The Details of Desire: From Dolores on the Dotted Line to DottedDolores

Bouchet, Marie.

Nabokov Studies, Volume 9, 2005, pp. 101-114 (Article)

Published by International Vladimir Nabokov Society and Davidson College

DOI: 10.1353/nab.2005.0006

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Nabokov Studies 9 (2005)

MARIE C. BOUCHET (Bordeaux)

The Details of Desire: From Dolores onthe Dotted Line to Dotted Dolores

Lolita is an ambiguous object of desire. She is an “être de fuite,”1 a creaturein metamorphosis, as reflected in her transforming pubescent body. Her“twofold nature” (44) endows her with an essential ambiguity. She is a hybridcreature, halfway between woman and child, half-demon, half-angel, half-beast, half-beauty. Because of her very ambivalence, the nature of Lolita resistsHumbert’s attempts to “fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets” (134;all quotations are from The Annotated Lolita). His desire to seize her ambi-guous nature proves difficult to fulfill: “The beastly and the beautiful mergedat one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix and I feel I fail todo so utterly. Why?” (135). Thus, he repeatedly complains of his failure atcapturing the nymphet’s beauty in words:

A poet à mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes ofher pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbednose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannotrecall it today. (44)

The remnants of the destroyed poem offer instances of the methods Humbertuses to complete his impossible task of fixing the unfixable in words. In thisshort excerpt, the reader is given only parts of the girl’s body. The constantfragmentation process at work in the various depictions of nymphets relieson the three points that the present essay offers to develop: first, the meto-nymical devices—in the above example, there is even a mise en abyme ofmetonymy: for each fragment of Lolita, Humbert focuses on “a part of thepart” that stands for the whole—the lashes of the eyes, the freckles on thenose, the down on the limbs. Second, it is to be noticed that these fragmentsare extremely precise details. Such detailing will be paralleled with the impor-tance Nabokov gave to detail in his scientific, academic, and literary careers.

1. Proust uses the term être de fuite to define Albertine.

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The third point will underline the recurrence of markings on the body—here,above, the freckles—in the evocations of nymphets, for their metatextualfunction.

The Metonymical Essence of Desire

The text strives toward a thorough description of the bodies of nymphetswhile never managing to provide an overall image. Descriptions of nymphetsare but an incomplete collage of pieces. This is due not only to the changingnature of nymphets, but also, as Peter Brooks underscored, to the very char-acter of descriptive prose, which he defines as “inherently metonymical”(102). The written text cannot supply a complete picture of its object, buthas to articulate it word by word, limb by limb. Hence every description ofa nymphet relies on a tension between movement (the changing nature ofthe girl) and stasis (the describing process that tries to fix her in words). AsHumbert cannot give the reader a complete and stable picture of his belovedAnnabel and Lolita, he relies heavily on metonymy, rehearsing body parts andplaying on ellipses.

The suggestive power of metonymy enables the narrator to evoke inde-scribable fragments of the nymphet’s body, through an implicit and con-tiguous displacement. The following example illustrates both his troubleportraying nymphets and the metonymical device:

I would like to describe her face, her ways—and I cannot, because myown desire blinds me when she is near. I am not used to being withnymphets, damn it. If I close my eyes I see but an immobilized fractionof her, a cinematographic still, a sudden smooth nether loveliness, aswith one knee up under her tartan skirt she sits tying her shoe. (44)

Humbert, like Cupid, is blinded; and he is consequently reduced to depict-ing his imagined Lolita. It is the only image he can really master, like “acinematographic still”—a metaphor that aptly reflects the conjunction ofmove and halt. Yet even in the controlled realm of his imagination, he justprovides a fragment, a “fraction of her.” The very complex phrase “a suddensmooth nether loveliness” deserves close analysis. This image metamorphosesthe abstract concept of “loveliness” into a very sensual and concrete part ofLolita’s body, thanks to the zeugma that alliteratively brings together twoepithets, the temporal adjective “sudden,” and the tactile adjective “smooth.”The effect produced is close to synaesthesia, as three senses are involved: sight,touch, and hearing (through the sound effects). A scrutiny of the soundpatterns also reveals that the tension between movement and stasis is reflectedin the rhythmical structures.

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The accumulation of monosyllabic words confers a regularity on the endof the sentence, as if its cadence is slowed down by spondees closing theparagraph. Moreover, the alliterations reveal the effort to control the text’srhythm: after the tender alliteration in n (“a sudden smooth nether loveliness,as with one knee up under”), duplications of h, t, s, and sh (“her tartan skirtshe sits tying her shoe”) create a sound chiasmus that frames the word she.Yet, despite the control marked in the chiasmic structure, the surface of thetext is stirred by repressed desire—the still is blurred. The chiasmus is indeednot completely perfect, and, behind the screen of mastered spondees and chias-mus, behind the euphemism “nether loveliness,” between the skirt and theshoe, the observer’s desire can be read. As Roland Barthes says, in Le plaisirdu texte, “the most erotic place of the body is where clothing gapes [...]; it isintermittence [...] that is erotic”2 (17).

As this example illustrates, fragmentation rules the descriptions of Lolitaand her likes in the novel: a complete picture, what Barthes calls “the totalbody” (le corps total) is never given, nor can it be given, due to the metamor-phosing nature of nymphets’ bodies.3 It is in the blank between skirt and shoethat desire is revealed. Indeed, the depiction of these “twofold creatures”persistently relies on ellipsis.

Descriptions obliquely hint at parts of the girl’s body that remain in theunsaid, while attention is directed onto non-sexual parts. Humbert’s portraitof Lolita in her tennis outfit illustrates this technique:

The white wide little-boy shorts, the slender waist, the apricot midriff,the white breast-kerchief whose ribbons went up and encircled her neckto end behind in a dangling knot leaving bare her gaspingly young andadorable apricot shoulder blades with that pubescence and those lovelygentle bones, and the smooth, downward-tapering back. (231)

This is an important passage: Humbert says he cherishes the memories ofLolita playing tennis, and Nabokov himself indicated that the tennis sceneswere part of “the nerves of the novel” (316). Here, in this seemingly top-to-toe description of Lolita, displacements abound. One should first noticethe hypallage “gaspingly,” which is more relevant to qualify the gazer thanthe gazed. The text circles around the breasts and the pubic area, by lightly

2 . “l’endroit le plus érotique d’un corps [est] là où le vêtement bâille [...];

c’est l’intermittence, [...] qui est érotique,” (17); my translation.3. The numerous parallels that can be drawn between nymphets and but-

terflies have been underscored by many critics, notably Alfred Appel, Jr.; seeThe Annotated Lolita, 327 and 338–40.

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enveloping them in white tennis clothes that are like veils over the desiredbody. Humbert seems to relish in the white fabric in which his “solipsized”nymphet is clad.

Her body looks as if it had shrunk: her bust is reduced to a “midriff,” evenher shoulders are a softened structure—“that pubescence and those lovelygentle bones”—and her “downward-tapering back” seems to disappear underthe wide white shorts. It is as if the white garment invaded the textual space,in order to suggest the flesh it covers. Indeed, as Jenefer Shute has pointedout, “clothing reveals more than it conceals” (540). The nymphet’s pulsatingbody remains in the ellipsis, in the white blanks between the lines of the text.Eroticism is much more suggestive when it withholds information and lets thereader’s imagination fill in the blanks; indeed the nymphet is never depictednaked: nudes never appear, unless under a fantasized form.

Let us examine one of the few instances of an undressed nymphet. Walkingup the steps to room 342 of The Enchanted Hunters hotel, in which he lockedand drugged Lolita in order to be able to take advantage of her sleeping body,Humbert describes the image that has been haunting his nights for longmonths and that he hopes to find behind the door:

In the course of evocations and schemes to which I had dedicated somany insomnias, I had gradually eliminated the superfluous blur, andby stacking level upon level of translucent vision, had evolved a finalpicture. Naked, except for one sock and her charm bracelet, spread-eagled on the bed where my philter had felled her—so I foreglimpsedher; a velvet ribbon still clutched in her hand; her honey-brown body,with the white negative image of a rudimentary swimsuit patternedagainst her tan, presented to me its pale breastbuds; in the rosy lamp-light, a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock. (125)

Even though “naked” is emphatically placed at the opening of the description,the evocation of the body itself is delayed. The reader is given only accessories,another form of clothing. In addition, the chosen accessories belong to crucialthematic networks: the white sock is one of the main Lolita-motifs, as it isthe element foreshadowing the nymphet’s presence in the Haze house (39):a few lines after Charlotte Haze picked it up from the floor, Lolita appearson the stage of the novel. The white sock is a highly erotic object for Humbert,as it is also with one of her anklets that he deceives Charlotte when she is out,attending church (81). As for the “charm bracelet,” it echoes the enchant-ment (“my philter,” the hotel’s name) and fairy tale motifs that run through-out the novel, and in the Enchanted Hunters episode in particular.

In the second part of Humbert’s fantasy, once the body is finally disclosed,

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the white color is used again through the metaphor of film development,which betrays the absent presence of a clothing item—Lolita’s bathing suit.Just as film development reverses the white and black of the negative, thefunction of the white color, in this vision of the nymphet’s body, is the reverseof the one it had in the tennis garment portrait, outside Humbert’s fantasies.This time, it is in the white absence of clothing that appear the sexual partsthat were veiled by the tennis outfit. The white color is not a veil here, sinceon the contrary it points to the removal of the veil. In the white spaces under-lined by the tan, the nymphet’s sleeping body is objectified (see the repetitionof “its”). Yet another type of veil envelops Lolita’s breasts and pubis, the veilof the metaphors that ornament the text. Nabokov’s extraordinary stylistic re-finements are illustrated here: the floral image in “the pale breastbuds” echoesthe archetypal Proustian blooming young girl, and in the delicate floss-imageof “a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock,” the caress of the allitera-tions in l, s, p, and t is paired with the twinkling assonance in i.

Another example illustrates the recurrent devices used in the descriptiveprocess. It is taken from Humbert’s diary:

Changeful, bad-tempered, cheerful, awkward, graceful with the tartgrace of her coltish subteens, excruciatingly desirable from head to foot(all New England for a lady-writer’s pen!), from the black ready-madebow and bobby pins holding her hair in place to the little scar on thelower part of her neat calf (where a roller-skater kicked her in Pisky), acouple of inches above her rough white sock. Gone with her mother tothe Hamiltons—a birthday party or something. Full-skirted ginghamfrock. Her little doves seem well formed already. Precocious pet! (49)

Once more, Humbert first introduces the nymphet’s ambiguity, and thenpretends he is about to give a complete picture of Lolita; but the description“from head to foot” is to be taken literally, as he only provides one detail ofher head (another accessory, the bow), and one detail of her foot (the scarabove the recurrent white sock), with an ellipsis of what lies in-between. Oncemore, there is no mention of the body itself, but of her dress, and in the evo-cation, her breasts are again veiled by a metaphor. In addition to the meto-nymical and elliptical devices, the fragmented portrait is characterized by aclose-up on details. Brian Boyd underscored the recurrence of this feature ofNabokov’s style:

Rather than try to capture the whole, Nabokov tries to vivify the part. Sohe chooses an off-centre detail: “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning,standing four feet ten in one sock.” (149)

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The persistent use of detail is an essential feature not only for the creation ofpatterns in the novel, like the sock-motif for instance, but also for the depic-tion of nymphets.

“Every detail of her bright beauty”

Descriptions entail a slowing down of the narrative, or even a halt in the de-velopment of the plot. Hence narratologists such as Gérard Genette dubbedthem “descriptive pauses” (133). When Nabokov’s text pauses on a detail ofthe nymphet’s body, the suspension of narrative progression and the dila-tation of the moment of description are reinforced by a slowing down ofthe rhythm of the sentence itself. The detail being the focal point of thedescription, the impression of stalling, of coming to a halt, is thus enhanced.

This suspension effect can be illustrated by examining the preceding quotefrom the novel. If one focuses upon the first detail Humbert gives of Lolita,“the black ready-made bow and bobby pins holding her hair in place,” one cansense how the sensual alliteration in labials is followed by an alliteration in h,that provokes a slowing down of the rhythm, accentuated by the verb in -ingform. The text prolongs the close-up on the accessories by affixing a relativeclause losing itself in Lolita’s hair. A similar technique enables the narrator tolinger on the second detail: “the little scar on the lower part of her neat calf(where a roller-skater kicked her in Pisky), a couple of inches above her roughwhite sock.” Here, the lingering process is carried out through the parenthesisthat analeptically recalls the cause of the scar, and through the extremely de-tailed location of the mark conveyed by the anatomical precision, and themeasurement data. Indeed, the utmost precision that characterizes these spotsof desire is striking. For instance, the evocation of Lolita’s outfit in the samepassage: her “full-skirted gingham frock,” though briefly sketched, gives de-tailed information on the shape, cut, and material of the dress.

Another vision of Lolita’s garment can illustrate the Nabokovian use ofdetail. The following excerpt is taken from the beginning of the famous divanscene:

She wore that day a pretty print dress that I had seen on her once before,ample in skirt, tight in the bodice, short-sleeved, pink, checkered withdarker pink, and, to complete the color scheme, she had painted her lipsand was holding in her hollowed hands a beautiful, banal, Eden-redapple. (57)

The nymphet’s body again has to be guessed under the profusely detaileddescription of her clothes, punctuated by paired alliterations that give arhythm to the portrait. The different parts of the dress and the different color

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nuances of the fabric are meticulously rehearsed in a long series of adjectives.Lolita is a parodic Eve: she is not naked but fully dressed, and in pink, thecolor of her age, and not of the fatal apple. Yet the ambiguity of the nymphetis reflected in the ambivalence of the color scheme, which evolves fromadolescent pink to the red color of the fruit of sin. Lolita is further affiliated toadult women by the lipstick she used to match her body to her dress. Thelipstick is given more importance in the screenplay Nabokov wrote for thenovel. In the conversation following Humbert’s discovery of Lolita sunningitself in the backyard, Lolita explains to Humbert how she hides her lipstickfrom her mother:

HUMBERT: Does your mother allow lipstick?LOLITA: She does not. I hide it here.She indraws her pretty abdomen and produces it from under the bandof her shorts. (43–44)

This passage bears obvious echoes of the description of Lolita in the novel’sdiscovery scene, which is also structured on details:

I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southbound mouthhad briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed thecrenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts [...]. (39, emphasismine)

Nabokov thus uses details (the lipstick and the precisely exact echoes of thenovel) to create correspondences between the novel and its dramatization.The central role of details recalls Nabokov’s preference for the particular overthe general. In Strong Opinions, he repeatedly stated his aversion for commonobjects and his fondness for unique detail: “I believe in stressing the specificdetail; the general ideas can take care of themselves” (55). In an earlier inter-view, he underlined the major part detail played in both his artistic and hisscientific work:

As an artist and scholar I prefer the specific detail to the generalization,images to ideas, obscure facts to clear symbols, and the discovered wildfruit to the synthetic jam. (7)

Nabokov had an entomological practice of detail that his literary creationslargely reflect. For him, there was no real separation between art and science,especially when it comes to detail: “In high art as in pure science, detail iseverything” (Strong Opinions 168). Details are also essential because they en-dow the characters with powerful verisimilitude.

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Details prove to be crucial elements for the creation of a convincing refer-ential illusion. They are the ideal spots for “reality effects”—“effets de réel,” aconcept forged by Roland Barthes (89). Nabokov was aware of the mimeticpower of details. He thus documented himself in order to provide as many“real” details to his reader as possible, so that Lolita seemed totally verisimilar.The material kept by the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress con-tains some notes on the physical transformations that teenage girls undergo atspecific times. Found amongst these items are charts depicting the evolutionof the bodily measurements of adolescent females, which Nabokov copiedfrom various books. This research is echoed in the following excerpt in whichHumbert is about to go shopping for Lolita:

One of my guides in these matters was an anthropometric entry made byher mother on Lo’s twelfth birthday (the reader remembers that Know-Your-Child-Book). I had the feeling that Charlotte, moved by obscuremotives of envy and dislike, had added an inch here, a pound there;but since the nymphet had no doubt grown somewhat in the last sevenmonths, I thought I could safely accept most of those January measure-ments: hip girth, twenty-nine inches; thigh girth (just below the glutealsulcus), seventeen; calf girth and neck circumference, eleven; chestcircumference, twenty-seven; upper arm girth, eight; waist, twenty-three; stature, fifty-seven inches; weight, seventy-eight pounds; figure,linear; intelligence quotient, 121; vermiform appendix present, thankGod. (107)

Not only is the nymphet’s body literally detailed, but it is also scientificallydigitized. The presence of mathematical measurements and anatomical voca-bulary strengthens the illusion of “reality.” Different from scientific precision,some truly original details also stand for “reality effects”:

She was bare-footed; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polishand there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe. (51)

The two traces on the nymphet’s feet not only seem extremely realistic, butthey again place her on the threshold between childhood and womanhood.The adhesive tape relates her to the first, and the cherry-red polish to thelatter. The hybrid nature of Lolita is reaffirmed in these tiny but extremelysensual details.

In his Lectures on Literature, Nabokov underlined the sensual quality ofdetails by saying that “one should notice and fondle details” (1). With thatstatement in mind, it can be said that on such sensuous bodies as those ofnymphets, details are burning with sensuality. This is memorably perceived in

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the scene when Humbert discovers Lolita, and reincarnates his lost Annabelin her:

I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and de-light [...] I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my south-bound mouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I hadkissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts—that lastmad immortal day behind the “Roches Roses.” (39)

The identification and affiliation of the two nymphets is made through a de-tail: the mole on Lolita’s hip. In his Lectures on Russian Literature, Nabokovsaid that “details are the sensual spark without which a book is dead” (xi–xii),and this one mole provides a perfect example of “sensual spark.” In additionto the prevailing sensuality, the nymphet’s body seems to be mapped by thekiss, as the euphemism “my southbound mouth” indicates, and the allitera-tion in labials—“abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused;and those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by theband of her shorts”—mirrors the contact of lips and skin.

Yet there remains one paradox about detail. Though it is the ideal basis for“reality effects,” thanks to its mimetic force and the sensual aura around it, italso betrays the referential illusion itself. Indeed, Nabokov’s prose, when itexplores detail, attracts the reader’s attention to its written quality, throughthe various sound effects, daring metaphors, variations in rhythm, and otherstylistic aspects that produce a metatextual effect. Those details are thus astextual as they are sensual.

The Body as Text

In Lolita, the fragmentation process leads to an enhancement of desire spots,which call to mind Barthes’s notion of “punctum.” This notion was developedin his study of photography, entitled La Chambre Claire. Barthes defines“punctums” as the details that break the continuity of the background anddirectly reach the viewer/reader (47–48). When related to Lolita, one can saythat the details of the nymphet’s body can be considered literary “punctums.”

It is fascinating to note that, very often, these details are similar to signs onthe nymphet’s body. Their recurrence is striking, from the very first descrip-tion of Lolita (see above) to the last. In fact, “the crenulated imprint” onAnnabel’s hip is not only a sensual detail, but also a textual one. As the word“imprint” indicates, it is a sign that relates her body to a page on which a textis printed.

As Peter Brooks has demonstrated, “the bodily marking not only serves torecognise and identify, it also indicates the body’s passage into the realm of

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the letter, into literature” (22). The nymphet’s body is thus textualized, semi-otized—turned into a sign meant to be deciphered. Brooks has also under-scored the erotic value of those signs:

What presides at the inscription and imprinting of bodies is, in thebroadest sense, a set of desires: a desire that the body not be lost tomeaning—that it be brought into the realm of the semiotic and thesignificant—and, underneath this, a desire for the body itself, an eroticlonging to have or to be the body. [...]where it concerns writing a body,creating a textual body, the interplay of eros and artistic creation isparticularly clear. (22)

Numerous echoes of Humbert’s narrative strategy are to be found in thisanalysis: indeed, beyond the goal of “fixing once for all the perilous magic ofnymphets” lies Humbert’s desire to recapture his past romance, make Lolitahis, and redeem the life he imposed on her through artistic creation. More-over, the persistent focus on the signs dotting Lolita’s body has a metatextualfunction: it assimilates those inscriptions to written signs.

The present essay will now focus upon the typically Nabokovian recurrenceof body signs that establish the nymphet’s body as a text. Two types of signscan be distinguished: body marks (moles, freckles, dimples) and markings onthe body (scars, insect bites, traces).

As we have seen, the nymphets’ bodies display dots on their surfaces. Thevarious moles, freckles, or dimples are consciously chosen because they workas signs on the skin. If one examines Nabokov’s revision of the translation ofLolita into French, kept by the Berg Collection, New York Public Library, onemay notice that the author wanted the “dark-brown mole” on Lolita’s side tobe translated as “signe brun foncé” (“dark-brown sign,” my emphasis).4

Whenever Humbert describes his beloved nymphet, he prefers highlightingthe tiny elements that punctuate Lolita’s body over providing a complete pic-ture of her. Going back to the destroyed madrigal quoted in the introduction,one can notice that freckles are the central element of the evocation, under-lined by an alliteration in f:

A poet à mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes ofher pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbednose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannotrecall it today. (44)

4. Quoted by arrangement with the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov. All rights

reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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This would-be poem is an important structural passage, as it is the centerof a network of echoes that resound throughout the text: Lolita’s gray eyes,freckles, and downy limbs indeed form motifs that are woven into the text’sfabric. These punctums provide an interesting framing effect, as the three ofthem recur in the last description of Lolita. The freckles are the first elementto re-appear:

She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her head looked smaller [...] andher pale-freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and armshad lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. (269)

Her nymphic essence seems to have been eaten up by her pregnancy: the ele-ments in the madrigal are still present, but they are all faded. Further on in thecourse of his last encounter with Lolita, Humbert realizes he still loves her,even in this faded version. At this moment, the original words and colors ofthe madrigal resurface:

I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, paleand polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine. (278, em-phasis mine)

Another instance of the sensual and textual dots on Lolita’s skin are thedimples that adorn her pubescent body. For example, Humbert celebrates“the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent frock” (59). By referring tothe whole of her person with the adjective “dimpled,” Humbert extends themarking onto the totality of her body. Another extremely original use of thisadjective can be found: Humbert refers to “her dimpled dimness” (131). Inthis metaphor one can find the tension between precision (the dimples) andimprecision (dimness) that characterizes many descriptions of the nymphet(see the pattern of haze and mist in the novel). The two antagonistic notionsare delicately joined by the alliteration in d, providing an eerie mix of hazydarkness and sensual spots of desire.

Another category of punctums is the markings left by some exterior elementthat scars, bruises, or scratches the surface of the heroine’s skin. Unlike thefreckles or moles which have always been present on the body, these signs in-scribe the nymphet’s body with time, as they are the trace of some past event.Some of these signs are permanent, like the sensual detail noticedearlier—“the little scar on the lower part of her neat calf (where a roller-skaterkicked her in Pisky)” (49). In the key episode of Lolita playing tennis, thenarrator points to another permanent detail dotting her desired body:

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Did I ever mention that her bare arm bore the 8 of vaccination? That Iloved her hopelessly? That she was only fourteen? (234)

The declaration of love seems to rely on that sensual marking that epitomizesthe interplay of the visual and the textual: indeed the form of the markingitself is reproduced into the written text, and is a sign—the figure 8.

Some of the markings dotting the bodies of nymphets are impermanent,like “the crenulated imprint” (39) on Annabel’s side, which, though tempo-rary, was never forgotten by Humbert. He even uses one of these markingsas a pretext to touch Lolita. In the divan scene, approaching the climacticmoment, he notices a bruise on her leg:

“Look, look!”—I gasped—“look what you’ve done, what you’ve done toyourself, ah, look”; for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruiseon her lovely nymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged andslowly enveloped—and because of her very perfunctory underthings,there seemed to be nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reach-ing the hot hollow of her groin [...]. (60–61)

The narrator’s excitement is divulged by the repetitions and hesitations inhis stammering speech. The fact that the bruise is a pretext for him to caressLolita is all the clearer as Humbert feels the need to swear the bruise wasthere. The marking appears as the key opening the way to the underside ofLolita’s frock: a similar alliteration in h resounds in Humbert’s “huge hairyhand” and the “hot hollow of her groin,” thus subtly betraying the aim ofHumbert’s hand.

This essay will end on a last close-up on the heroine’s body. This is the firstsight Humbert has of Lolita when he comes to pick her up at Camp Q, afterlong weeks of separation:

She was all rose and honey, dressed in the brightest gingham, with apattern of little red apples, and her arms and legs were of a deep goldenbrown, with scratches like tiny dotted lines of coagulated rubies, and theribbed cuffs of her white socks were turned down at the rememberedlevel [...]. (111)

This depiction gathers a large number of Lolita-motifs, such as the white sock,the tan motif, or the rose-theme. The idea of pattern is even mise en abyme bythe mention of the “pattern of little red apples” that doubly echoes the divanscene: the apple and the gingham frock recall the apple she held and the dressshe wore on that sunny Sunday morning.

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The element to be stressed here is the “scratches like tiny dotted lines ofcoagulated rubies” that Humbert notices. These markings clearly establish thesemiotization of Lolita’s body, as the comparison parallels the scratches withpunctuation dots, thus metamorphosing her brown limbs into a text’s page.Moreover, in his analysis of punctums, Barthes related this notion to a text’spunctuation (49): an extremely apt analogy here.

The gem metaphor that renders Lolita’s dried blood preciously enhancesthe paradoxical beauty of the painful trace. The assonance in ai and the al-literations in l, t, and d that punctuate the text seem to mimic the red dottingon her skin. Moreover, the sound patterns contain a resonance of the conso-nants in Lolita’s name, and also carry an obvious echo to the opening of thenovel: “She was Dolores on the dotted line” (9).

From “Dolores on the dotted line” to a Dolores dotted with sensual details,Nabokov parallels Lolita’s desired body to a text through sensual as well astextual signs. The recurrence of these dots is yet another original way for theauthor to foreground the written, fictional quality of his creation. This tech-nique of semiotization of the nymphet’s body has to be underlined, as it is anunnoticed aspect of the metatextual strategies Nabokov persistently uses, asmany critics have otherwise noted.

Looking back once again on the destroyed madrigal, one can sense anotherparadox. Indeed, even if Humbert experienced difficulty in trying to fix thenymphet’s “twofold nature” and ambiguous beauty in words, the remnants ofhis destroyed piece of verse somehow provide a little poem in prose:

A poet à mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes ofher pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbednose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannotrecall it today. (44)

The alliterative inflexions (“five asymmetrical freckles,” “bobbed,” “blond,”“brown”) and assonantic echoes in a, ei, ai, o and au create a musical regular-ity punctuated by the anaphora “to the,” which brings to mind the traditionof blazons. Such a hybrid form of prose and poetry seems to be the only onethat can approach Lolita’s beauty, because it is harmonious with her ownhybrid nature.

“Lolita” is the title, the first and last word of a beautiful novel, but it isthrough the dots punctuating her body that the blending of nymphet and textis sensually recalled: Lolita and Lolita are indeed the same.

114 Nabokov Studies

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “L’effet de réel.” Littérature et réalité. Roland Barthes et al.Paris: Seuil, 1982.

———. La Chambre claire, Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 1980.

———. Le plaisir du texte. Paris: Seuil, 1973.

Boyd, Brian. “Nabokov and Tolstoy.” Scripsi 9.1 (1993): 139–56.

Brooks, Peter. Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993.

Genette, Gérard. Figures III. Paris: Seuil, 1972.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

———. Lectures on Russian Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.

———. Lolita: A Screenplay. New York: Vintage, 1997.

———. Strong Opinions. New York: Vintage, 1990.

———. The Annotated Lolita. Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage, 1991.

Shute, Jenefer. “The Text of the Female Body in Nabokov’s Novels.”Amerikastudien 30.4 (1985): 537–43.