Lolita, or the Confession of a White W

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file:///D|/docs/fiction/Nabokov%20-%20Lolita.txt
It is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might have
extracted from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance memories
that I have threaded through my book with considerably more ostentation than
they present themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to seek in
the past. At the time I felt I was merely losing contact with reality; and
after spending the rest of the winter and most of the following spring in a
Quebec sanatorium where I had stayed before, I resolved first to settle some
affairs of mine in New York and then to proceed to California for a thorough
search there.
Here is something I composed in my retreat:
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet."
Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,
I cannot get out, said the starling).
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?
Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-caped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!
Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').
Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
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file:///D|/docs/fiction/Nabokov%20-%20Lolita.txt
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
L'autre soir un air froid d'op�ra m'alita:
Son f�l�--bien fol est qui s'y fie!
Il neige, le d�cor s'�croule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.
Officer, officer, there they go--
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.
Officer, officer, there they are--
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out, and take cover.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.
By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a maniac's
masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to
certain perspectiveless and terrible landscapes and figures, and magnified
parts of landscapes and figures, as drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by
their astute trainers. I wrote many more poems. I immersed myself in the
poetry of others. But not for a second did I forget the load of revenge.
I would be a knave to say, and the reader a fool to believe, that the
shock of losing Lolita cured me of pederosis. My accursed nature could not
change, no matter how my love for her did. On playgrounds and beaches, my
sullen and stealthy eye, against my will, still sought out the flash of a
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file:///D|/docs/fiction/Nabokov%20-%20Lolita.txt
nymphet's limbs, the sly tokens of Lolita's handmaids and rosegirls. But one
essential vision in me had withered: never did I dwell now on possibilities
of bliss with a little maiden, specific or synthetic, in some out-of-the-way
place; never did my fancy sink its fangs into Lolita's sisters, far far
away, in the coves of evoked islands. That was all over, for the time
being at least. On the other hand, alas, two years of monstrous indulgence
had left me with certain habits of lust: I feared lest the void I lived in
might drive me to plunge into the freedom of sudden insanity when confronted
with a chance temptation in some lane between school and supper. Solitude
was corrupting me. I needed company and care. My heart was a hysterical
unreliable organ. This is how Rita enters the picture.
26
She was twice Lolita's age and three quarters of mine: a very slight,
dark-haired, pale-skinned adult, weighing a hundred and five pounds, with
charmingly asymmetrical eyes, and angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a
most appealing ensellure to her supple back--I think she had some
Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up one depraved May evening
somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between
Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the
Tigermoth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school
together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw. My senses
were very slightly stirred but I decided to give her a try; I did--and
adopted her as a constant companion. She was so kind, was Rita, such a good [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]