CHAPTER 32.

die Kleine: German; the little one.

moue: grimace, facial contraction.

sapphic diversions: reference to the reputed lesbianism of the group associated with Sappho, Greek lyric poetess of Lesbos (c. 600 B.C.).

Miranda twins: in Lolita's class list, (see Beale).

boat to Onyx or Eryx: there are no such lakes. Onyx is often used for cameos, while Eryx refers to the ancient cult of Aphrodite (Venus) of Eryx, an Elymian settlement on a mountain above Drepana in western Sicily, built below their temple of Aphrodite (the goddess of love and beauty, to whom Lolita is often compared; "Venus came and went," says H.H.; and the magazine picture of a surrealistic "plaster replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand" metaphorically projects Lolita's life with him). See Dr. Kitzler, Eryx, Miss., where scholarly H.H. obliquely informs the reader that the priestesses at the Temple of Eryx were prostitutes.

I would not talk to strangers: see Never Talk to Strangers and Do not talk to strangers, where the phrase echoes. The advice still holds.

saturnalia: the festival of Saturn in ancient Rome, celebrated with feasting and revelry; a licentious spectacle.

A fellow of my age: Quilty (see Quilty, Clare); the "blood-red armchair" should alert the reader. H.H. stresses their similar ages; see of my age ... rosebud ... mouth.

Schwab's drugstore: an author's error has been corrected (a instead of o in the 1958 edition). The Schwab's chain drugstores in Hollywood (now defunct) were a meeting place for film people and young aspirants. In the thirties and forties several subsequent stars were discovered there, some-according to folklore-while eating sundaes or drinking sodas.

a fairytale vampire: for the fairy-tale theme, see Percy Elphinstone.

le decuvert: French; the nude.

immortal daemon ... child: see not human, but nymphic.

Aunt Clare's place: by mentioning Quilty's first name, H.H., a sly teaser, throws the reader something more than a hint. See Quilty, Clare for a summary of Quilty allusions.

hypothetical hospital: "hypothetical" is the best word to use, since its name would be whatever H.H. chose to make it.

CHAPTER 33.

gay ... Lepingville: see Lepingville ... nineteenth century. H.H.'s "lepping" is over; the town's name and gaiety mark the fact that, as Part One ends, H.H. secures his capture.

swooners: H.H.'s variant of the noun, its meaning expanded to include some garment that evokes a swoon. Teen-swooning, inspired by Frank Sinatra's crooning, was much in the news in the forties.

PART TWO.

CHAPTER 1.

pharisaic: self-righteous and censorious; resembling the Pharisees, a sect of the ancient Jews famed for its strict observance of ceremonies, rites, and traditions.

earwitness: a dictionary word (used as early as 1594) but amusing because no one ever says it.

nous connumes: Flaubert uses the verb connaitre in the literary tense passe simple when in Madame Bovary (1857) he is describing her unhappy experiments with all kinds of diversions, especially her lovers and their activities together. For other allusions, see le mot juste, Miss Emperor, and Never will Emma rally ... timely tear. Nabokov intends no allusion to Frederic Moreau's travels in L'Education sentimentale (1869); "Not the education of the senses," he said, "a poor novel which I only vaguely remember." Bovary is funned in King, Queen, Knave and "Floeberg" burlesqued briefly in Ada (p. 128). Although Kinbote synchronizes Gradus's travels through space and time and the stages of Shade's composition of the poem Pale Fire, he nevertheless complains when Shade similarly alternates two themes: "the synchronization device has been already worked to death by Flaubert and Joyce" (p. 196).

Chateaubriandesque trees: the first European writers and painters who visited America were impressed by its great trees, and H.H. no doubt drew the image from Atala (1801), a separately published episode from Le Genie du christianisme (1802) by Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (17681848), whose arrival in America is mentioned in Pale Fire (p. 247). In the Eugene Onegin Commentary, Nabokov calls Rene, another episode from Le Genie, "a work of genius by the greatest French writer of his time" (Vol. III, p. 98). See Charlotte. Though unlabeled, there are many "Chateaubriandesque trees" in Ada's Ardis Park, and by design, for Chateaubriand is to Ada what Poe and Merimee are to Lolita. Van Veen reads Ada's copy of Atala (p. 89), and Rene, with its "subtle perfume of incest" (Onegin Commentary, Vol. III, p. 100), is alluded to directly (pp. 131 and 133). Mlle. Lariviere, the Veens' grotesque governess, writes a novel and film scenario whose hero is named "Rene" (see pp. 198199, 217, 249, and 424), and since "incest" and "insect" are anagrammatically linked (p. 85), a mosquito is named after Chateaubriand-Charles Chateaubriand, that is, "not related to the great poet and memoirist" (p. 106). For further discussion of Chateaubriand and Ada, see my article, "Ada Described," TriQuarterly, No. 17 (Winter 1970). For another Chateaubriand allusion in Lolita, see le montagnard emigre.

non-Laodicean: in Revelation 3:1416, the Laodicean church is characterized as "lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold" in matters of religion.

madamic: H.H.'s coinage, referring to the madam, or proprietress, of a brothel.

instars: an insect or other anthropod in one of the forms assumed between molts. The pupa of a butterfly is an instar.

do you remember, Miranda: an echo of the opening lines and refrain of "Tarantella" (1923), a poem by Hilaire Belloc (18701953); "Do you remember an Inn, / Miranda? / Do you remember an Inn?" See p. 185.

the nasal voices: because "this book is being read, I assume, in the first years of 2000 A.D." (as H.H. says [p. 299]), readers not having had the benefit of a 19471952 adolescence may not be able to complete the names of the "invisibles" who serenaded her. "Rex" is a ringer, and "Sammy" refers to non-singer Sammy Kaye (19101087), whose very popular, very mediocre dance band featured a succession of lachrymose vocalists on hits such as 1947's "I'm Laughing on the Outside (But Crying on the Inside)," a title that splendidly summarizes H.H.'s rhetorical mask. The other singers are Jo Stafford (date of birth a secret), Edwin Jack "Eddie" Fisher (1928), Tony Bennett (born Anthony Benedetto: 1926), Peggy Lee (born Norma Egstrom: 1920), Guy Mitchell (1925), and Patti Page (born Clara Ann Fowler: 1927), whose most successful recording, "The Tennessee Waltz" (1950), is commemorated in Ada with the mention of "a progressive poet in residence at Tennessee Waltz College" (p. 134). As Joyce says in Finnegans Wake, "Wipe your glosses with what you know." But this information isn't campy if you don't know who these "invisibles" are, and that their sentimental songs of love and romance were very corny, and backed by ludicrously fulsome string arrangements. Because Nabokov often uses a kind of shorthand to eviscerate Lo's popular culture, younger readers now need to be prepped; they actually believe that early fifties' pop music was "soft" rock-and-roll-as on the TV show Happy Days.

Study guide: Your Hit Parade, a series of record collections begun in 1988 by Time-Life Music, which will eventually cover every year of the forties and fifties. The disc for 1951 includes Patti Page's "Detour," Guy Mitchell's "My Heart Cries for You," and Tony Bennett's "Because of You" and "Cold, Cold Heart." The latter, an apostrophe to a cruel mistress, could be called a debased Petrarchan sonnet-just the kind of song H.H. would scorn. Play some of these hits while reading Lolita-as ironic descant, say, to the important reunion scene, where H.H. says that one of her songs was throbbing on the radio as they talked. For an illustrated survey of teen culture, see Time-Life's volume, This Fabulous Century: 19501960 (1970), especially for its facsimile pages from the sort of movie magazines that Lo and her pals consumed. The programmatic innocence that was proffered by these publications will come as a big surprise to younger readers, who expect scandal, and to aging scholars who have never before seen such stuff and only now can complete their education-really, if they want to understand the full reach of Lolita. "Patty," an author's error in the 1958 edition, has been changed to "Patti."

Starasil: an actual ointment.

trochaic lilt: in prosody, a trochee is a foot of two syllables, the first stressed or half-stressed, and the second unstressed.

Huncan Dines: the spoonerism hardly conceals Duncan Hines (18801959), author of such guidebooks as Adventures in Good Eating, Lodging for a Night, and Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey.

chere Dolores: French; dear Dolores-an insulting translation for bilingual readers.

comme ... gentille: French; as you know too well, my sweet one.

rapist ... therapist: a slight variation of earlier wordplay; see psychotherapist ... rapist. In Ada, thinkers who speculate on the existence of Terra are called "terrapists" (p. 341).

by Polonius: the talkative and complacent old man of Hamlet. The reference is probably to the warnings he gives his daughter, Ophelia, about the slippery ways of men. See Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y..

Mann Act: the obvious "dreadful pun" is Mann: man. "Act" was not capitalized in the 1958 edition; the error has been corrected here.

my Lolita ... her Catullus: the Latin love-poem motif; see Catullus ... forever.

c'est tout: French; that is all.

thirty-nine other dopes: forty, including Lo; the same number as the Ramsdale class, and the sleepless nights-plotted "coincidences" all.

crazy quilt of forty-eight states: it is appropriate that Part Two's first allusion to Quilty should be this geographical metaphor, since H.H. and his nemesis pursue each other back and forth across "the crazy quilt." When all the journeys are ended, he is "quilted Quilty" and, once more, "the crazy quilt."

inutile: French; useless, unprofitable.

Lorrain clouds: Claude Gelee, known as Claude Lorrain (16001682), French painter who settled in Rome and established landscape painting as a respectable form. His open vistas and lyrical evocations of light and atmosphere influenced Poussin, among others. A character in King, Queen, Knave (1928) points at something "with the air of Rembrandt indicating a Claude Lorraine" (p. 91), a reminder of the consistency of Nabokov's vision.

El Greco horizon ... mummy-necked farmer: the famous painter (1541?1614?), born in Greece, schooled in Italy, resident of Spain. H.H. discovers in Kansas the turbulent Toledo landscapes of Greco and describes the farmer as though he were an "El Greco"-his elongated "mummy neck" is optically distorted in the manner of this artist. Since many early readers, especially the British and French, thought Lolita resolutely "anti-American," Nabokov urged me to note the book's tender landscape details, and the tribute paid to "the lovely, trustful, enormous country." H.H.'s tributes are of central importance. The "moral apotheosis" correctly sighted by John Ray is congruent with H.H.'s most rapturous description of the countryside, though the landscape described here remains "two-dimensional" (H.H.'s phrase) because it is essentially unpeopled (the farmer isn't human)-a purely aesthetic spectacle as opposed to the three-dimensional landscape here. There, Nabokov completes the picture as a novelist rather than a dandy landscape artist or artificer.

samara: a dry, winged fruit, usually one-seeded, as in the ash or elm.

ce qu'on appelle: French; what one calls.

CHAPTER 2.

partie de plaisir: French; outing, picnic.

raison d'tre: French; the reason for being, the justification.

John Galsworthy: English novelist (18671933), author of The Forsyte Saga (1922).

canthus: the inner corner of the eye where the upper and lower eyelids meet.

"Kurort" type: German; health resort, watering place.

roan back ... an orchestra of zoot-suiters with trumpets: Roan is a color: chestnut interspersed with gray or white-said of a horse; also a low-grade sheepskin tanned and colored to imitate ungrained Morocco. Zoot suits were a "hep" male fashion of the forties that originated with the Hispanic "pachuco" gangs of Los Angeles in 1942. A zoot suit consisted of a porkpie hat, a wide-shouldered, thigh-length jacket, and billowy trousers that were tapered and "pegged" (bloused) at the bottom. A long watch-chain was optional. The humor of H.H.'s verbal cartoon turns on one's knowing that a sixteen-piece jazz band contained four or five trumpeters at most. Zoot, the saxophone-playing puppet on The Muppets, is not a tribute to fashion but to John Haley (Zoot) Sims (19251985), the great tenor saxophonist.

author of "Trees": Joyce Kilmer (18861918), American poet, best known for the sentimental poem which H.H. refers to here.

bronzed owner of an expensive car: although Quilty-hunters may find this man suspect, Nabokov said it is definitely not Quilty.

lousy with ... flies: noted Nabokov: "The insects that poor Humbert mistakes for 'creeping white flies' are the biologically fascinating little moths of the genus Pronuba whose amiable and indispensable females transport the pollen that fertilizes the yucca flowers (see, what Humbert failed to do, 'Yucca Moth' in any good encyclopedia)." For entomological allusions, see John Ray, Jr..

Independence ... Abilene: also a juxtaposition of the "starting points" of successive American presidents: Harry S. Truman (18841972) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (18901969).

lilac ... phallic: H.H. continually reminds us that he has "only words to play with." His phallic is built on the semantic constituents of lilac and Pharaonic (of or pertaining to Pharaoh, the title of the sovereigns of ancient Egypt).

lanugo: anatomical word; in a restricted sense, the downy growth which covers the young of Otherwise non-hairy animals.

rufous: a bright russet or brownish-orange hue.

lucerne: a deep-rooted European herb with bluish-purple flowers; in the United States usually called alfalfa.

comme on dit: French; as they say.

hundreds of ... hummingbirds: these are not birds, noted Nabokov, "but hawkmoths which do move exactly like hummingbirds (which are neither gray nor nocturnal)." For entomological allusions, see John Ray, Jr..

Shakespeare ... New Mexico: not invented; a mining town founded c. 1870 on property that had previously been involved in one of the largest unsuccessful mining speculations of the period in the Southwest. Now a "ghost town," it is no longer listed in any atlas.

Florentine Bea's ... contemporary: Dante's Beatrice (see Dante ... month of May). A thirteenth-century mummy.

Our twentieth Hell's Canyon: see those calls.

winery in California ... wine barrel: it exists. Crossing over into Death Valley from Nevada, H.H. and Lolita travel down to Los Angeles and then wend their way northward up the California coast to Oregon (Crater Lake). Most of H.H.'s observation's of "local color"(Nabokov's phrase) will not be glossed unless they're particularly colorful or obscure.

Scotty's Castle: an enormous and grotesque structure built in the twenties by Walter ("Death Valley") Scott, formerly with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. It is only half-completed because he ran out of funds when a mysterious "gold mine" was exhausted.

R. L. Stevenson's footprint on an extinct volcano: the Scottish writer (18501895) followed the woman he loved to California, where he lived for a year (18701880). In From Scotland to Silverado, James D. Hart, ed. (1966), collects his writing about the state. Stevenson is buried on the volcanic Mount Vaea in Samoa; but H.H., who may or may not know that, is here referring to his honeymoon stay on Mount St. Helena, California, generally thought to be an extinct volcano (it is in fact not one). There is a Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial there, but he left no actual footprint. H.H., having just noted "The ugly villas of handsome actresses," was no doubt more impressed by the footprints and handprints of movie stars immortalized in the cement pavements outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. For further Stevenson allusions, see Treasure Island and Mr. Hyde.

Mission Dolores: good title for book: this book, of course. The mission observed by H.H. exists, in San Francisco.

festoons: in architecture, a molded or carved ornament representing a festoon (a garland or wreath hanging in a curve). H.H. is observing the coastline of Monterey.

Russian Gulch State Park: in Sonoma, California; named by Russian colonists.

The Bearded Woman read our jingle and now she is no longer single: H.H. conflates a series of roadside advertising signs erected by the Burma Shave Company, or invents his own version. "The first form of sequential advertising," report Sally Henderson and Robert Landau in Billboard Art (1981), "the Burma Shave signs spoke to the public in a new way with both humor and wit. The small signs, installed at the roadside in sets of six, took approximately eighteen seconds to read when the car was traveling at a speed of thirty-five miles per hour." Burma Shave signs dotted the countryside from 1925 to 1963. Lolita would have been more interested in this cognate series: "The Bearded Lady / Tried AJar / She's Now a Famous / Movie Star / Burma Shave." Weathered old Burma Shave signs turn up today in "antique" stores, bathed in a very warm light indeed. Now that the old roads and their kitsch and clutter have given way to sleek super-highways and standardized conveniences, the once despised diners, gas stations, and one-of-a kind motels of the past have been deemed vernacular art and archeology by grieving nostalgists and students of a democratic culture. Picture-books such as John. Margolies's The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America (1981) and Michael Wallis's Route 66: The Mother Road (1990), may also serve to document the vanishing cross-country quotidian world of Lolita and Jack Kerouac's more romanticized On the Road (1957). The photographs in Robert Frank's The Americans (1959) complement H.H.'s most melancholy rooms and ruminations, as he would put it.

Christopher Columbus' flagship: the zoo exists, in Evansville, Indiana. Its monkeys-kept out-of-doors on the ship from April to November-continue to be the zoo's most popular attraction.

Little Rock, near a school: rereading this passage in 1968, Nabokov called it "nicely prophetic" (the larger "row" over school desegregation, September 1957). For further "prophecy," see bearded scholar.

a propos de rien: French; not in relation to anything else; casually.

town ... first name: "his" refers to Quilty. Clare, Michigan; an actual town.

species ... Homo pollex: H.H. combines the familiar Latin homo, "the genus of mammals consisting of mankind," with pollex, or "thumb."

viatic: H.H. sustains his "scientific" vocabulary; a coinage from the Latin root via. Viaticum is English-an allowance for traveling expenses-but H.H. has gone back to the Latin word viaticus, which specifically refers to the road.

priapically: from Priapus, the god of procreation; see Priap.

man of my age ... face a claques: Quilty, with a "face that deserves to be slapped; an ugly, mischievous face." For an index to his appearances, see Quilty, Clare.

concupiscence: lustfulness.

coulant un regard: French; casting a sly glance.