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Double Rumbles and luminous limpidity
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Dear List,
In "Strong Opinions" VN answers questions without abandoning the magic suggestiveness we encounter in his written texts by stylistically reinforcing the connection bt. the sound and the words that inspire him ( the fact that he most probably wrote his comments in advance of the interview makes no difference at this point). To explain his choice of the name "Lolita", he doesn't directly point to the "double L" in the nymphet's name, but mentions its "lyrical lilt" and the "limpid luminous letter L".
Besides, he also clarifies the "sources" and even affluents of his associations for "Lolita" or "Humbert". He writes that the name "Lolita" was chosen because of its "lyrical lilt" and "the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in Dolores" that sustain "her heartrending fate" together "with cuteness and limpidity".
In the same answer he offers its contrast to Humbert Humbert's "double rumble". (SO,25-26, Vintage) and its haunting bawdy presence in another sentence on "idealistic humbuggery" (SO,58).
There are other non-humbertian rumbles in "Lolita" ( "cars, stars", "barmen, carmen") that sound again in SO as he refers, for example,
to Hemmingway's novels synthetized as "bells,balls, and bulls" (SO, 80). And yet, alliteration and onomatopeic choices may also express a different mood. In the same sentence about "Lolita" and her sweet smelling name we find "Dolores, roses and tears" sorrowfully become "Eros, the rose and the sore" in "ADA" ( Ada, part II, chp.5, page 367) while Van muses before meeting Lucette:
"He had left the parlor door that opened on the landing slightly ajar, but somehow missed the sound of her high heels on the stairs (or did not distinguish them from his heartbeats) while he was in the middle of his twentieth trudge' back to the ardors and arbors! Eros qui prend son essor! Arts that our marblery harbors: Eros, the rose and the sore,' I am ill at these numbers, but e'en rhymery is easier 'than confuting the past in mute prose.' Who wrote that? Voltimand or Voltemand? Or the Burning Swine? A pest on his anapest! 'All our old loves are corpses or wives.' All our sorrows are virgins or whores."
Even if matter and form, spirit and style are often separated, in VN's minimalistic music in English they are often rejoined, sometimes explosivelly so.
If VN had written a novel, such as ADA, directly in Russian, I wonder if it might have resulted in a different story altogether!
Jansy Mello
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In "Strong Opinions" VN answers questions without abandoning the magic suggestiveness we encounter in his written texts by stylistically reinforcing the connection bt. the sound and the words that inspire him ( the fact that he most probably wrote his comments in advance of the interview makes no difference at this point). To explain his choice of the name "Lolita", he doesn't directly point to the "double L" in the nymphet's name, but mentions its "lyrical lilt" and the "limpid luminous letter L".
Besides, he also clarifies the "sources" and even affluents of his associations for "Lolita" or "Humbert". He writes that the name "Lolita" was chosen because of its "lyrical lilt" and "the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in Dolores" that sustain "her heartrending fate" together "with cuteness and limpidity".
In the same answer he offers its contrast to Humbert Humbert's "double rumble". (SO,25-26, Vintage) and its haunting bawdy presence in another sentence on "idealistic humbuggery" (SO,58).
There are other non-humbertian rumbles in "Lolita" ( "cars, stars", "barmen, carmen") that sound again in SO as he refers, for example,
to Hemmingway's novels synthetized as "bells,balls, and bulls" (SO, 80). And yet, alliteration and onomatopeic choices may also express a different mood. In the same sentence about "Lolita" and her sweet smelling name we find "Dolores, roses and tears" sorrowfully become "Eros, the rose and the sore" in "ADA" ( Ada, part II, chp.5, page 367) while Van muses before meeting Lucette:
"He had left the parlor door that opened on the landing slightly ajar, but somehow missed the sound of her high heels on the stairs (or did not distinguish them from his heartbeats) while he was in the middle of his twentieth trudge' back to the ardors and arbors! Eros qui prend son essor! Arts that our marblery harbors: Eros, the rose and the sore,' I am ill at these numbers, but e'en rhymery is easier 'than confuting the past in mute prose.' Who wrote that? Voltimand or Voltemand? Or the Burning Swine? A pest on his anapest! 'All our old loves are corpses or wives.' All our sorrows are virgins or whores."
Even if matter and form, spirit and style are often separated, in VN's minimalistic music in English they are often rejoined, sometimes explosivelly so.
If VN had written a novel, such as ADA, directly in Russian, I wonder if it might have resulted in a different story altogether!
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm