The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated (74 page)

à titre documentaire
: French; just for the record.

Lo to behold
: H.H. toys with the worn interjection, “Lo and behold,” as Lolita did much earlier (
And behold
).

detective
: Trapp (Quilty).

un ricanement
: French, a sneer.

Alice Adams
: the title of a 1921 novel by Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) about a small-town girl who pines for better things.

Browns
: “Browns” reappear
here
,
here
, and
here
.

Cokes
: the 1958 edition did not capitalize the trademark; the error has been corrected.

intacta
: H.H. uses the Latin form of the common word “intact,” but invokes its less common meaning, “untouched virgin.”

boy friend
: Quilty.

bearded scholar
: “Another little bit of prophecy” (see
The Bearded Woman read our jingle and now she is no longer single
), said Nabokov. “Lots of bearded young scholars around these days.”

la pomme de sa canne
: French; the round knob of a cane.

Mirana
: H.H.’s father had owned a Mirana hotel; see
Mirana
.

Proteus of the highway
: Quilty; from Greek mythology; a prophetic sea-god in Poseidon’s service, who would assume different shapes when seized.

remises
: carriage houses.

Melmoth
: a triple allusion. There is no such car; it is named after the four-volume Gothic novel
Melmoth the Wanderer
(1820), by Charles Robert Maturin (1782–1824), Irish clergyman and writer (also identified in
Keys
, p. 31). In his
Eugene Onegin
Commentary, Nabokov calls Maturin’s Melmoth a “gloomy vagabond” (Vol. II, p. 352). “The book, although superior to [Monk] Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe, is essentially second-rate, and Pushkin’s high regard for it (in the French version) is the echo of a French fashion,” writes Nabokov (
ibid.
, p. 353). Nabokov’s paraphrase of the “action” of
Melmoth the Wanderer (ibid.)
underscores the humor of naming H.H.’s car after it:

Maturin’s novel most likely supplied Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) with his post-prison pseudonym of “Sebastian Melmoth.” In addition, added
Nabokov, “Melmoth may come from Mellonella Moth (which breeds in beehives) or, more likely, from Meal Moth (which breeds in grain).” For entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.

grays … his favorite cryptochromism
: a coinage; “secret colors.” It is also an authorial favorite, in view of the puns on Haze, shadow, and ombre.

“ordeal of the orb
”
: changing the tire.

gigantic truck … impossible to pass
: a fear confirmed; see
slow truck … road
.

“Love Under the Lindens
”
: planted between famous plays by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) and Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) is a combination of
Desire Under the Elms
(1924), by Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953), and
Unter den Linden
(a boulevard in Berlin). See also
Keys
, p. 15on. The portmanteau title, credited to “Eelmann” (O’Neill plus Thomas Mann), is mentioned in
Ada
(p. 403). Nabokov’s low opinion of O’Neill’s
Mourning Becomes Electra
is expressed in
Gogol
(p. 55).

flashlight
: a corrected author’s error (instead of “torchlight” in the 1958 edition). The quotation marks which enclosed this extract in the 1958 edition have also been corrected.

Cyrano … sleeping stranger
: after rereading this passage in 1968, Nabokov belatedly put words in H.H.’s mouth: “Cyrano’s big nose. Cyranose. Sorry myself to have missed that portmantoid pun. ‘A sleeping stranger,’ ” he added, “is enchanting and haunting.” Edmond Rostand’s famous play (1897) is based on the life of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655), French writer and soldier. “Cyraniana” in
Ada
(p. 339) alludes to his most famous work,
Histoire comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune
(1656; modern edition:
A Voyage to the Moon
).

petit rat
: a young ballet student at the Paris Opera (ages nine to fourteen).

Electra
: “The name is based on that of a close ally of the Clouded Yellow butterfly,” said Nabokov, “and has nothing to do with the Greek Electra.” See
Edusa Gold
. For entomological allusions, see
John Ray, Jr.
.

Ned Litam
: the anagrammatic (it reads backwards) pseudonym under which the great tennis player William T. (Bill) Tilden II wrote fiction. See
a famous coach … with a harem of ball boys
, where Lolita takes lessons from him.

endorsing a Dromedary
: like Quilty; see
Morell … “conquering hero”
. Note how H.H. is continually providing oblique clues; see
Quilty, Clare
for a summary of Quilty allusions.

fifty-three
: the 1958 edition omitted the hyphen; the error has been corrected.

susceptible to the magic of games … I saw the board
: H.H. is speaking for his maker, who would hope that the reader shares this limpid view of the gameboard that is
Lolita.

stratagems
: “beautiful word, stratagem—a treasure in a cave,” writes Nabokov in
Gogol
(p. 59).

tessellated
: laid with checkered work or adorned with mosaic.

Champion, Colorado
: an actual town, chosen by Nabokov because this is a championship game—H.H.’s attempts to fix in prose the beauty of the nymphet.

Decugis or Borman
: Max Decugis was a great European tennis player who often teamed with Gobbert (see
Gobbert
). They were Wimbledon men’s doubles champions in 1911. Paul de Borman was the Belgian champion in the first decade of this century. Nabokov recalled, “He was left-handed, and one of the first Europeans to use a sliced (or twist) service. There is a photograph of him in the Wallis Myers book on tennis (c. 1913).” I could not find the Myers book, but Decugis and Borman are discussed in George W. Beldman and P. A. Vaile’s
Great Lawn Tennis Players
(New York, 1907). Beldman deplores Borman’s lack of aggressiveness and poor position (resulting from the way he used his body to achieve his spins and cut shots), and writes of him, inimitably, “I do not know that he has a single perfect stroke, yet in every shot he made there was education for him who was able to take it” (pp. 350–351). Nabokov took it, and immortalized Borman in
Lolita.
At first wince (to quote H.H.), such minutiae may seem no better than Kinbotisms, but they are calmly offered as an example of the precise manner in which Nabokov’s memory speaks to him and, as well, to suggest how he does indeed stock his “imaginary garden with real toads” (see
Parody of a hotel corridor … and death
). He was in fact a life-long
tennis enthusiast and supplemented his meagre income as an émigré by giving tennis lessons to wealthy Berliners. Not by chance does he have H.H. poeticize Lolita’s tennis game, on a court invested with the geometric perfection that the painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) brought to rigorous abstractions that sometimes look like overviews of tennis courts.

butterfly
: although Nabokov intended no “symbolism,” it appears after H.H. has come as close to capturing Lolita’s grace as he ever will. Nabokov only commented, “Butterflies are indeed inquisitive, and the dipping motion is characteristic of a number of genera.” See
John Ray, Jr.
.

wimbles
: any of several instruments for boring holes.

a syncope in the series
: an elision or loss of one or more letters or sounds from the middle of a word.

Maffy On Say
: phonetic American pronunciation of “
ma fiancée.
”

purling
: gently murmuring, as a brook.

three horrible Boschian cripples
: one of whom is Quilty. Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450–1516), the great Flemish master of the grotesque, whose paintings abound in moral and physiological cripples. “And Flemish hells with porcupines and things” is a brief Boschian vision in the poem
Pale Fire
(line 226). On his deathbed, in
Ada
, Daniel Veen, an art collector and Bosch devotee, imagines that he is being put-upon by creatures from a Bosch painting, and dies “an odd Boschean death” (pp. 435–436). Nabokov then comments at length on the butterfly rendered at the center of Bosch’s “Garden of Delights.”

That … intruder … a double
: Quilty; a pun: a double at tennis and a
Doppelgänger.
See
double game
.

red ball
: rolled by Quilty, who reappears
here
.

Aztec Red
: H.H. remembers the color of Quilty’s car. See
Aztec Red
.

padded shield
: like the
olisbos
of
olisbos
; Quilty is seen as a grotesque Priapus who in this passage transforms nature into a veritable forest of phalli.
Priaps
(below) is H.H.’s usage.

Elphinstone
: where H.H. will lose his “elf”; see
Percy Elphinstone
.

Soyons logiques
: French; Let us be logical.

saguaro
: a giant cactus with a thick stem and white flowers.

fatamorganas
: mirages: see
Mirana
. A display in the fabulous department store in
King, Queen, Knave
offers “a Fata Morgana of coats” (p. 68).

José Lizzarrabengoa
: Carmen’s abandoned lover. See
Little Carmen
,
Est-ce que … Carmen
, and
Changeons … séparés
.

Etats Unis
: French; U.S.A.

Mrs. Hays
: H.H. found Lo at Mrs. Haze’s house, and will now lose her at the motor court of Mrs. Hays, also a widow.

Blue
: from the common German name, “Blau.” Dr. Starov, from the last chapter of
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
(1941), and Dr. Blue combine in
Pale Fire
(1962) to form “The great Starover Blue [who] reviewed the role / Planets had played as landfalls of the soul” (lines 627–628). See
suggested the play’s title
.

heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit
: Quilty; an allusion to Goethe’s poem
Erlkönig
(“Erlking”; king of the elves), in which spectral incarnations of the Erlking pursue a little boy who rides with his father through the dark and windy forest. Unable to possess the beloved boy, the Erlking wills his death. When the father arrives “safely” at the farmhouse, the child is dead in his arms. In
Pale Fire
, the Zemblan word “
alfear
” (Nabokov’s coinage) is defined as “uncontrollable fear caused by elves” (p. 143); and a passage of John Shade’s (lines 653–664) alludes to Goethe’s poem, especially line 662, which Charles Kinbote likes enough to scan and then translate into Zemblan (p. 239). See the
Onegin
Commentary (Vol. II, p. 235). See also
Keys
, p. 138n. For “elf,” see
Percy Elphinstone
.

“ague
”
: a violent chill.

haute montagne
: French; above-timberline pastures.

Lore … Rolas
: the importation of Basques and their vicious sheep dogs, and the place names (Lore, etc.) are “real,” Nabokov having encountered them both in the Pyrenees and the Rockies. “
Que sais-je!
” is a French cliché (“and so forth,” “or whatever”).

French perfume
: the Soleil Vert of
this passage
.

secret agent … or hallucination
: Quilty.

Aurora
: the dawn, as personified by the Romans (Eos for the Greeks). The image of the “warmed hands” means the sun had hardly risen high enough to warm the hillside.

lavender
: a mint cultivated on hillsides in Southern France, used for its fragrant oil.

Clowns and Columbines … Tennis
: the first title is H.H.’s invention (the other titles exist). In the
commedia dell’arte
(see
“Bertoldo” … comedy
and
Dr. Gratiano … Mirandola, N.Y.
), the clown Pulcinella had a dual nature: witty, ironic, somewhat cruel, yet also silly, fawning, and timid. Columbine was the eternal coquette whose keen wit allows her to manipulate the most complex intrigues. She is the constant companion of Harlequin, the volatile, elusive character associated with Mercury as the patron of merchants, panderers, and thieves. The analogy with H.H., Lolita, and Quilty is clear. Helen Wills (1905–      ) was the greatest woman tennis player of the twenties and thirties, and her youthful championship and 1928 book,
Tennis
, are obviously meant to inspire Lolita further. The dance volumes are evidently there to inspire a new program of instruction and state of grace that H.H. will never get to see. The volume of Browning must contain
Pippa Passes
(see
frock-fold … Browning
and
Pim … Pippa
). The title character, a perambulating mill girl, is so good-natured that she keeps on singing, no matter what she sees.