The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

by Nabokov, Vladimir

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

  Richard Roe: a party to legal proceedings whose real name is unknown; the second party when two are unknown, just as “John Doe” is the first party. Dorothy Doe is an alliterative party of no legal significance.

  Maurice Vermont … Rumpelmeyer: Nabokov said, “I vaguely but persistently feel that both Vermont and Rumpelmeyer exist!” (probably culled from a telephone directory). Whether “real” or not, these names were chosen because they are a play on (and with) the emperor’s old clothes: to rumple (to form irregular folds) and the Vermont, a merino sheep having greatly exaggerated skin folds. Maurice points below to Maeterlinck, a purveyor of more pretentious fairy tales; while Rumpelmeyer also suggests Rumpelstiltskin, a fairy tale that is resolved only when the fair protagonist discovers the grotesque villain’s name. For a similar moment in Lolita, see this passage.

  Lenormand: Henri René Lenormand (1882–1951). In the period between the two world wars, he was the center of those French dramatists concerned with subconscious motivation. He was regarded as a Freudian, but he claimed that his plays were based on emotional conflicts rather than on intellectual systems. Lenormand believed that all altruistic action was motivated by egoistic impulses. In his plays man is set in physical nature and climatic conditions are considered as a shaping force in human behavior. Le Temps est un songe (1919) and À l’Ombre du mal (1924) are among his best-known works. The allusion to Lenormand is generalized, said Nabokov. Although some of them are a parodist’s delight, Nabokov had no specific Lenormand works in mind. Lenormand’s play, La Maison des Remparts, features a girl named Lolita, but Nabokov never saw or read it.

  Maeterlinck: the reputation of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) was at its height in the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of this century, when the Belgian-born writer’s anti-naturalistic Symbolist plays exerted a wide influence. In an effort to communicate the mysteries of man’s inner life and his relation to the universe, he created a theater of stasis, rich in atmosphere and short in action. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1911. Among his most famous plays are Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) and L’Oiseau bleu (1909): see touché, reader! and Schmetterling. Invited to Hollywood by producer Louis B. Mayer in the thirties, he wrote a Symbolist screenplay. “The hero is a goddamn bee!” proclaimed the horrified Mayer.

  British dreamers: Nabokov had in mind Sir James M. Barrie (1860–1937), Scottish novelist and dramatist who wrote Peter Pan (1904) and A Kiss for Cinderella (1916), and Lewis Carroll (see A breeze from wonderland and Alice-in-Wonderland).

  a seventh Hunter: see an impossible balance and the Introduction, here. This Hunter is implicitly the author himself.

  elves: for “elves” and the fairy-tale theme, see Percy Elphinstone, which underscores the fact that the entertainment is indeed “the poet’s invention.”

  Was it?: her euphoria is caused by the realization that Quilty has named his play in her honor.

  CHAPTER 14

  Miss Emperor: Mlle. Lempereur is Emma Bovary’s music teacher. By pretending to go to lessons Emma is able to meet Léon in Rouen and deceive her husband (Part III, Chapter 5). See also Keys, p. 25. See nous connûmes for Flaubert.

  Gustave’s: because Lolita has followed Emma’s example, Flaubert (not Trapp) is still on H.H.’s mind.

  mon pauvre ami … saluent: French; my poor fellow, I have never seen you again and although there is little likelihood of your seeing my book, allow me to tell you that I give you a very cordial handshake and that all my little girls send you greetings.

  d’un … contrit: French; a look of contrived mortification.

  rehearsing … with Mona: she meets Quilty here. See Quilty, Clare for a summary of his appearances.

  pommettes: cheekbones. A corrected author’s error (not italicized in 1958 edition).

  haddocky: fishy (akin to the cod); the adjectival use is H.H.’s.

  dackel: German; a dachshund.

  Mr. Hyde: in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Hyde similarly knocks over a little girl. Note that H.H. identifies himself with the evil self of Stevenson’s Doppelgänger tale. For Stevenson, see R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano and the Introduction, here and here.

  hurriedly hung up: the conversation was with Quilty.

  Pim … Pippa: an allusion to the play Mr. Pim Passes By (1919), by A.A. Milne (1882–1956), and to Browning’s Pippa Passes. See also Keys, p. 20. See frock-fold … Browning for another reference to Pippa Passes, and Pale Fire, p. 186. For My Last Duchess’s Fra Pandolf, see Pale Fire, p. 246.

  J’ai toujours … Dublinois: “I have always admired the [ormonde] work of the sublime Dubliner.” The sublime one is James Joyce, but ormonde does not exist in French; it refers to Dublin’s Hotel Ormond (no e), whose restaurant provides the setting for the so-called “Sirens” episode of Ulysses, and whose name is a most Joycean pun—hors [de ce] monde (“out-of-this-world,” a further tribute). (See also Keys, p. 20.) The reverential allusion is delivered obliquely in the requisite Joycean manner. Also in the Dubliner’s spirit is the “jolls-joyce” car in which the hero of Ada rides in one scene (p. 473). See outspoken book: Ulysses. In a 1966 National Educational Television network interview, Nabokov said the “greatest masterpieces of twentieth-century prose are, in this order: Joyce’s Ulysses; Kafka’s Transformation; Bely’s St. Petersburg; and the first half of Proust’s fairy tale, In Search of Lost Time.” “On fait son grand Joyce after doing one’s petit Proust,” reads a parenthetical statement in Ada, added to the “manuscript” by gently derisive Ada herself, “In [her] lovely hand” (p. 169). When Véra Nabokov saw some of the opened pages of the annotator’s copy of Lolita, the typeface barely visible beneath an overlay of comments in several colors of pencil and ink, she turned to her husband and said, “Darling, it looks like your copy of Ulysses.” Although there are strong artistic affinities between Joyce and Nabokov, he dismissed the possibility of formal “influence”: “My first real contact with Ulysses, after a leering glimpse in the early ’twenties, was in the ’thirties at a time when I was definitely formed as a writer and immune to any literary influence. I studied Ulysses seriously only much later, in the ’fifties, when preparing my Cornell courses. That was the best part of the education I received at Cornell” (Wisconsin Studies interview). See children-colors … a passage in James Joyce.

  In addition to admiring Joyce, Nabokov also knew him. “I saw [Joyce] a few times in Paris in the late thirties,” recalled Nabokov. “Paul and Lucie Léon, close friends of his, were also old friends of mine. One night they brought him to a French lecture I had been asked to deliver on Pushkin under the auspices of Gabriel Marcel (it was later published in the Nouvelle Revue Française). I had happened to replace at the very last moment a Hungarian woman writer, very famous that winter, author of a bestselling novel, I remember its title, La Rue du Chat qui Pěche, but not the lady’s name. A number of personal friends of mine, fearing that the sudden illness of the lady and a sudden discourse on Pushkin might result in a suddenly empty house, had done their best to round up the kind of audience they knew I would like to have. The house had, however, a pied aspect since some confusion had occurred among the lady’s fans. The Hungarian consul mistook me for her husband and, as I entered, dashed towards me with the froth of condolence on his lips. Some people left as soon as I started to speak. A source of unforgettable consolation was the sight of Joyce sitting, arms folded and glasses glinting, in the midst of the Hungarian football team. Another time my wife and I had dinner with him at the Léons’ followed by a long friendly evening of talk. I do not recall one word of it but my wife remembers that Joyce asked about the exact ingredients of myod, the Russian ‘mead,’ and everybody gave him a different answer.”

  Nabokov makes a Joycean appearance in Gisèle Freund and V. B. Carleton’s James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years (New
York, 1965). Pictured on pp. 44–45 is a meeting of the editorial board of the Parisian journal Mesures. Nine literati are shown gathered around a garden table, and a caption identifies the group, which includes Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Henri Michaux, Jean Paulhan—and Jacques Audiberti, a tall, thin man standing in the back, looking down, his face in shadows, a trace of a smile suggesting some miraculous foreknowledge of the caption that twenty-eight years later would mistakenly identify him as “Audiberti,” and in thus denying the existence of the already pseudonymous V. Sirin, would summarize the vicissitudes and spectral qualities of Russian émigré life, and cast him as The Mystery Man in the Garden, a role based on the nameless man in the brown macintosh, the mystery man of Ulysses, the “lankylooking galoot” (as Bloom calls him) whose name is misunderstood by a newspaper reporter as “M’Intosh,” under which name he is immortalized. The photo is also included in TriQuarterly 17 (Winter 1970).

  C’est entendu?: French; that’s agreed?

  Lenore: although Poe wrote a poem thusly titled, the primary allusion is to the title character in one of the most popular dramatic ballads of Gottfried August Bürger (1747–1794), German poet of the Sturm und Drang period. H.H. echoes the best-known line, in which Lenore and her ghostly lover ride off: “Und hurre, hurre, bop, hop, hop, hop! …” (line 149). See also Keys, p. 141n. The allusion is ironic, since Lenore grieves over her lover. Nabokov discusses the poem in the Commentary to his Eugene Onegin translation (Vol. III, pp. 153–154).

  qui … temps: French; who was taking his time.

  CHAPTER 15

  Professor Chem: for “Chemistry.”

  edusively (placed!): a portmanteau word; from educible (educe: “to draw forth; elicit”; see Edusa, p. 209), coined to rhyme with effusively. By punning on Edusa’s name he manages to place her.

  the author: Quilty. See Quilty, Clare.

  Edusa Gold: named after the Clouded Yellow, a golden-orange European butterfly known at one time as Colias edusa. See Electra. For entomological allusions, see John Ray, Jr..

  Some old woman: Quilty; Lolita’s diversionary ploy is successful; see sidetrack … female.

  natural climax: an echo of the “traumatic” experience; lost pair of sunglasses.

  CHAPTER 16

  le montagnard émigré: “the exiled mountaineer,” the legend under a picture of Chateaubriand and the title of one of his romances (a sentimental ballad or song). An émigré is an expatriate; the word originally referred to Royalist fugitives from the French Revolution (such as Chateaubriand). Le Montagnard émigré was first published in 1806 and later included in Chateaubriand’s story Les Aventures du dernier Abencerage, where the untitled verses are sung by a young French prisoner of war. Several of its lines are important in Ada, and appear literally at the center of the Ardis section; see pp. 138–139 and 141 (also see pp. 106, 192, 241, 342, 428, and 530). For more on Chateaubriand, see Chateaubriandesque trees.

  Felis tigris goldsmithi: taxonomic Latin: “Goldsmith’s tiger” (Felis: genus; tigris: species; goldsmithi: subspecies), and allusion to line 356 of “The Deserted Village” (1770), by Oliver Goldsmith (c. 1730–1774): “where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey” (the animal is in fact a cougar rather than a tiger). “I found it and I named it, being versed / in taxonomic Latin,” writes Nabokov in his poem “A Discovery” (John Ray, Jr.). Surely the same cannot be said of H.H., who is completely unversed in such matters (see Nabokov’s remarks, John Ray, Jr.).

  catalpas: botanical term; “any of a small genus of American and Asiatic trees of the trumpet-creeper family.”

  Nebraska … first whiff of the West: a parody of the state’s omnipresent pre-1960 slogan, “Nebraska—Where the West Begins!”

  Red Rock: the initial rock is here. Nabokov told me that the image is in no way a reference to the “red rock” that appears in The Waste Land (l. 25)—mentioned now because several correspondents have inquired about this.

  caravansary: see caravansaries.

  detective tale: one of the works of Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941), who was a kind of French Conan Doyle. See Arsène Lupin.

  persons unknown: Quilty. For a summary of allusions to him, see Quilty, Clare.

  sign of Pegasus: trademark of Mobil Oil; in Greek mythology, Pegasus is the winged horse sprung from Medusa at her death. Because a blow of his hoof brought forth Hippocrene, the fountain of the Muses, he is an emblem of poetic inspiration.

  that bug: according to Nabokov, “this ‘patient bug’ is not necessarily a moth—it could be some clumsy big fly or miserable beetle.” For entomological allusions, see John Ray, Jr..

  the Conche: Shell Oil’s trademark; in Greek mythology, the sea demigod Triton, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, played a trumpet made of a conch. See Proteus of the highway.

  Chestnut Court: throughout the novel, the smallest verbal units are undergoing a kind of metamorphosis (see A key (342!)). The chestnut trees below the motel are said to be “toylike,” and H.H. is indeed toying with “Chestnuts.” Here, “Chestnut Court” becomes “Chestnut Castle,” five lines later turns into “Chestnut Crest,” and here it returns to its “Chestnut Court” form; given a new context here, it becomes a horse. See Chestnut Lodge, by which time it has become “Chestnut Lodge.” As happens so often, Nabokov himself has described the process best: “The names Gogol invents are really nicknames which we surprise in the very act of turning into family names—and a metamorphosis is a thing always exciting to watch” (Gogol, p. 43).

  an elf-like girl on an insect-like bicycle: H.H. has just mentioned that they are near Lolita’s home town of Pisky (“pixie”; see Pisky); elves are thus indigenous to the region, and Nabokov has blended the fairy-tale theme with the entomological motif.

  Chestnut Castle: see Chestnut Court.

  “Bertoldo” … comedy: the famous clown of Italian popular legend, who was the subject of a sixteenth-century collection of witty tales, Vita di Bertoldo, by Giulio Ceasare Croce. Bertoldo is planted here to show that H.H. could easily understand Quilty’s later allusion to Italian comedy.

  red hood: Quilty; the devil’s presence is more than fleeting; see diabolical glow. His appearances are summarized in Quilty, Clare.

  cod-piece fashion: in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a flap or bag, often ornamental, concealing an opening in the front of men’s breeches; cod-piece is archaic for “penis” (often used by such writers as François Rabelais [c. 1490–1553], author of Gargantua).

  adolori … langueur: “affected by love’s languor.” The phrase “d’amoureuse langueur” appears several times, with slight variations, in Ronsard’s Amours. “Adolori,” a punning tribute to Lolita (à Dolores), is of course H.H.’s addition. See also Keys, p. 137n. See Ronsard’s “la vermeillette fente” for another Ronsard allusion.

  diabolical glow: Quilty. She was with him at about the time H.H. was having his hair cut by the grotesque, tragic barber.

  the shadow: Quilty is continually identified as such.

  CHAPTER 17

  Gros: French; fat.

  “luizetta”: H.H.’s invention; from louis d’or, the French gold coin.

  the … life we all had rigged: that “we all” (= H.H., Quilty, McFate, and Nabokov) involutes the narrative once more. See I have only words to play with.

  burley … Krestovski: see Krestovski. The punning adjective summarizes his essence: burly (sturdy, stout) plus burley (an American tobacco, used in cigarettes and plugs).

  CHAPTER 18

  Chestnuts and Colts: freed from all modifiers (see Chestnut Court), the trees, motels, and unstated brand names of the above pistols are here able to frolic together briefly as horses. “We are faced by the remarkable phenomenon of mere forms of speech directly giving rise to live creatures,” as Nabokov says of Dead Souls (Gogol, p. 78).

  Aztec Red: Quilty’s “red shadow” and “red beast” (here), characterized below as a “Red Yak.”

  Jovian: in Roman mythology, Jove (or Jupiter) is god of the sky.<
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  donc: French; therefore.

  crepitating: crackling.

  Jutting Chin … funnies: the comic strip Dick Tracy, created by Chester Gould (1900–1985) in 1931.

  of my age … rosebud … mouth: Quilty; the fact and the motif are familiar. H.H. had thought of growing such a mustache (toothbrush mustache), and they also own similar bathrobes (here).

  O lente … equi: “O slowly run, horses of the night”; H.H.’s adjacent “translation” puns on the literal Latin (night mares). Less one lente, this line is from The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (V, ii, 140), by Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593). With only one hour left before eternal damnation, Faustus hopes for more time. H.H. does not try to “outspeed” Quilty, that latter-day Mephistopheles. See also Keys, pp. 31–32. For a similar pun—nightmares and stallions—see Ada, p. 214.

  viatic: see viatic.

  lady … lightning: see The Lady Who Loved Lightning. The allusions to The Lady Who Loved Lightning and “Fatface” anticipate the next passage, in which H.H. and Lolita attend Quilty’s play. He and his collaborator are mentioned by name here and even appear on stage.

  Soda, pop. 1001: there is in California a Lake Soda, pop. unknown. The magical “1001” is well chosen. It is simultaneously a numerical mirroring (see Beale) and an allusion to the fairy-tale theme (see Percy Elphinstone) via another vertiginously involuted work, The Thousand and One Nights.

  flatus: gas generated in the bowels or stomach.

  kurortish: Kurort is German for “health resort” (see here); the usage is H.H.’s own.

  children-colors … a passage in James Joyce: the colors of the spectrum; the “living rainbow” mimed by the “seven little graces.” It is from Finnegans Wake. The theme of the diversity and unity of all things is central to the constantly metamorphosing dream world of Finnegans Wake. The seven colors of the spectrum represent diversity and are most frequently personified by seven “rainbow girls” who oppose the archetypal mother, Anna Livia Plurabelle. The book opens with a reversed rainbow; the seven clauses in the second paragraph each contain a color, shifting from violet to red. Although not wrong, H.H.’s mention of a single “passage” is misleading because the motif is sustained throughout the Wake. To have the hateful Quilty “lift” from Finnegans Wake rather than Ulysses constitutes a rather private and thus thoroughly Joycean joke, based on Nabokov’s low opinion of the book he calls Punnigans Wake, or, in Bend Sinister, keeping its vast liquidity in mind, “Winnipeg Lake, ripple 585, Vico Press edition” (p. 114). “Ulysses towers over the rest of Joyce’s writings,” said Nabokov, “and in comparison to its noble originality and unique lucidity of thought and style the unfortunate Finnegans Wake is nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room, most aggravating to the insomniac I am.… Finnegans Wake’s façade disguises a very conventional and drab tenement house, and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity. I know I am going to be excommunicated for this pronouncement” (Wisconsin Studies interview). Charles Kinbote sustains his maker’s negative opinion: “it would have been unseemly for a monarch to appear in the robes of learning at a university lectern and present to rosy youths Finnigan’s [sic—A.A.] Wake as a monstrous extension of Angus MacDiarmid’s ‘incoherent transactions’ and of Southey’s Lingo-Grande (‘Dear Stumparumper,’ etc.) …” (Pale Fire, p. 76).