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