Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Chapter 1.
«Le pli […] n’étant ni l’un ni l’autre et les deux à la fois, indécidable…»1
–Jacques Derrida
Our reading of Lolita is the consent we hand to Humbert as he enraptures us in his language. Once our eyes behold the words on the page, we too have penetrated Lolita. Her name is his primary utterance, but this name is a double diminutive. Its first diminutive is Lola, a nickname of Dolores. As this double down moves further from Dolores in and of herself, it determines the existence of Lolita. The materialisation of her name is sanctioned by Humbert, as he holds authority over that which he names.
Indeed, we never meet Dolores—questioning her very existence—for in reading the text, we consent to Humbert’s world. This renders those who stand by ethics as hypocritical, for they cannot even remember the book by her name (Dolores); it is a name that refuses to be remembered. Dolores (i.e., pain) is associated with the PIE root *delh- ‘to chop’. As such, there are necessarily many iterations of her—as much as it feels like to be her, when that ‘pain’ is expressed by a feeling of being torn apart.
Humbert’s ‘Lolita’ is thus spoken as an omen that gestures towards these iterations in the second paragraph: “She was Lo […] She was Lola […] She was Dolly […] She was Dolores […] But in my arms she was always Lolita”. This anaphora of identification lends the unsaid clauses emphasis. The activities of these clauses are disturbingly hyper-fixated on her premature age. Humbert finishes this series with the name that sustains her official existence, before utilizing the conjunction. It interrupts, and consequently dissolves all clausal remembrances of her age in a cynical feat. Formally, it relieves the listener of the atrocious anaphora, this technique meaning ‘the bearing on one’s back’ from ἀνα- (back) φέρειν (to bear). We are relieved into his arms, alongside Lolita herself as he escorts us through his language, having developed Stockholm syndrome. The paradox of her existence is this: whatever “she was” in the past never existed, because within every occasion she was “Lolita” as per the adverb “always”. All planes of her existence collapse in this text Lolita, spoken in word. As for the name itself, the suffix -ita is a double entendre that speaks to her small size and Humbert’s perverted endearment and tenderness.
Before this perversion is revealed, we enter into a declaration of his (sane) love for Lolita: “Lolita, light of my life […]”. Humbert opens the floor with loaded words and phrases that congest the room, although at an initial glean its content is seemingly welcomed. He speaks in idioms, that is from ἰδίωμα (to appropriate to oneself) from ἴδιος (personal, private). In a contemporary scene, idioms seem to be deracinated from that Ancient Greek meaning because they are used in common. However, it is precisely because they are used in common to enshroud a peculiar meaning that it is still intimate with the Ancient Greek from afar. When Humbert speaks in idioms, it is to express an experience that cannot be reduced to words, rendering its content empty for whoever receives it.
Justifiably, what remains is linguistic virtuosity, the aesthetics for which Nabokov is so celebrated for. Lolita’s ethics in content are only disclosed and shaped as we press on reading. This reading cannot polarize ethics and aesthetics—for it is through aesthetics that ethics matters, and it is through ethics that aesthetics form. So, speaking in idioms is the joke Humbert plays that the jury (i.e., the common man and woman) fall into. The ridiculous exhilaration (‘oh wow’) of the jury in response (at this point) is unnerving, in turning to idioms as a manifestation of an exclusive experience. Humbert tragically deploys this technique from the start because he suspects that we will not engage in the contradiction between ethics and aesthetics, for we are already suspicious of him on trial. This tragedy almost implodes after uttering her name, which he makes his own (a daring thing to cross over into). It is positively aporetic: an odd and particular impasse.
If we are willing to cross over into it, our minds will remember the utterance of Andromache who laments over her son as the “ὀφθαλμὸς βίου” (Euripides 406), i.e., the eye of (my) life. Humbert likens himself to this tragic figure, with Lolita as his creation and savior. Lolita is doubled as Andromache obscures and confuses which of her sons this evocation is toward. The Lolita that exists (i.e., insofar as we have been speaking of her existence) is like Andromache’s second son, birthed after her displacement. Dolores (or whoever Lolita was) is akin to Andromache’s first son, who was thrown from the wall. A death that is immediate (and immanent), having been cast outside boundaries. Whoever Lolita was, never was because Annabel dies. Humbert only knows who Lolita was through Annabel’s death (that nothingness). Annabel is who Lolita was. Interruptingly, Lolita is conceived and born from that which should be covered (in euphemism too): “[…] fire of my loins […].” The author-creation dynamic is sparked from a “fire” that both animates and consumes, a pattern also in Humbert’s sentence structure (i.e., light-fire and life-loins).
Their reliable formulae (i.e., gender + age), if we were to reduce them to such, is derived from the hyphenated words within “certain initial girl-child”. Annabel was the beginning place that determined our going into (as per the etymological pun within “initial”) Lolita. Humbert is tragically oxymoronic in the first pairing “certain initial”. Where he desires to be particular, he cannot explicitly name for fear of the ethical. The reference to someone via the vagueness of “certain” is usually made out of politeness for their age (of an older woman). The “initial” is thus the ensigning that he refuses to make, signalling that Lolita as a sign is almost arbitrary (as he who creates her).
Humbert names her, but not in ownership or as a rule (rendering the aforementioned formulae unreliable). Rather like so: “Lolita […] my […] my […]. My sin, my soul.” Although Humbert authors Lolita’s name, every “my” taken brings him further away from her and into himself. But it is from himself that he names her, and this circles back: “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” The breaths of the prior sentence (i.e., comma, comma, period.) establish a 3/4 rhythm, resembling the “three steps” of a dance that anticipate the three-fold enunciation of her name. The T alliteration fashions it as a tongue twister, for her name is this dance, where who leads and follows is obscure. The sense of the “tongue” pronounces the performative element of this world, lengthened and deliberated through the L, M and I alliterations.
The question lingers: “Did she have a precursor?”. It is an open question asked by Humbert, because in one sense no one asked for it. Yet in another sense, it is a rhetorical question that confirms our question concerning the essence, or “soul” of Lolita. Humbert knows this because his answer uses the wording of his own question, as if to reaffirm our thinking in reverse: “She did, indeed she did.” It repeats, with the insertion of that qualifier “indeed”. The word is a pun when split syllabically as in-deed. The joke is not only on the sexual deeds of Humbert with Annabel and Lolita. The word addresses its readers who consent (or act in agreement) to the sexual crimes through the aforementioned question. Lolita is Humbert’s performative world (insofar as a deed involves a ‘doing’). Reminiscing on the “ὀφθαλμὸς βίου”, light as “eye” in translation refers to this performative act as counteractively bodily. Lolita is the light through which Humbert sees the world; she reflects the world.
He continues with the uncontracted phrase of “indeed” to be provocative: “In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child.” Humbert confesses to creating Lolita (as the text, the sin, the person etc.). This is the first time Humbert says “I”. Is it to atone for his sins? The recurrent juxtapositions in his speech highlight the absurdity of his being on trial. The ridiculousness is turned on the accuser who points his fingers at Humbert when he ‘excuses’ himself from his crime. His confession points to the possibility (“might”) of a negation of his creation (“no Lolita”). Lolita is a non-possibility, but not merely on a linguistic technicality. As an entity of relation, to entertain the erasure of her entire existence (“at all”) is to erase all those involved in that relation (viz., Humbert, Annabel, and us as the jury). More simply, those allegations are futile because the text itself exists. Lolita is a “sin”, not a crime. The trial is the very space for Humbert to presence Lolita, for she is not the crime for which he is on trial for. Humbert does not say “I” in the way a judge wants the defendant to use it; as a deviation from the crime, which rouses an inescapable empathy.
As if nonchalantly returning from a more real reality, Humbert indulges us in a claustrophobic and overcomplicated math problem: “Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer.” In a moment of self-awareness (realizing for what he is on trial), Humbert explicitly addresses us: “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” Only now as a second-person pronoun do we awaken to the trial scene, but with an amnesia that wonders how murder is relevant. Humbert does not manipulate here; he revels against the aesthetic claims of his audience by implicitly accusing them of relying on their identifier for him—“murderer”—calculated as a number whereby he cannot plead his case. Although he would not plead because he shamelessly admits it to be true, his sarcasm shows that those who defend him for the sake of aesthetics are hypocrites too. His speech is not reduced to mere ornamentality.
At this point in the chapter, Humbert deviates (at large) towards Annabel Lee (Edgar Allan Poe): “[…] one summer […] In a princedom by the sea […] exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied.” With this sentiment of nostalgia, I regrettably (but only temporarily) leave these conversations to another essay. This essay already gestures to that conversation, which necessitates reading as an experience of relation itself. A reading of Lolita is to take the path that enters into entanglement and disentanglement, digression and regression—to that asymptote of asides (an appropriation). Entering as entrancement.
Ladies and gentlemen, Lolita is an epistemic spiral between ethics and aesthetics, death and birth, author and creation, sin and crime, empathy and judgment. Nabokov defines this spiral in Speak, Memory as “a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, unwound, had ceased to be vicious, it has been set free.” This is a text in a fit of lucid madness, which we should read in fear.
‘The fold… being neither one nor the other but both at the same time… undecidable.’