1. The little black diary mentioned by Humbert Humbert, with
false precision, in his Sept/Nov. 1952
Confessions "was destroyed five years ago and
what we examine now (by courtesy of a photographic memory) is but its brief
materialization, a puny unfledged phœnix.I remember the thing so exactly because
I wrote it really twice." He started to use it in 1947 ( &,
from Ramsdale, since the last days in May).
Does anybody remember when,why or how was this diary
destroyed?
2. In his Preamble, John Ray Jr. warns the readers about a change of
the names referred to by HH in his Confessions: "Its author's bizarre cognomen is his own invention... While 'Haze'
only rhymes with the heroine's real surname, her first name is too closely
interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it...
References to 'H.H.''s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the
daily papers...For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the
destinies of the 'real' people beyond the 'true' story, a few details may be
given as received from Mr. 'Windmuller,' of 'Ramsdale,' who desires his identity
suppressed ...His daughter, 'Louise,' is by now a college sophomore, 'Mona Dahl'
is a student in Paris. 'Rita' has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in
Florida. Mrs. 'Richard F. Schiller' died in childbed, giving birth to a
stillborn girl...'Vivian Darkbloom' has written a biography, 'My
Cue'..."
From his reborn notes we read: "Thursday.
We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month.
In a volume of the Young People's Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that
a child's pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon
the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the
Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class
at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart." At the end
of the list, he adds: "A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to
discover this "Haze, Dolores" (she!) in its special bower of names, with its
bodyguard of roses — a fairy princess between her two maids of
honor."
Angel, Grace / Austin, Floyd /
Beale, Jack / Beale, Mary / Buck, Daniel / Byron, Marguerite / Campbell, Alice /
Carmine, Rose / Chatfield, Phyllis/ Clarke, Gordon/Cowan, John /Cowan, Marion/
Duncan, Walter/ Falter, Ted /Fantasia, Stella /Flashman, Irving / Fox, George/
Glave, Mabel/ Goodale, Donald/Green, Lucinda / Hamilton, Mary Rose/ Haze,
Dolores/ Honeck, Rosaline/ Knight, Kenneth/ McCoo, Virginia/ McCrystal, Vivian/
McFate, Aubrey/ Miranda, Anthony/
Miranda, Viola /Rosato, Emil /Schlenker,
Lena / Scott, Donald/ Sheridan, Agnes /Sherva, Oleg / Smith, Hazel/ Talbot,
Edgar /Talbot, Edwin /Wain, Lull /Williams, Ralph /Windmuller,
Louise.
Everything indicates that the
altered names were created by John Ray, Jr. (with the exception of
the Humbert Humbert cognomen)
If he altered the name of
"Ramsdale" and those of Louise Windmuller, Dolores Haze, aso, was JR
Jr. equally responsible for coining Aubrey
McFate's?
I was never a very
attentive Lolita rereader of the entire
novel. Please, excuse
me if my question is somehow redundant..
It seems to me that if the McFate
class-mate's name was invented by JR Jr. there is some serious
authorial irony at play there...
3. Humbert's sentences
swerve making unexpected travels in time. The sentence
describing the moment when he set his eyes on Lo (no longer the
McCoo's Virginia he'd been dreaming of until then), in the "breathless
garden" is an interesting example (I underlined the tenses):
"That
was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies." / "Yes," I said,
"yes. They are beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful."
Comments?