AFio
Humbert is playing with the English language and with the idea and appearance of school girls’ garments. There are no garments called swooners, but Humbert’s list of purchases includes “shorts” and “all kinds of summer frocks,” some or all of which Humbert finds sexy. In other words, garments to swoon over if one is a pedophile with a fancy prose style.
There is no question that if Humbert were to encounter the swooner garments of today, his cardiac condition would have flattened him a lot sooner than it does in America of the late forties, early fifties.
Painted-on Apple Bottom jeans riding low enough to show off the jeweled magenta thong, and a skinny cotton top cut deeply enough to advertise the Juicy brand Victoria Secret bra and its contents, high enough at the hem to reveal the jeweled navel ring, and brief enough behind to allow the circular tailbone tattoo to be admired or read or deciphered or solved every time the child reaches down for the handle of her roller-wheeled carry-on luggage, would have Humbert writhing on the floor clutching his chest by chapter three of his Confessions of a White Widowed Male.
Andrew Stuart Brown
On 8/27/06 8:53 AM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Swooners?
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 02:54:01 -0700
From: Aris Fioretos <aris.fioretos@T-ONLINE.DE> <mailto:aris.fioretos@T-ONLINE.DE>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
I'm about to complete a new Swedish translation of "Lolita." There's one word the meaning of which
still eludes me. In the last chapter of Part One, Humbert refers to some items of clothing that he has
just purchased. What, pray, are "swooners"? None of the dictionaries I've consulted have been able to
offer any help.
AFio
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