You reminded me that there are "aurochs" in PF, too: "Conmal [...] needed half a century to translate the works of him whom he called "dze Bart,"[...] and had just completed Kipling’s "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers"[...] when he fell ill and soon expired under his splendid painted bed ceil with its reproductions of Altamira animals, his last words in his last delirium being "Comment dit-on ‘mourir’ en anglais?" — a beautiful and touching end."

Thank you! (btw: I had to look up "ceil" and wikipedia offered 'pale blue' associated to 'surgical scrubs', and also to ceiling, ie: "in mathematics and computer science, the floor and ceiling functions are two mathematical functions which convert arbitrary real numbers to close integers". Interesting bifurcation.)

You wrote: "The very fact--as Vera pointed out--that Dolores seems daily to be in tears (or on the verge of them) is enough--along with the other details you mention--to help us see that there is another girl beneath Humbert's mannequin. My response was to the question of whether we are able to access her subjectivity. It seems to me that the pang of sorrow that throbs through the book is largely produced by the realization that there is a Dolores in there whom we will never be able to reach. We glimpse her for a moment, but she is gone, replaced, before we can save her."

In "Lolita" we encounter frequent indications of there being a "Dolores in there": does this apply to what you consider her "subjectivity"? What do you mean by "she is gone, replaced, before we can save her"?

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