The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated (72 page)

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.

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.

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
.

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!”