Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

manic in his emotions, and this mania grows noticeable in the constant “mood to mood” transitioning that
characterizes the dynamic of his mind. Even when invoking Lolita, Humbert names the variations of his
nymphet’s nature, yet finally concedes, “But in my arms she was always Lolita” (9). He “appropriates her on
his own terms” and early on implicitly warns his jurors of his solipsism, acknowledging that the Lolita he
conceives is borne out of his unconsummated childhood love (Boyd 228). This effect highlights the dangers
of the liberated mind and its consequential ironic ability to “entrap” those it encounters (Boyd 228). In an
interview with Trilling, Nabokov cites a newspaper article about an ape who produced a charcoal sketch of
the bars of his cage as the initial inspiration for his book. He argues that his own “baboon” is doing just that:
“He is drawing and shading and erasing and redrawing the bars of his cage” (“Nabokov discusses Lolita 1”).
Humbert’s obsession is all he can see of the world, and so his rendering of such a reality manipulates our
reception of events as they are related from Humbert’s physical and mental imprisonment.
The constructed duality of Humbert’s nature finds its origins in the irrecoverable past that he
unsuccessfully seeks to reclaim. This is the very essence of Humbert’s nostalgia, for as Hutcheon states,
nostalgia serves as a reaction to the fact that time cannot be retrieved (“Irony, Nostalgia”). Humbert yearns
for his childhood love, a relationship unconsummated and frustrated by death, thereby provoking him to
seek this same youthful romantic encounter with a nymphetic girl who seemingly retrieves the past for a
man growing older in the ever-changing present. Writing his memoir from a contemporary discourse in his
attempt to access the past, Humbert’s nostalgia for his Annabel does not recall the reality of his adolescent
love, but rather evokes the past as reimagined and idealized through his memory—“I recall the scent of
some kind of toilet powder”—and desire for things gone: “the little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent
tongue haunted me ever since—until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in
another” (15). Humbert attempts to transfer his unfulfilled love and passion for Annabel onto the innocent
Dolores Haze, a project that compels him to construct his Lolita just as he constructs his self. Like the ape
who sketches his perceived world, Humbert depicts his own emotional captivity through the medium of a
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