JM:
Related to "reversions" there's one instance in "Ada" that
once caught my fancy: "At the Goodson
Airport, in one of the gilt-framed mirrors of its old-fashioned waiting room,
Van glimpsed the silk hat of his father who sat awaiting him in an armchair of
imitation marblewood, behind a newspaper that said in reversed characters:
‘Crimea Capitulates.’ At the same moment a raincoated man with a pleasant,
somewhat porcine, pink face accosted Van." In this example,
although not dealing with a person's name, the reversion of the headlines
on Crimea's capitulation ( unlike Van's stunts of standing
on his head, ie, linked to the Latin "caput" or, even, in the way
by which Gurk's pass was shown to Krug), is here applicable
only to the individual letters, not to their position
in the sentence.
Unfortunately, despite Crimean dancers and disasters
being mentioned in "Ada", I cannot grasp Nabokov's intention nor do I
know how to operate with the connections he offers (perhaps this is why I
retained in my mind this
particular sentence).
As you pointed out, anyone who yells
"there's nobody here" is announcing his presence and, therefore, this
"nikto" demands a disguise - as it seems you've also alluded to
it, in connection to the dropped "b" (Botkin/Nikto), related
to BS's Hamlet's "to be or not to be." However,
your question, quoted at the beginning, still
baffles me. I'm sure Nabokov always intended to leave his "watermark"
on everything he wrote but, at the same time, I also think he wanted to
"write himself out of his novels" (as when he writes about characters whom
he has expelled to a cathedral's façade like
gothic gargoyles).
By sheer sonorous association to "nikto" ( I only just
came across the word "nictate" while leafing thru Lolita's new
translation and something in your text led me to remember it again) I
offer one or two considerations. In his confessions Humbert is at his most recherché
Swiss, but I don't know if he consulted Webster's 2 nor what are
Webster's entries for the word "nictate". The sentence in which he
employs the term is totally and charmingly innocent,
but very passionate - and this is why I was surprised to find a
correlate to "nictate" in "to wink at a crime" or "to be connivant"
- as if HH were already suggesting Lolita's complicity in his crimes.
Is it possible?
"I came across her in her mother's bedroom. Prying her left
eye open to get rid of a speck of something. Checked frock. Although I do love
that intoxicating brown fragrance of hers, I really think she should wash her
hair once in a while. For a moment, we were both in the same warm green bath of
the mirror that reflected the top of a poplar with us in the sky. Held her
roughly by the shoulders, then tenderly by the temples, and turned her about.
"It's right there," she said. "I can feel it." "Swiss peasant would use the top
of her tongue." "Lick it out?" "Yeth. Shly try?" "Sure," she said. Gently I
pressed my quivering sting along her rolling salty eyeball. "Goody-goody," she
said nictating. "It is gone." "Now the other?" "You dope," she
began, "there is noth —" but here she noticed the pucker of my approaching lips.
"Okay," she said cooperatively, and bending toward her warm upturned russet face
somber Humbert pressed his mouth to her fluttering eyelid. She laughed, and
brushed past me out of the room. My heart seemed everywhere at once. Never in my
life ..."
Various online dictionaries refer to "nictitate" and "nictate" as
"blinking", "batting eyelids" or "winking" (the exact word for the scene HH is
describing). However,“connive” was also mentioned, as in "to wink
at a crime" or to "pretend to be ignorant of something in order to escape
the blame." Cf. "Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper, 2001"
and The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009.
Etymology: from Latin nictō (“wink”); "Gently I
pressed my quivering sting along her rolling salty eyeball. ‘Goody-goody,’ she
said nictating." — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita,1955.