情与欲 》 洛麗塔 Lolita 》
·作者介紹·
弗拉基米爾·納博科夫 Vladimir Nabokov
最早聽到的洛麗塔，是一本小說的名字和一位13歲少女的名字。如果僅從對小說的理解，可以將其單純地理解為早熟的性感少女以及她和戀童癖的聯繫，而且有接觸西方文化的人會發現，西方人說的“洛麗塔”女孩是那些穿着超短裙，化着成熟妝容但又留着少女劉海的女生，簡單來說就是“少女強穿女郎裝”的情況。 但是當“洛麗塔”流傳到了日本，日本人就將其當成天真可愛少女的代名詞，統一將14歲以下的女孩稱為“洛麗塔代”，而且態度變成“女郎強穿少女裝”，即成熟女人對青澀女孩的嚮往。 而幾乎所有東方型的“洛麗塔”，都以電影《下妻物語》裏的宮廷娃娃時裝作為標準來打扮自己。港版“洛麗塔”由此而來，而慣於嚮香港取經的粵版洛麗塔也一樣。但不同的是，粵版洛麗塔玩傢年齡集中在13－25歲，而且大部分人不超過20歲，十七八歲的這類玩傢，她們並不存在要拼命裝嫩的需要，更多時候她們追求的是一種嶄新的衣着態度，和尋求有別一般的生活方式。
在西方“洛麗塔”是個極有象徵意義的名字，意指性感少女、戀童等意，取自一部名為《洛麗塔》的小說，後拍為同名電影，國內亦翻譯為《一支梨花壓海棠》。套用最近流行的李安導演的那句名言，我們可以說，“每個女孩心裏都有一個洛麗塔”，從西方到東方，從日本到香港，再到中國內地，雖然時間漫長了些，但14歲少女洛麗塔那樣精靈可愛的女孩形象竟能在全世界引起“軒然大波”，估計是半世紀以前她的創作者根本無法預料到的，她們甚至特別選擇人流最密集的商業中心作為自己的秀場，不論你是否接受，她們總是那麽驕傲、那麽忘我，誰敢說，洛麗塔不是真正高貴的小公主。
洛麗塔-基本資料
由一開始的LOLI是LOLITA的簡稱，指代可愛、吸引人的幼女（多指7～14歲），源於小說《洛麗塔》到後來文化的延伸，lolita＝形容詞，代表蘿莉狀、可愛的幼女，loli = 幼女，多用在電影以及日本GALGAME文化中。
最近，因為日本和英美的電影文化的影響，使蘿莉風格的服裝大行其道，LOLITA演變成代表了一種服飾風格，尤其是在日本，LOLITA成為了代表性強的服裝品牌，並被越來越多少女推崇，從而漸漸取代了LOLITA指形容詞，代表蘿莉狀、可愛的幼女的地位。
特徵
一個女生究竟是不是蘿莉，每人的定義都有不同：有以年齡（嚴格生理年齡）來分的，有以氣質（心理年齡、外表年齡）來分的，更嚴格的是兩項標準都要達到的，最後還有自己認為是就當作是的。不過普遍來說有一個重點就是要“尚未發育”或者“發育不全”。
心理
Lolita不單是一種服飾潮流，更是年輕人表達情感需要的方式，或是彌補自信不足的自我保護武裝。一如發展心理學家艾力遜指出，年青人正處於“自我認識與迷亂”的階段，他們往往擁有童真與夢想，有擺脫現實規限的渴求，需要尋找自我，因此以不羈和野性挑戰傳統，期望得到別人關註、瞭解、認同和真正接納。
蘿莉有三好：身嬌、腰柔、易推倒
類型
小公主型、傢中小妹型、女王型、小惡魔型、膽怯嬌羞型、小迷糊型、類成熟型
洛麗塔-三大族群
一、SweetLolita———以粉紅、粉藍、白色等粉色係列為主，衣料選用大量蕾絲，務求締造出洋娃娃般的可愛和爛漫，在廣州是最多人選擇的造型，走在大街上也不算太張揚。
Sweet Lolita
現今在Lolita界的地位：主流
Sweet Lolita正如其名，屬於所有Lolita分類中服飾設計最為甜美的一個派別。Sweet係洋裝的布料大多以粉紅、粉藍或白色等粉嫩可愛的單色為主。除此之外，為了能製造出一種仿若洋娃娃般可愛甜美、爛漫純真的氣息，Sweet係洋裝通常會在衣物上使用比別的派係 更多的蕾絲和本布褶皺。
近幾年來，大約是因為版型與設計經常被山寨的緣故，各傢Sweet係洋裝品牌紛紛擯棄單色布料，轉而使用起各種印有糖果、蛋糕、小動物或描述某個童話場景的印花布料（因為圖案特殊且難以仿製，這種布料往往是單此一傢別無分店，所以相當能防D版於未然）。
一般來說，SweetLolita洋裝往往比其他係別的洋裝更能獲得初次踏進Lolita世界的女孩們的青睞。
SweetLolita洋裝代表品牌：BABY,THE STARS SHINE BRIGH、Angelic Pretty、METAMORPHOSE
二、ClassicalLolita———以簡約色調為主，着重剪裁以表達清雅的心思，顔色不出挑，如茶色和白色。蕾絲花邊會相應減少，而荷葉褶是最大特色，整體風格比較平實，適合新手。
☆Classical Lolita☆
現今在Lolita界的地位：主流
恰如其名，ClassicalLolita洋裝正是所有係別的Lolita洋裝中服裝款式最為優雅的派別。其洋裝設計就好象19世紀英國的貴族少女一般，既古典優雅，又不失純真可愛。
ClassicalLolita洋裝所選用的布料雖然也喜歡以純色為主，但它所使用的純色料子一定都有着素雅得體又不刺眼的色調。除開白、黑、粉、藍這四個基本色之外，各式各樣美麗的碎花布也是Classical係洋裝布料的愛用之選。
與SweetLolita洋裝不同，除了古典係蕾絲之外，Classical Lolita洋裝極少會在衣物上使用到大量造型平平、質地一般的蕾絲。在衣服上每個需要用到花邊的地方，ClassicalLolita洋裝基本上都會以與衣服相同質地的本布褶皺來代替蕾絲。而Classical係洋裝所選用的布料顔色亦非常素雅，除了白、黑、粉、藍這四個基本色之外，各式各樣美麗的碎花布也是Classical係洋裝布料的常用者。
總而言之，ClassicalLolita洋裝的特色就是“簡約而不簡單”。由於款式簡單大方、優雅不凡，ClassicalLolita洋裝比其他係別的Lolita洋裝更適合日常穿着，也更容易被傢長及大衆所接受。當少女們厭倦了造型過於誇張的SweetLolita洋裝和非常不日常的 GothicLolita洋裝後，ClassicalLolita洋裝就順理成章地成為了她們的必然選擇與最終選擇。 有意思的是，最能穿出ClassicalLolita洋裝韻味的人居然並不是青春活潑的高初中女生，而是那些年紀在20以上的、因為工作和閱歷的緣故而擁有了沉靜氣質的年輕女子。看來在現實中，“氣質”能與“年輕”完美並存的實例果然屈指可數呢。
代表品牌：Mary Magdalene、Victorian maiden、JULIETTE & JUSTINE Lolita不是Cosplay：前者代表生活態度，後者更加強調角色模仿 gothiclolita
三、GothicLolita———主色是黑和白，特徵是想表達神秘恐怖和死亡的感覺。通常配以十字架銀器等裝飾，以及化較為濃烈的深色妝容，如黑色指甲、眼影、唇色，強調神秘色彩。
☆Gothic Lolita☆
現今在Lolita界的地位：主流
首先需要註意的是，Gothic Lolita與純正的Gothic是完全不同的，大傢千萬不要把它們混為一談——因為以正常人的眼光來看，純粹的Gothic根本就是“妖魔鬼怪般的人物”。而Gothic Lolita雖然在服飾設計上也彌漫着相當濃厚的Gothic味，但它至少還能給人以小惡魔般另類的可愛天真之感。
其次，那些認為凡是用黑白色面料製作的Lolita洋裝就一定屬於GothicLolita洋裝的想法也是錯誤的。事實上，即使采用完全相同的面料進行衣物製作，那些出自不同派係之手的Lolita洋裝也依舊會在觀感上存在着極易分辨的明顯差異——
就算圖裏的模特都穿着黑色的洋裝，但人們還是能從款式和造型上輕易認出誰纔是甜嫩可愛的SweetLolita洋裝、誰又是如同死神般冷淡孤高的 GothicLolita洋裝的。
幾乎97％以上的GothicLolita洋裝都衹采用了黑色和白色的單色布料，像粉紅、嫩黃之類的可愛顔色可是與這個係別完全絶緣的。此外，GothicLolita洋裝也是所有類別的Lolita洋裝中最常使用皮質材料的派別。難怪在國內的某些地方，是否穿着使用上等小羊皮製作的束腰會成為了外行人判斷此人是否GothicLolita少女的唯一標準了。
除了單調的布料用色之外，GothicLolita少女們最愛使用的配飾，也是最能表現出Gothic那股混合了“恐怖”、“純真”、“神秘”、 “絶望”、“憂鬱”、“死亡”與“禁忌”這七大主題的獨有氣息的各類小物（如黑色指甲油、十字架和骷髏銀飾等）。
Elegant Gothic Lolita 此外，GothicLolita洋裝中還存在着兩個比較特別的分支——EGL Lolita及EGA Lolita。EGL Lolita的全稱是“Elegant Gothic Lolita”（即“雅緻歌特Lolita”）。它的款式設計一般偏嚮傳統古典，雖與Gothic Lolita非常接近，卻又多帶了點吸血鬼的感覺。而EGA Lolita的全稱則是“Elegant Gothic Aristocrat”（即“雅緻歌特貴族”），其服裝款式一般為男裝、長裙、褲子和領尖定有紐扣的襯衣及外套。
與其他係別的Lolita洋裝比起來，集優雅華麗與黑暗詭異於一身的Gothic Lolita可謂是最受歐美人熱愛和着迷的Lolita風格。也許這是因為GothicLolita洋裝的設計中充滿了神秘及誘惑的禁欲色彩，所以更能引起深受基督教影響之人的共鳴罷。
代表品牌：Moi-meme-Moitie、Mille Fleur
洛麗塔-相關評論
事實上“女性化”本來就是個沒有什麽具體概念的詞，而“洛麗塔”的女性化無非是擁有少女式的性感和猶如小狐狸精般的狡黠。
其實沒有“洛麗塔”情結的女人就像是過於成熟的水果，失去了青澀帶來的回味。於是，那些綴滿白色的黑色的花邊裙子，胸前的綁帶把我們帶回到逝去的懵懂歲月，那不僅僅是單純意義上的裝嫩，而是對於自己的最好奬勵，允許自己生活在非現實的世界中，鼓勵自己犯那些小小的錯誤，甚至有那麽一點殘忍和邪惡。
這種時尚可能是從一部日劇開始大肆蔓延並在明星的率領下成為時尚的，在日劇《下妻物語》中，深田恭子的“洛麗塔”扮相將這一風尚推嚮頂點。令日本街頭的穿着也形成了三股不同的風尚，“甜美可愛洛麗塔”多為甜美可人的風格，以粉色為主，運用大量蕾絲褶皺裙，表現出洋娃娃般的可人形象；“哥特式洛麗塔”在歐美尤其流行，以黑色為主，彌漫着死亡氣息的恐怖與優雅，可以配上黑色的指甲油和唇膏，締造頽廢的氣質；“經典洛麗塔”則是最簡單的入門款，裙身多為荷葉邊，透過碎花和粉色表現出清純的感覺。
這種流行風從日本通過香港迅速蔓延到中國內地，讓那些身着“公主裝”的女人們以時尚的藉口開始肆意裝嫩，而這種裝嫩的境界也不再停留於原有的“師出無名”了。
時尚界自然也不會錯過任何一個可以大做文章的由頭，在這個洛麗塔般“小妖精” 橫行的年代，時尚精英們紛紛嚮懵懂和叛逆致敬，他們和普通大衆一起進入一場拒絶長大的遊戲中。年輕且性感的裝扮，並不難做到，因此近年來，蕾絲花邊和蝴蝶結曾風靡一時，且風頭不減。連Dior在今年的秀場上也用華麗和不同季節服裝的混搭，製造出早熟的摩登小女郎風格，碩大的太陽眼鏡，女人味十足的皮草搭配芥末黃的百褶裙和吊帶上衣，性感清純一個都不能少。
·作者介紹·
·作者介紹·
納博科夫.V.（1899～1977）俄裔美國作傢。出生於聖彼得堡一個貴族家庭，1919年隨父親離開，途經土耳其西歐。在大學攻讀過俄羅斯語言文學和法國文學並獲得學位，1922年畢業後在柏林當過家庭教師、網球教練和電影配角演員，後從事俄語文學創作。1922～1937年間他一直居住在柏林，1937年去了巴黎，1940年納粹德國入侵法國前移居美國，並於1945年加入美國國籍。由於他的家庭是個親英派，納博科夫從六歲起就能說一口流利的英語，而且從1939年開始就改用英語寫作。從1940年開始，納博科夫曾先後在美國的斯坦福大學、康奈爾大學、哈佛大學等講授俄羅斯和歐洲文學以及文學創作。他業餘愛好收集蝴蝶等鱗翅目昆蟲，還曾擔任過哈佛大學比較動物博物館研究員，並發表過數篇學術論文。1959年他辭去了大學教職，移居瑞士直至1977年去世。
納博科夫學識淵博，才華橫溢，一生的創作極其豐富多樣，包括了詩歌、劇作、小說、傳記、翻譯、象棋與昆蟲學方面的論文等大量作品，但他主要是以小說聞名於世，如《洛麗塔》、《普寧》、《微暗的火》、《阿達》、《透明物體》等都是膾炙人口的名篇。納博科夫前後期的創作在基本主題和結構手段上的連續性是很突出的一個特徵，從最初那部表現懷鄉愁恩和移民生活的《瑪麗》到他七十歲時所寫的那部大掉書袋的探索愛情之作《阿達》莫不如此。納博科夫否認自己的創作有或道德的目的，對他來說，文學創作是運用語言進行的一種對現實的超越，因為“藝術的創造藴含着比生活現實更多的真實”，他認為藝術最了不起的境界應具有異常的復雜性和迷惑性，所以他的作品致力於用語言製造撲朔迷離的時空迷宮，製造個人的有別於“早已界定”的生活與現實，顯示出一種華美玄奧新奇的風格；此外，納博科夫在昆蟲學方面具有的興趣和研究方式也使他的作品對事物的觀察與描述顯示出一種細緻入微和精巧的特色。
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian and published in 1958 in New York. The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle-aged Humbert Humbert, who becomes obsessed and sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.
After its publication, Nabokov's Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious girl. The novel was adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne.
Lolita is included on TIME's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It is fourth on the Modern Library's 1998 list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th century.
Plot summary
Lolita is divided into two parts and 36 short chapters. It is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar born in 1910 to a Swiss father and an English mother in Paris, who is obsessed with what he refers to as "nymphets". Humbert suggests that this obsession results from the death of a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh. In 1947, Humbert moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. He rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a widow. While Charlotte tours him around the house, he meets her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (also known as Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, and L), with whom he falls in love at first sight. Humbert stays at the house only to remain with her. While he is infatuated with Lolita, a highly intelligent and articulate, albeit tempestuous teenage girl, he disdains of her preoccupation with contemporary American popular culture, such as teen movies and comic books.
While Lolita is away at summer camp, Charlotte, who has fallen in love with Humbert, tells him that he must either marry her or move out. Humbert reluctantly agrees in order to continue living near Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious of Humbert's distaste and pity for her, and his lust for Lolita, until she reads his diary. Upon learning of Humbert's true feelings and intentions, Charlotte is appalled. She makes plans to flee with Lolita, and threatens to expose Humbert's perversions. But as she runs across the street in a state of shock, she is struck and killed by a passing car.
Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, pretending that Charlotte is ill in a hospital. He does not return to Charlotte's home out of fear that the neighbors will be suspicious. Instead, he takes Lolita to a hotel, where he meets a strange man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert attempts to use sleeping pills on Lolita so that he may molest her without her knowledge, but they have little effect on her. Instead, she initiates sex. He discovers that he is not her first lover, as she had sex with a boy at summer camp. Humbert reveals to Lolita that Charlotte is actually dead; Lolita has no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms.
Lolita and Humbert drive around the country, moving from state to state and motel to motel. Humbert initially keeps the girl under control by threatening her with reform school; later he bribes her for sexual favors, though he knows that she does not reciprocate his love and shares none of his interests. The novel's first part ends after he rapes her. After a year touring North America, the two settle down in another New England town, where Lolita is enrolled in school. Humbert is very possessive and strict, forbidding Lolita to take part in after-school activities or to associate with boys; the townspeople, however, see this as the action of a loving and concerned, while old fashioned, parent.
Lolita begs to be allowed to take part in the school play; Humbert reluctantly grants his permission in exchange for more sexual favors. The play is written by Clare Quilty. He is said to have attended a rehearsal and been impressed by Lolita's acting. Just before opening night, Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument, which culminates in Lolita saying she wants to leave town and resume their travels.
As Lolita and Humbert drive westward again, Humbert gets the feeling that their car is being tailed and he becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting that Lolita is conspiring with others in order to escape. She falls ill and must convalesce in a hospital; Humbert stays in a nearby motel, without Lolita for the first time in years. One night, Lolita disappears from the hospital; the staff tell Humbert that Lolita's "uncle" checked her out. Humbert embarks upon a frantic search to find Lolita and her abductor, but eventually he gives up.
One day in 1952, Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert goes to see Lolita, giving her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals the truth: Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's and the writer of the school play, checked her out of the hospital and attempted to make her star in one of his pornographic films; when she refused, he threw her out. She worked odd jobs before meeting and marrying her husband, who knows nothing about her past.
Humbert asks Lolita to leave her husband and return to him, but she refuses, and he breaks down in tears. He leaves Lolita, and kills Quilty at his mansion, shooting him to death in an act of revenge. He then is arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well, and reveals the novel in its metafiction to be the memoirs of his life, only to be published after he and Lolita have both died.
According to the novel's fictional "Foreword", Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript. Lolita dies giving birth to a stillborn girl on Christmas Day, 1952.
Style and interpretation
The novel is a tragicomedy narrated by Humbert, who riddles the narrative with word play and his wry observations of American culture. His humor provides an effective counterpoint to the pathos of the tragic plot. The novel's flamboyant style is characterized by word play, double entendres, multilingual puns, anagrams, and coinages such as nymphet, a word that has since had a life of its own and can be found in most dictionaries, and the lesser used "faunlet." One of the novel's characters, "Vivian Darkbloom," is an anagram for author Vladimir Nabokov.
Several times, Humbert begs the reader to understand that he is not proud of his union with Lolita, but is filled with remorse. At one point, he is listening to the sounds of children playing outdoors, and is stricken with guilt at the realization that he robbed Lolita of her childhood.
Some critics have accepted Humbert's version of events at face value. In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies excused the narrator entirely, writing that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child. This is no pretty theme, but it is one with which social workers, magistrates and psychiatrists are familiar."
Most writers, however, have given less credit to Humbert and more to Nabokov's powers as an ironist. For Richard Rorty, in his famous interpretation of Lolita in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Humbert is a "monster of incuriosity." Nabokov himself described Humbert as "a vain and cruel wretch" and "a hateful person" (quoted in Levine, 1967).
Martin Amis, in his essay on Stalinism, Koba the Dread, proposes that Lolita is an elaborate metaphor for the totalitarianism that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood (though Nabokov states in his Afterword that he "[detests] symbols and allegories"). Amis interprets it as a story of tyranny told from the point of view of the tyrant. "Nabokov, in all his fiction, writes with incomparable penetration about delusion and coercion, about cruelty and lies", he says. "Even Lolita, especially Lolita, is a study in tyranny."
In 2003, Iranian expatriate Azar Nafisi published the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran about a covert women's reading group. For Nafisi, the essence of the novel is Humbert's solipsism and his erasure of Lolita's independent identity. She writes: "Lolita was given to us as Humbert's creature [...] To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own [...] Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her history, that past is still given to us in glimpses."
One of the novel's early champions, Lionel Trilling, warned in 1958 of the moral difficulty in interpreting a book with so eloquent and so self-deceived a narrator: "we find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents [...] we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting."[citation needed]
Publication and reception
Due to its subject matter, Nabokov was unable to find an American publisher for Lolita after finishing it in 1953. After four refusals, he finally resorted to Olympia Press in Paris, September 1955. Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no substantial reviews. Eventually, at the end of 1955, Graham Greene, in an interview with the (London) Times, called it one of the best novels of 1955. This statement provoked a response from the (London) Sunday Express, whose editor called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography." British Customs officers were then instructed by a panicked Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. In December 1956, the French followed suit and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita (the ban lasted for two years). Its eventual British publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson caused a scandal that contributed to the end of the political career of one of the publishers, Nigel Nicolson.
By complete contrast, American officials were initially nervous, but the first American edition was issued without problems by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1958, and was a bestseller, the first book since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication. The first official translation of the book was the Danish edition, which was published in 1957.
Today, it is considered by many to be one of the finest novels written in the 20th century. In 1998, it was named the fourth greatest English language novel of the 20th century by the Modern Library. Nabokov rated the book highly himself. In an interview for BBC Television in 1962 he said,
Lolita is a special favourite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real.
Two years later, in 1964's interview for Playboy, he said,
I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle—its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works—at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, my short stories, my book of recollections; but I cannot grudge her this. There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet.
At the same year, in the interview for Life, Nabokov was asked, "Which of your writings has pleased you most?" He answered,
I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
Sources and links
Links in Nabokov's work
In 1939, Nabokov wrote a novella Volshebnik (Волшебник) that was published only posthumously in 1986 in English translation as The Enchanter. It can be seen as an early version of Lolita but with significant differences: it takes place in Central Europe, and the protagonist is unable to consummate his passion with his stepdaughter, leading to his suicide. The theme of ephebophilia was already touched on by Nabokov in his short story A Nursery Tale, written in 1926. Also, in the 1932 Laughter in the Dark, Margot Peters is sixteen and already had an affair when middle-aged Albinus is attracted to her.
In chapter three of the novel The Gift (written in Russian in 1935–1937) the similar gist of Lolita's first chapter is outlined to the protagonist Fyodor Cherdyntsev by his obnoxious landlord Shchyogolev as an idea of a novel he would write "if I only had the time": a man marries a widow only to gain access to her young daughter, who however resists all his passes. Shchyogolev says it happened "in reality" to a friend of his; it is made clear to the reader that it concerns himself and his stepdaughter Zina (fifteen at the time of marriage) who becomes the love of Fyodor's life and his child bride.
In April 1947 Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls–and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea...." The work expanded into Lolita during the next eight years. Nabokov used the title A Kingdom by the Sea in his 1974 pseudo-autobiographic novel Look at the Harlequins! for a Lolita-like book written by the narrator who, in addition, travels with his teenage daughter Bel from motel to motel after the death of her mother; later, his fourth wife is Bel's look-alike and shares her birthday.
In the unfinished novel The Original of Laura, published posthumously, a character Hubert H. Hubert appears, an older man preying upon then-child protagonist, Flora. Unlike in Lolita, his advances are unsuccessful.
Allusions/references to other works
* In the Foreword, there is a reference to "the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933 by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoken book"—that is, the decision in the case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, in which Woolsey ruled that James Joyce's novel was not obscene and could be sold in the United States.
* Humbert Humbert's first love, Annabel Leigh, is named after the "maiden" in the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, and their young love is described in phrases borrowed from Poe's poem. Nabokov originally intended Lolita to be called The Kingdom by the Sea, drawing on the rhyme with Annabel Lee that was used in the first verse of Poe's work. A passage at the end of Chapter 1 — "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns" — is also a reference to the poem. ("With a love that the winged seraphs in heaven / Coveted her and me.")
* Humbert Humbert's double name recalls Poe's "William Wilson", a tale in which the main character is haunted by his doppelgänger, paralleling to the presence of Humbert's own doppelgänger, Clare Quilty. Humbert is not, however, his real name, but a chosen pseudonym.
* Humbert Humbert's field of expertise is French literature (one of his jobs is writing a series of educational works that compare French writers to English writers), and as such there are several references to French literature, including the authors Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, François Rabelais, Charles Baudelaire, Prosper Mérimée, Remy Belleau, Honoré de Balzac, and Pierre de Ronsard.
* In chapter 17 of Part I, Humbert quotes "to hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss" from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
* In chapter 35 of Part II, Humbert's "death sentence" on Quilty parodies the rhythm and use of anaphora in T. S. Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday.
* The line "I cannot get out, said the starling" from Humbert's poem is taken from a passage in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, "The Passport, the Hotel De Paris."
Possible real-life prototypes
According to Alexander Dolinin, the prototype of Lolita was 11-year-old Florence Horner, kidnapped in 1948 by a 50-year-old mechanic Frank La Salle, who had caught her stealing a five-cent notebook. La Salle traveled with her over various states for 21 months and is believed to have raped her. He claimed that he was an FBI agent and threatened to “turn her in” for the theft and to send her to "a place for girls like you." The Horner case was not widely reported, but Dolinin adduces various similarities in events and descriptions.
The problem with this suggestion is that Nabokov had already used the same basic idea — that of a child molester and his victim booking into an hotel as man and daughter — in his then-unpublished 1939 work Volshebnik (Волшебник). This is not to say, however, that Nabokov could not have drawn on some details of the case in writing Lolita, and the La Salle case is mentioned explicitly in Chapter 33 of Part II:
Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?
Heinz von Lichberg's "Lolita"
German academic Michael Maar's book The Two Lolitas describes his recent discovery of a 1916 German short story titled "Lolita" about a middle-aged man travelling abroad who takes a room as a lodger and instantly becomes obsessed with the preteen girl (also named Lolita) who lives in the same house. Maar has speculated that Nabokov may have had cryptomnesia (a "hidden memory" of the story that Nabokov was unaware of) while he was composing Lolita during the 1950s. Maar says that until 1937 Nabokov lived in the same section of Berlin as the author, Heinz von Eschwege (pen name: Heinz von Lichberg), and was most likely familiar with his work, which was widely available in Germany during Nabokov's time there. The Philadelphia Inquirer, in the article "Lolita at 50: Did Nabokov take literary liberties?" says that, according to Maar, accusations of plagiarism should not apply and quotes him as saying: "Literature has always been a huge crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast... Nothing of what we admire in Lolita is already to be found in the tale; the former is in no way deducible from the latter." See also Jonathan Lethem in Harper's Magazine on this story.
Nabokov's afterword
In 1956, Nabokov penned an afterword to Lolita ("On a Book Entitled Lolita") that was included in every subsequent edition of the book.
One of the first things Nabokov makes a point of saying is, despite John Ray Jr.'s claim in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story.
In the afterword, Nabokov wrote that "the initial shiver of inspiration" for Lolita "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: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage". Neither the article nor the drawing has been recovered.
In response to an American critic who characterized Lolita as the record of Nabokov's "love affair with the romantic novel", Nabokov wrote that "the substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct".
Nabokov concluded the afterword with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English".
Russian translation
Nabokov translated Lolita into Russian; the translation was published by Phaedra in New York in 1967.
The translation includes a "Postscriptum" in which Nabokov reconsiders his relationship with his native language. Referring to the afterword to the English edition, Nabokov states that only "the scientific scrupulousness led me to preserve the last paragraph of the American afterword in the Russian text..." He further explains that the "story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick."
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The 1962 adaptation's movie poster art.
The 1997 movie poster art.
* Lolita has been filmed twice: the first adaptation was made in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick, and starred James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and Sue Lyon as Lolita; and a second adaptation in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, and Melanie Griffith. Nabokov was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the earlier film's adapted screenplay, although little of this work reached the screen. The more recent version was given mixed reviews by critics. It was delayed for over a year because of its controversial subject matter, and was not released in Australia until 1999.
* Nabokov's own version of the screenplay (dated Summer 1960 and revised December 1973) for Kubrick's film was published by McGraw-Hill in 1974.
* The book was adapted into a musical in 1971 by librettist/lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer John Barry under the title Lolita, My Love. Critics were surprised at how sensitively the story was translated to the stage, but the show nonetheless closed on the road before it opened in New York.
* In 1982, Edward Albee adapted the book into a non-musical play. It was savaged by critics, Frank Rich notably attributing the temporary death of Albee's career to it.
* In 2003, Russian director Victor Sobchak wrote a second non-musical stage adaptation, which played in England at the Lion and Unicorn Fringe Theater in London. It drops the character of Quilty and updates the story to modern England.
* Rodion Shchedrin adapted Lolita into a Russian language opera, which premiered in Moscow in 2006 and was published that same year. It had a much earlier performance in Sweden in 1992. It was nominated for Russia's Golden Mask award.
* The Boston-based composer John Harbison began an opera of Lolita, which he abandoned in the wake of the clergy child-abuse scandal that rocked Boston. Fragments of what he had done were woven into seven-minute piece "Darkbloom: Overture for an Imagined Opera". Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, is a character in Lolita.
References in other media
* The novel Lo's Diary by Pia Pera retells the story from Lolita's point of view, making major plot changes on the premise that Humbert's version is incorrect on many points. Lolita is characterized as being quite sadistic and manipulative.
* The collection Poems for Men who Dream of Lolita by Kim Morrissey takes the form of a series of poems written by Lolita herself reflecting on the events in the story, a sort of diary in poetry form. In strong contrast to Pera's novel, Morrissey portrays Lolita as an innocent, wounded soul. Morrissey had earlier done a stage adaptation of Sigmund Freud's famous Dora case.
* Steve Martin wrote the short story "Lolita at Fifty" (included in his collection Pure Drivel), which is a gently humorous look at how Dolores Haze's life might have turned out.
* In The Police song "Don't Stand So Close to Me" about a schoolgirl's crush on her teacher, the teacher "starts to shake and cough just like the old man in that book by Nabokov." The singer mispronounces Nabokov's name.
* The lyrics of the song "Posters", a song by the rock band Dada about a girl who leads the (male) narrator to her room, includes the line "She asked me if I ever read Lolita."
* In the 1999 film American Beauty, the lead character's name, Lester Burnham, is an anagram of "Humbert learns".
* The 2001 Album Gourmandises by the French singer-songwriter Alizee featured her most successful single Moi... Lolita which reached number one in several countries in Europe and East Asia
* The 2007 Marilyn Manson song and music video for "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)" draws strong influence from Lolita, largely inspired by the comparable age difference between Manson and girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood.
* In Katy Perry's song 'One of the Boys', she mentions Lolita. "I studied Lolita religiously"
* The 2010 song "Lolita" by Mexican singer Belinda was inspired by the story.
* On their 2010 album, the band Glass Wave dedicates a song to Lolita. The lyrics are sung in her own voice.
* In the Red Dwarf episode Marooned, David Lister is forced to burn books to keep warm after crashing on an Ice Planet. When asking if he can burn Lolita, Arnold Rimmer advises him to "save page sixty eight". Lister reads it, calls it "disgusting" then slips it into his jacket and burns the rest.
* In the novel Pretty Little Liars, Hanna makes a silent reference when she catches a 40 year old man staring at her and Mona. She looks at him and thinks "A regular Humbert Humbert", but doesn't speak aloud because Mona wouldn't understand the literary reference and she had only read it in the first place because "Lolita looked deliciously dirty."
Further reading
* Appel, Alfred Jr. (1991). The Annotated Lolita (revised ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9. One of the best guides to the complexities of Lolita. First published by McGraw-Hill in 1970. (Nabokov was able to comment on Appel's earliest annotations, creating a situation that Appel described as being like John Shade revising Charles Kinbote's comments on Shade's poem Pale Fire. Oddly enough, this is exactly the situation Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd proposed to resolve the literary complexities of Nabokov's Pale Fire.)
* Levine, Peter (1967). "Lolita and Aristotle's Ethics" in Philosophy and Literature Volume 19, Number 1, April 1995, pp. 32–47.
* Nabokov, Vladimir (1955). Lolita. New York: Vintage International. ISBN 0-679-72316-1. The original novel.
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