Extract:
We passed on to a small pantry and entered the dining room, parallel to the parlor we had already admired. I noticed a white sock on the floor. With a deprecatory grunt, Mrs. Haze stooped without stopping and threw it into a closet next to the pantry. We cursorily inspected a mahogany table with a fruit vase in the middle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum. I groped for the timetable I had in my pocket and surreptitiously fished it out to look as soon as possible for a train. I was still walking behind Mrs. Haze through the dining room when, beyond it, there came a sudden burst of greenery – “the piazza," sang out my leader, and then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses.
It was the same child-the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from the gaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day. And, as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess (lost, kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds), I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight (the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, the nurse drunk) I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts – that last mad immortal day behind the "Roches Roses." The twenty-five years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished.
I find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash, that shiver, that impact of passionate recognition. In the course of the sun-shot moment that my glance slithered over the kneeling child (her eyes blinking over those stern dark spectacles – the little Herr Doktor who was to cure me of all my aches) while I passed by her in my adult disguise (a great big handsome hunk of movieland manhood), the vacuum of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against the features of my dead bride. A little later, of course, she, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely her prototype. All I want to stress is that my discovery of her was a fatal consequence of that "princedom by the sea" in my tortured past. Everything between the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and false rudiments of joy. Everything they shared made one of them.
I have no illusions, however. My judges will regard all this as a piece of mummery on the part of a madman with a gross liking for the fruit vert. Au fond, ça m' est bien égal. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were like sand, and –
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies."
"Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"
– Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. 1971 (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 2000): 39-40.
Critical Responses:
"I wonder how many readers survive the novel without realizing that its heroine is, so to speak, dead on arrival, like her child. Their brief obituaries are tucked away in the 'editor's' Foreword, in nonchalant, school-newsletter form:'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, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest." - Martin Amis.
" As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: the sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." - Vladimir Nabokov, "On a Book Entitled Lolita."
Lolita (1962)directed by Stanley Kubrick
screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov & Stanley Kubrick
starring James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters & Peter Sellers
Quotes:
Humbert Humbert: You know, I've missed you terribly.
Lolita Haze: I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you.
Humbert Humbert: Oh?
Lolita Haze: But it doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway.
Humbert Humbert: What makes you say I've stopped caring for you?
Lolita Haze: Well, you haven't even kissed me yet, have you?
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Charlotte Haze: Do you believe in God?
Humbert Humbert: The question is does God believe in me?
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Lolita Haze: Do you always have to shave twice a day?
Humbert Humbert: Yes, of course, because all the best people shave twice a day.
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Charlotte Haze: Hum, you just touch me and I... I... I go as limp as a noodle. It scares me.
Humbert Humbert: Yes, I know the feeling.
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Clare Quilty: She's a yellow belt. I'm a green belt. That's the way nature made it. What happens is, she throws me all over the place.
Swine: She throws you all over the place?
Clare Quilty: Yes. What she does, she gets me in a, sort of, thing called a sweeping ankle throw. She sweeps my ankles away from under me. I go down with one helluva bang.
Swine: Doesn't it hurt?
Clare Quilty: Well, I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it. I really love it. I lay there hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. It's really the greatest.
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Clare Quilty: Listen, didn't you... didn't you have a daughter? Didn't you have a daughter with a lovely name? Yeah! A lovely... What was it now? A lovely, lyrical, lilting name, like, uh... uh...
Charlotte Haze: Lo-li-ta!
Clare Quilty: Lolita, that's right, Lolita. Diminutive of Dolores, "The Tears and the Roses."
Charlotte Haze: Wednesday she's going to have a cavity filled by your Uncle Ivor.
Clare Quilty: Yes. Hahahahaha... Yes.
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Humbert Humbert: Well it's nothing but she had an accident.
Clare Quilty: Oh jee, she had an accident. That's really terrible, I mean fancy a fellow's wife having... a normal guy having... his wife having an accident like that, w-what happened to her?
Humbert Humbert: Uh, she was hit by a car.
Clare Quilty: Jee, no wonder she's not here. Jee, you must feel pretty bad about it w-w-w-w-when uh e-w-what's happening, is she coming out later or something?
Humbert Humbert: Well that was the understanding.
Clare Quilty: What, in an ambulance? Hehehehe jee I'm sorry I-I-I-shouln't say... I get sorta carried away you know, being so normal and everything. I get sorta carried away you know being so normal and everything.
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Charlotte Haze: [to Humbert] Oh, you MAN!
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Charlotte Haze: He is a writer and he is not be disturbed!
Lolita Haze: [makes the Nazi salute] Sieg heil!
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Humbert Humbert: What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, of every nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so. And only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script.
Critical Responses:
"What a surreal, dreamlike world Stanley Kubrick creates with this intriguing film! The book, a recognized 20th century classic, is at times disturbing, hysterically funny, uncomfortably erotic, and heartbreakingly sad. The film, made in the 60s, captures many of the same feelings generated by the book--but the censorship of the time could only allow Kubrick to suggest the more intimate and erotic aspects of the book--which he slyly succeeds in doing. It is hard to believe now, but when this film was released, it was considered to be unbelievably provocative and absolutely for adults only.
The movie becomes its own artistic statement - Kubrick doesn't merely try to recreate the scenes and storyline of the book--although much of it is there--but he uses the period music, speech, clothes and mannerisms to create his own imaginative and fascinating world. At the same time, we sure do end up caring about the characters. Within the exceptional cast, note the special performance Shelly Winters gives--her character is at once funny and so achingly sad and pathetic. This is a real tour-de-force of acting. In several instances we go from laughing at her to really disliking her, to feeling so very sorry for her. She creates a truly memorable character.'
The film ranks right up there with all of the spectacular films Kubrick made during his amazing and very singular career---each of his films was so distinctive--and Lolita is one of the most distinctive of them all." - Internet Movie Database.
Lolita (1997)directed by Adrian Lyne
screenplay by Stephen Schiff
starring Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffiths & Frank Langella
Quotes:
Humbert: I missed you. I missed you a lot.
Lolita: Well I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. But it doesn't matter, because you don't care about me anymore anyway.
Humbert: What makes you think I don't care about you?
Lolita: Well you haven't kissed me yet, have you?
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Lolita: Murder me! Murder me like you murdered my mother!
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Humbert: What I heard then was the melody of children at play. Nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus.
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Humbert: She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo... Lee... Ta.
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Humbert: We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing.
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Clare Quilty: He can smell if you're sweet. He likes sweet young people. People like you.
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Humbert: A normal man, given a group photograph of school girls and asked to point out the loveliest one, will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them.
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Charlotte Haze: I asked you to make your bed. Didn't I?
Lolita: No. You asked me if I'd made my bed.
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Lolita: I feel like we're grown-ups.
Humbert: Me, too.
Lolita: We get to do whatever we want, right?
Humbert: Whatever we want.
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Miss Pratt: I know you have accepted a post at Beardsley College, and I know that there, academics are first, last, and always. Well, that's not us, Mister Humper. Here at Beardsley Prep... what we stress are the three Ds. Dramatics, Dancing, and Dating.
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Humbert: I was not quite prepared for the reality of my dual role. On the one hand, the willing corruptor of an innocent, and on the other, Humbert the happy housewife.
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Miss Pratt: She's a lovely child, Mr. Haze, but the onset of sexual maturing seems to be giving her trouble. It is the general impression that 14-year-old Dolores is morbidly disinterested in sexual matters.
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Humbert: How are the piano lessons going?
Lolita: Fine. Great. Excellent. Wonderful. Perfect.
Humbert: Especially since you missed the last two.
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Lolita: You look one hundred percent better when I can't see you.
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Lolita: Wait a sec. You're telling me we're sleeping in one room? With one bed?
Humbert: I've asked them to bring up a cot, which I'll use if you like.
Lolita: You're crazy.
Humbert: Why, my darling?
Lolita: Because, my darrr-ling, when my darrr-ling mother finds out she'll divorce you and strangle me.
Humbert: Lo, listen a moment. For all intents and purposes I am your father and I am responsible for your welfare. We are not rich, so when we travel, we shall be - we shall uh... we shall be thrown together a great deal. And two people who enter into a cohabitation inevitably lead into a kind of...
Lolita: The word is "incest".
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Lolita: I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me.
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Humbert: I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.
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Humbert: From here to that old car you know so well is a stretch of twenty-five paces. Make those twenty-five steps. With me. Now.
Lolita: You're saying you'll give us the money if I go to a motel with you?
Humbert: No, no, no. I mean leave here now, and come live with me. And die with me, and everything with me.
Lolita: You're crazy.
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Humbert: What are you eating?
Lolita: It's called a jawbreaker. It's supposed to break your jaw. Want one?
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Clare Quilty: Who is the girl?
Humbert: She is my daughter.
Clare Quilty: You lie, she is not.
Humbert: I beg your pardon?
Clare Quilty: I said "July was hot."
...
Clare Quilty: Where the Devil did you get her?
Humbert: What?
Clare Quilty: I said, "The weather is getting better."
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Clare Quilty: You are a foreigner, you are an agent of a foreign power, you're a foreign literary agent.
Critical Responses:
"This film is a stunning adaptation of the novel of the same name. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful and the film is brilliantly acted. The content of the story may put off many prospective viewers, but the story does not condone Humberts actions, it simply narrates them. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Humberts (Irons) loss of his young love scars him in a way which compels him to rediscover it, through relationships with young girls. He moves to a town to accept a teaching position and while looking for suitable housing he meets Lolita Haze (Swain), a young girl who immediately catches his eye and his heart. The rest of the film chronicles their tempestuous relationship, one in which Humbert takes advantage of Lolita's natural curiosity and developing mind and body. I highly recommend this version of the film and the book to any person interested in a beautifully written, compelling story about one haunted man's selfish folly and the effect it has the young girl it revolves around." - Internet Movie Database.
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