21). Nabokov has placed these crooked reflectors everywhere in his fiction: Doubles and mock-Doubles, parodies and self-parodies (literature trapped
in a prison of amusement-park mirrors), works within works, worlds refracting worlds, and words distorting words—that is, translations (art’s “crazy-mirror,” said Nabokov) and language games (see kremlin). Pale Fire’s invented language is “the tongue of the mirror,” and the portmantoid pun is the principal mirror-language of Lolita. See “Humbert Humbert”.

  Enfin seuls: French for “alone at last,” the trite phrase of the honeymooner.

  lentor: archaic; slowness.

  spoonerette: a spoonerism is the accidental transposition of sounds in two or more words (“wight ray”). By acknowledging his spoonerism, H.H. reminds us what a wordsmith he is (in Pale Fire John Shade teaches at Wordsmith University). The affectionate suffix -ette may recall majorette, as well as the slang meaning of spooner, one who “necks” (or, as one dictionary archly puts it, “act[s] with silly and demonstrative fondness”). The suffix also parodies a recognizable and overused préciosité of Ronsard’s, who in fact employed “nymphette” in one of his poems. See “vermeillette” (Ronsard’s “la vermeillette fente”) and Quilty’s “barroomette.”

  kitzelans: lusting; from the German kitzel, “inordinate desire,” and kitzler, “clitoris.” See Dr. Kitzler, Eryx, Miss..