Preface

In the decades since its American publication (in 1958), Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita has emerged as a classic of contemporary literature. This annotated edition, a corrected and chastely revised version of the edition first published in 1970, is designed for the general reader and particularly for use in college literature courses. It has developed out of my own experiences in teaching and writing about Lolita , which have demonstrated that many readers are more troubled by Humbert Humbert’s use of language and lore than by his abuse of Lolita and law. Their sense of intimidation is not unwarranted; Lolita is surely the most allusive and linguistically playful novel in English since Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), and, if its involuted and constantly evolving means bring to mind any previous novel, it should be that most elusive of works, The Confidence-Man (1857) by Herman Melville. As with Joyce and Melville, the reader of Lolita attempts to arrive at some sense of its overall “meaning,” while at the same time having to struggle with the difficulties posed by the recondite materials and rich, elaborate verbal textures. The main purpose of this edition is to solve such local problems and to show how they contribute to the total design of the novel. Neither the Introduction nor the Notes attempts a total interpretation of Lolita .

The annotations keep in mind the specific needs of college students. Many kinds of allusions are identified: literary, historical, mythological, Biblical, anatomical, zoological, botanical, and geographical. Writers and artists long out of fashion (e.g., Maeterlinck) receive fuller treatment than more familiar names. Selective cross-references to identical or related allusions in other Nabokov works (a sort of mini-concordance) will help to place Lolita in a wider context and, one hopes, may be of some assistance to future critics of Nabokov. Many of the novel’s most important motifs are limned by brief cross-references. Humbert’s vocabulary is extraordinary, its range enlarged by the many portmanteau words he creates. Puns, coinages, and comic etymologies, as well as foreign, archaic, rare, or unusual words are defined. Although some of the “unusual” words are in collegiate dictionaries, they are nevertheless annotated as a matter of convenience. Not every neologism is identified (e.g., “truckster”), but many that should be obvious enough are noted, because the rapidly moving eye may well miss the vowel on which such a pun depends (speed-readers of the world, beware! Lolita is not the book for you). Because many American students have little or no French, virtually all the interpolations in French are translated. In a few instances, readers may feel an annotation belabors the obvious; I well remember my own resentment, as a college sophomore, when a textbook reference to Douglas MacArthur was garnished by the footnote “Famous American general (1880– ).” Yet the commonplace may turn out to be obscure. For instance, early in Lolita Humbert mentions that his first wife Valeria was “ deep in Paris-Soir . ” When in 1967 I asked a Stanford University class of some eighty students if they knew what Paris-Soir was, sixty of them had no idea, twenty reasonably guessed it to be a magazine or newspaper, but no one knew specifically that it was a newspaper which featured lurid reportage, and that the detail formulates Valeria’s puerility and Humbert’s contempt for her. In 1967, most of them knew what a “zoot suit” and “crooner” are; this is no longer true, so they’ve been glossed (only twelve of one hundred 1990 Northwestern University students could define a crooner or zoot suit, a new wrinkle in The Crisis in the Humanities). Several notes are thus predicated on the premise that one epoch’s “popular culture” is another’s esoterica (see Note the nasal voices ).

Most of the Introduction is drawn from parts of my previously published articles in The New Republic (“Nabokov’s Puppet Show—Part II,” CLVI [January 21, 1967], 25–32), Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature (1967), The Denver Quarterly (1968), and TriQuarterly (1970). Several Notes are adapted from the two middle articles and my interview with Nabokov in Wisconsin Studies (see bibliography for full entries). The first edition was completed in 1968, save for eleventh-hour allusions to Ada , and published in 1969, but the vagaries and vagrancies of publishing delayed its appearance. In the meantime, Carl R. Proffer’s Keys to Lolita was published (1968). Two enchanted hunters (see Note The Enchanted Hunters ) working independently of each other, Mr. Proffer and I arrived at many similar identifications, and, excepting those which are readily apparent, I have tried to indicate where he anticipated me.

The text of Lolita is that of the 1989 Vintage edition. It contains many corrections made over time, some of which are identified in the Notes. All were approved by Nabokov. Like the first American edition of 1958, this variorum edition concludes with Nabokov’s Afterword, which, along with its Notes, should be read in conjunction with the Introduction (where the reader will be offered exact instructions as to this procedure).

Given the length of the Notes and the fact that they are at the back of the book, the reader would do well to consider the question of how best to use these annotations. An old reader familiar with Lolita can approach the apparatus as a separate unit, but the perspicacious student who keeps turning back and forth from text to Notes risks vertigo. A more balanced method is to read through a chapter and then read its annotations, or vice versa. Each reader, however, has to decide for himself which is the most comfortable procedure. In a more perfect world, this edition would be in two volumes, text in one, Notes in the other; placed adjacent to one another, they could be read concurrently. Charles Kinbote in his Foreword to Pale Fire (1962) suggests a solution that closely approximates this arrangement, and the reader is directed to his sensible remarks, which are doubly remarkable in view of his insanity (this edition, In Place of a Note on the Text ).

Although there are some nine hundred notes to this text, the initial annotated edition of a work should never be offered as “definitive,” and that claim will not be made here. As it is, The Annotated Lolita was the first annotated edition of a modern novel to have been published during its author’s lifetime— A Tale of a Tub for our time. Vladimir Nabokov was occasionally consulted and, in some cases, commented on the annotations. In such instances his contribution is acknowledged. He asked me to mention that in several instances his interpretation of Lolita did not necessarily coincide with mine, and I have tried to point out such cases; the literary allusions, however, have been deemed accurate. Every allusion newly identified in the second edition of 1991 was double-checked with Nabokov during the last years of his life.

This edition—now, as in 1970—is analogous to what Pale Fire might have been like if poor John Shade had been given the opportunity to comment on Charles Kinbote’s Commentary. Of course, the annotator and editor of a novel written by the creator of Kinbote and John Ray, Jr., runs the real risk of being mistaken for another fiction, when at most he resembles those gentlemen only figuratively. But the annotator exists; he is a veteran and a grandfather, a teacher and taxpayer, and has not been invented by Vladimir Nabokov.