The Maar/Zimmer exchange is
nothing short of a boxing match. Gloves off, gentlemen! Is there any reason Mr
Zimmer did not comment on what (at least I thought) was the most intriguing
part of Mr Maar’s letter in the TLS? Namely the (supposed) references to the
‘pale Spanish child’ made by VN himself in
‘Lolita’:
>In the second chapter, Humbert
Humbert watches Lolita among other nymphets at the swimming-pool, and recalls
that none ever surpassed her in desirability, with a few exceptions: "once in
the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, the daughter of a heavy-jawed
nobleman, and another time 'mais je divague'". Why did Nabokov introduce this
Spanish daughter of a nobleman as the only child capable of competing with
Lolita? She lacks any obvious function in the text. On the following pages she
appears inconspicuously once again as Lolita's little Spanish friend. She is
"the lesser nymphet, a diaphanous darling", with whom Lolita jumps a rope. On
leaving the scene with Lo, Humbert flashes a smile at this "shy, dark-haired
page-girl of my princess", who thereupon disappears from the novel.
Who is
smiling here to whom - the paedophile Humbert at a missed chance, or his
creator at the lesser Spanish nymphet of the aristocrat Lichberg, who had
supplied the services of a page to the true princess? Referential mania? If
only one ever knew with this Rastelli.<
Could there be/is there any other
explanation (come on, VN heavyweights!) for this Spanish child than the one
put forward by Maar?
TA Colquhoun