Free The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated by Vladimir Nabokov

self-awareness, Nabokov defines in
The Gift
the essence of his own art: “The spirit of parody always goes along with genuine poetry.”
    This spirit in Nabokov represents not merely a set of techniques but, as suggested above, an attitude toward experience, a means of discovering the nature of experience.
The Prismatic Bezel
is aptly titled: a “bezel” is the sloping edge on a cutting tool or the oblique side of a gem, and the luminous bezel of Nabokov’s parody can cut in any direction, often turning in upon itself as self-parody.
    To stress the satiric (rather than parodic) elements of
Lolita
above all others is as limited a response as to stop short with its sexual content. “Sex as an institution, sex as a general notion, sex as a problem, sex as a platitude—all this is something I find too tedious for words,” Nabokov told an interviewer from
Playboy
, and his Cornell lectures on Joyce further indicate that he was not interested in sexual oddities for their own sake. On May 10, 1954, in his opening lecture on
Ulysses
(delivered, as it turns out, at the time he was completing
Lolita
), Nabokov said of Leopold Bloom, “Joyce intended the portrait of an ordinary person. [His] sexual deportment [is] extremely perverse … Bloom indulges in acts and dreams sub-normal in an evolutionary sense, affecting both individual and species.… In Bloom’s (and Joyce’s) mind, the theme of sex is mixed with theme of latrine. Supposed to be ordinary citizen: mind of ordinary citizen does not dwell where Bloom’s does. Sexual affairs heap indecency upon indecency …” Coming from the creator of Humbert Humbert, the fervent tone and the rather old-fashioned sense of normalcy may seem unexpected. On May 28, the last class of the term and concluding lecture on Joyce, hediscussed the flaws in
Ulysses
, complaining that there is an “Obnoxious, overdone preoccupation with sex organs, as illustrated in Molly’s stream-of-consciousness. Perverse attitudes exhibited.” 26 In spite of the transcriptions in notebookese, one gets a firm idea of Nabokov’s attitude toward the explicit detailing of sexuality, and his remarks imply a good deal about his intentions in
Lolita
. The “ nerves of the novel ” revealed in the Afterword underscore these intentions by generalizing Humbert’s passion. That the seemingly inscrutable Nabokov would even write this essay, let alone reprint it in magazines and append it to the twenty-five translations of
Lolita
, surely suggests the dismay he must have felt to see how many readers, including some old friends, had taken the book solely on an erotic level. Those exposed “nerves” should make it clear that insofar as it has a definable subject,
Lolita
is not merely about pedophilia. As Humbert says, rather than describing the details of the seduction at The Enchanted Hunters hotel, “ Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets. ” Humbert’s desires are those of a poet as well as a pervert, and not surprisingly, since they reflect, darkly, in a crooked enough mirror, the artistic desires of his creator.
    Humbert’s is a nightmare vision of the ineffable bliss variously sought by one Nabokov character after another. For a resonant summary phrase, one turns to
Agaspher
(1923), a verse drama written when Nabokov was twenty-four. An adaptation of the legend of the Wandering Jew, only its Prologue was published. Tormented by “dreams of earthly beauty,” Nabokov’s wanderer exclaims, “I shall catch you / catch you, Maria my inexpressible dream / from age to age!” 27 Near the end of another early work, the novel
King, Queen, Knave
(1928), an itinerant photographer walks down the street, ignored by the crowd, “yelling into the wind: ‘The artist is coming! The divinely favored,
der gottbegnadete
artist is coming!’ ”—a yell that ironically refers to the novel’s unrealized artist,