The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  manatee: any of several aquatic mammals, such as the sea cow.

  Arcadian … wilds: from Arcadia, the idyllic rural region of Greece and the classic image of pastoral simplicity. “Even in Arcady am I, says Death in the tombal scripture,” notes Kinbote in Pale Fire (p. 174).

  rill: a very small brook.

  cabanes: huts; simple dwellings.

  que dis-je: French; what am I saying?

  marmot: any rodent of the genus Marmota, such as the woodchuck.

  Venus came and went: H.H. is being verbally playful about a sexual climax.

  un monsieur très bien: French; a proper gentleman (a very pompous and bourgeois expression).

  hospitalized … by now: reference to H.H.’s Western-style fight with Quilty on p. 299.

  strumstring: H.H.’s coinage; the crooner is Gene Autry (1907–      ).

  harpies: from classical mythology; foul creatures, part woman, part bird, that stole the souls of the dead, or defiled or seized their victims’ food.

  orchideous masculinity: belonging to the natural order of plants akin to genus Orchis. Its Greek etymology adds a comic dimension, for orchis means “testicle” as well as the plant. The hideous increases the humor.

  parapets of Europe: a Rimbaud echo; see ramparts of ancient Europe.

  Oriental tale: invented by Nabokov.

  Beardsley: after Aubrey Beardsley; see McFate, Aubrey.

  Woerner’s Treatise: it exists, Nabokov told the annotator.

  A Girl of the Limberlost: by Gene Stratton Porter (1863–1924), it was once a great favorite of schoolgirls (published 1914). Little Women (1869), by Louisa May Alcott (1832–1882), continues to be read.

  ganglia: plural of ganglion, an anatomical and zoological word; “a mass of nerve tissue containing nerve cells, a nerve center”; a center of strength and energy.

  dans … l’âge: French; in a mature age (when he is most robust).

  vieillard encore vert: French; literally, “an old man still green”—that is, sexually potent.

  Know Your Own Daughter: the “biblical title” is real, said Nabokov, although it has been impossible to document. Many similar titles exist, all lending themselves to double-entendre: Frances K. Martin, Know Your Child (1946); C. Lewis, How Well Can We Know Our Children? (1947); C. W. Young, Know Your Pupil (1945); and E. D. Adlerblum, Know Your Child Through His Play (1947). See A Guide to … Development.

  The Little Mermaid: anyone familiar with this fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), the Danish fabulist, knows that H.H.’s gift has been carefully chosen, and that there are several ironies involved. The little mermaid longs to “enchant a mortal heart”—namely, the prince—and thus win an immortal soul. Lolita has succeeded all too well; but neither H.H., Quilty, nor her husband Dick Schiller, who will carry her off to Alaska, qualifies as prince in the fairy tale Lolita. At the end of Andersen’s tale, the mermaid has been transposed into one of the freely circulating children of the air, who must float for three hundred years before they are admitted into the kingdom of heaven. But they can get in earlier, as one explains as the tale concludes: “Unseen we float into the houses of mortals where there are children, and for every day that we find a good child who makes his parents happy and deserves their love, God shortens our period of trial. The child does not know when we fly through the room, and when we smile over it with joy a year is taken from the three hundred. But if we see a naughty and wicked child, we must weep tears of sorrow, and each tear adds a day to our period of trial” (from The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales, Alfred and Mary Elizabeth David, eds., New York, 1964, p. 274). H.H., who later sheds “merman tears” (merman), no doubt hopes that Lolita will take this to heart. See also Keys, p. 134n. For the fairy-tale theme, see Percy Elphinstone.

  casé: settled.

  27,000 miles: see traveled 14,000 … New York.

  rentier: a man who lives from the interest of. his invested capital (generally applies to an old, retired man).

  her bi-iliac garland still as brief as a lad’s: The bi-iliac are the two most prominent points of the crests of the iliac bones. H.H. is toying with the last line of “To an Athlete Dying Young” (“The garland briefer than a girl’s”) from A Shropshire Lad (1896), by A. E. Housman (1850–1936), the English poet and Cambridge classics don (see Speak, Memory, p. 273; Pale Fire, p. 269). The poem’s aura is homosexual, but its theme of loss pertains to H.H., and his sense of youth’s transience. His athlete (roller-skating, tennis) is figuratively dying in this passage; the nymphet is growing. H.H. can appreciate the double lives (Housman tried marriage), the anguish and legalized persecution suffered especially by homosexuals in England (Oscar Wilde was jailed in 1895). Gaston Godin’s garret (large photographs) is built on this Housman.

  CHAPTER 4

  habitus: a not uncommon Latin noun meaning moral condition, state, disposition, character, etc.

  Miss Cormorant: she is named after the voracious sea bird.

  recueillement: self-communion, “collectedness.”

  harems and slaves: of course she can care, and H.H. has compared her lot to theirs.

  CHAPTER 5

  Lester … Fabian: their respective first and final syllables form “lesbian” (see also Keys, p. 96). See Miss Horn … Miss Cole for a similar effect.

  CHAPTER 6

  Gaston Godin: his “Beardsley existence” is also figurative, for he might well have been drawn by Aubrey Beardsley. H.H.’s caricature resembles the famous cover drawing of “Ali Baba” (for a projected edition of The Forty Thieves, never undertaken [1897]), as well as Oscar Wilde, whose post-prison alias is bestowed on H.H.’s car (see Melmoth). Gaston is fin de siècle in many ways, as this passage make clear.

  mes goûts: French; my tastes.

  He always wore black: H.H.’s attire; see here.

  large photographs: they constitute a veritable pantheon of homosexual artists: André Gide (1869–1951), French writer, author of Les Faux-Monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters, 1925), winner of the Nobel Prize in 1947; Pëtr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), Russian composer, whose “vile” and “silly” opera Eugene Onegin Nabokov could not abide; Onegin Commentary, Vol. II, p. 333); Norman Douglas (1868–1952), English writer, author of South Wind (1917); Waslaw Nijinsky (1890–1950), Russian ballet dancer of Polish descent (see p. 302), afflicted with insanity, and an associate of Diaghilev (who in Ada is the ballet master Dangleleaf [p. 430]); and Marcel Proust (see Proustian theme … Bailey”).

  two other … writers: one of whom, W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), author of Of Human Bondage (1915), would have been named had he not been still alive, said Nabokov. The other, Nabokov told me, is the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907–1973). “These poor people,” says H.H. (p. 184).

  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”:

  I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,

  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

  They cried, “La belle dame sans merci

  Thee hath in thrall!”

  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).

  CHAPTER 7

  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.

  CHAPTER 8

  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.

  CHAPTER 9

  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.

  CHAPTER 10

  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 [PART ONE] c09.1, c11.1, c11.2, c15.1, c19.1, c19.2, c21.1, c27.1, c27.2, c29.1, c30.1, [PART TWO] 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.

  CHAPTER 11

  “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.

  CHAPTER 12

  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).

  CHAPTER 13

  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.