The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated by Vladimir Nabokov Page A
Authors: Vladimir Nabokov
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Spectator
, March 24, 1967, p. 336. Reprinted in
Urgent Copy
(New York, 1969).
19 A photograph of these drawings appears in
Time
, May 23, 1969, p. 83.
20 For several reminiscences of Nabokov, see
Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute
, edited by Peter Quennell (New York, 1980).
21 In
Pale Fire
, Charles Kinbote spies John Shade seated in his car, “reading a tabloid newspaper which I had thought no poet would deign to touch” (p. 22).
22 The course in question is Literature 311–312, “Masterpieces of European Fiction,” MWF, 12 (first term: Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
, Gogol’s
Dead Souls
, Dickens’s
Bleak House
, Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary
, and Tolstoy’s
The Death of Ivan Ilyich;
second term: Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
, Stevenson’s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, Gogol’s
The Overcoat
, Kafka’s
The Metamorphosis
, Proust’s
Swann’s Way
, and
Ulysses
, in that order). The quotations are from the annotator’s class notes of 1953–1954 and can be supplemented now by Nabokov’s
Lectures on Literature
(New York, 1980).
23 Although published in New York in 1941, a year after Nabokov’s emigration,
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
was in fact written in Paris in 1938 (in English). Students of chronology should also note that
Lolita
precedes
Pnin
(1957). The date of the former’s American publication (1958) has proved misleading.
24 For Nabokov’s later description of
posblost
(as he then transliterated it), see his
Paris Review
interview, collected in
Strong Opinions
(New York, 1973), pp. 100–101.
25 Satirized too is the romantic myth of the child, extending from Wordsworth to Salinger. “The McCoo girl?” responds Lolita kindly. “Ginny McCoo? Oh, she’s a fright. And mean. And lame. Nearly died of polio.” If the origin of modern sentimentality about the child’s innocence can be dated at 1760, with the publication of
Mother Goose’s Melodies
, then surely
Lolita
marks its death in 1955.
26 From the annotator’s class notes, 1953–1954.
27 Translated and quoted by Andrew Field,
op. cit
., p. 79.
28 Vladislav Khodasevich, “On Sirin” (1937), translated by Michael H. Walker, edited by Simon Karlinsky and Robert P. Hughes,
TriQuarterly
, No. 17 (Winter 1970).
29 I have elsewhere discussed the novel as a novel, as well as an artifice; see my article “
Lolita
: The Springboard of Parody,”
Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature
, VIII (Spring 1967), 204–241. Reprinted in L. S. Dembo, ed.,
Nabokov: The Man and His Work
(Madison, 1967).
30 See frw.1 , p1.c9.1 , p1.c11.1 , p1.c13.1 , p1.c15.1 , p1.c20.1 , p1.c22.1 , p1.c24.1 , p1.c29.1 , p1.c32.1 , p1.c32.1 , p2.c1.1 , p2.c2.1 , p2.c2.2 , p2.c2.3 , p2.c3.1 , p2.c7.1 , p2.c9.1 , p2.c14.1 , p2.c16.1 , p2.c17.1 , p2.c19.1 , p2.c22.1 , p2.c23.1 , p2.c24.1 , p2.c25.1 , p2.c26.1 , p2.c36.1 , and p2.c36.1 —not to mention Humbert’s several interjections to the jury ( p1.c29.1 is typical), to mankind in general (“ Human beings, attend! ”), and to his car (“ Hi, Melmoth, thanks a lot, old fellow ”). One waxes statistical here because H.H.’s direct address is an important part of the narrative, and important too in the way that it demonstrates a paradoxically new technique. In regard to literary forms and devices, there is almost nothing new under the sun (to paraphrase a poet); it is contexts and combinations that are continually being made new. One epoch’s realism is another’s surrealism. To the Elizabethan playgoer or the reader of Cervantes, the work-within-the-work was a convention; to an audience accustomed to nineteenth-century realism, it is fantastic, perplexing, and strangely affecting. The same can be said of the reintroduction of “old-fashioned” direct address, revived and transmogrified at a moment in literary history when the post-Jamesian novelists seemed to have forever ruled out such self-conscious devices by refining the newer “impressionistic” conventions (the effaced narrator, the “central
, March 24, 1967, p. 336. Reprinted in
Urgent Copy
(New York, 1969).
19 A photograph of these drawings appears in
Time
, May 23, 1969, p. 83.
20 For several reminiscences of Nabokov, see
Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute
, edited by Peter Quennell (New York, 1980).
21 In
Pale Fire
, Charles Kinbote spies John Shade seated in his car, “reading a tabloid newspaper which I had thought no poet would deign to touch” (p. 22).
22 The course in question is Literature 311–312, “Masterpieces of European Fiction,” MWF, 12 (first term: Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
, Gogol’s
Dead Souls
, Dickens’s
Bleak House
, Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary
, and Tolstoy’s
The Death of Ivan Ilyich;
second term: Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
, Stevenson’s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, Gogol’s
The Overcoat
, Kafka’s
The Metamorphosis
, Proust’s
Swann’s Way
, and
Ulysses
, in that order). The quotations are from the annotator’s class notes of 1953–1954 and can be supplemented now by Nabokov’s
Lectures on Literature
(New York, 1980).
23 Although published in New York in 1941, a year after Nabokov’s emigration,
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
was in fact written in Paris in 1938 (in English). Students of chronology should also note that
Lolita
precedes
Pnin
(1957). The date of the former’s American publication (1958) has proved misleading.
24 For Nabokov’s later description of
posblost
(as he then transliterated it), see his
Paris Review
interview, collected in
Strong Opinions
(New York, 1973), pp. 100–101.
25 Satirized too is the romantic myth of the child, extending from Wordsworth to Salinger. “The McCoo girl?” responds Lolita kindly. “Ginny McCoo? Oh, she’s a fright. And mean. And lame. Nearly died of polio.” If the origin of modern sentimentality about the child’s innocence can be dated at 1760, with the publication of
Mother Goose’s Melodies
, then surely
Lolita
marks its death in 1955.
26 From the annotator’s class notes, 1953–1954.
27 Translated and quoted by Andrew Field,
op. cit
., p. 79.
28 Vladislav Khodasevich, “On Sirin” (1937), translated by Michael H. Walker, edited by Simon Karlinsky and Robert P. Hughes,
TriQuarterly
, No. 17 (Winter 1970).
29 I have elsewhere discussed the novel as a novel, as well as an artifice; see my article “
Lolita
: The Springboard of Parody,”
Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature
, VIII (Spring 1967), 204–241. Reprinted in L. S. Dembo, ed.,
Nabokov: The Man and His Work
(Madison, 1967).
30 See frw.1 , p1.c9.1 , p1.c11.1 , p1.c13.1 , p1.c15.1 , p1.c20.1 , p1.c22.1 , p1.c24.1 , p1.c29.1 , p1.c32.1 , p1.c32.1 , p2.c1.1 , p2.c2.1 , p2.c2.2 , p2.c2.3 , p2.c3.1 , p2.c7.1 , p2.c9.1 , p2.c14.1 , p2.c16.1 , p2.c17.1 , p2.c19.1 , p2.c22.1 , p2.c23.1 , p2.c24.1 , p2.c25.1 , p2.c26.1 , p2.c36.1 , and p2.c36.1 —not to mention Humbert’s several interjections to the jury ( p1.c29.1 is typical), to mankind in general (“ Human beings, attend! ”), and to his car (“ Hi, Melmoth, thanks a lot, old fellow ”). One waxes statistical here because H.H.’s direct address is an important part of the narrative, and important too in the way that it demonstrates a paradoxically new technique. In regard to literary forms and devices, there is almost nothing new under the sun (to paraphrase a poet); it is contexts and combinations that are continually being made new. One epoch’s realism is another’s surrealism. To the Elizabethan playgoer or the reader of Cervantes, the work-within-the-work was a convention; to an audience accustomed to nineteenth-century realism, it is fantastic, perplexing, and strangely affecting. The same can be said of the reintroduction of “old-fashioned” direct address, revived and transmogrified at a moment in literary history when the post-Jamesian novelists seemed to have forever ruled out such self-conscious devices by refining the newer “impressionistic” conventions (the effaced narrator, the “central
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