The Details of Desire: From Dolores on the Dotted Line to Dotted Dolores

Bouchet, Marie.

Nabokov Studies, Volume 9, 2005, pp. 101-114 (Article)

Published by International Vladimir Nabokov Society and Davidson College DOI: 10.1353/nab.2005.0006

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Nabokov Studies 9 (2005)

MARIE C. BOUCHET (Bordeaux)

The Details of Desire: From Dolores on the Dotted Line to Dotted Dolores

Lolita is an ambiguous object of desire. She is an tre de fuite,1 a creature in metamorphosis, as reflected in her transforming pubescent body. Her twofold nature (44) endows her with an essential ambiguity. She is a hybrid creature, halfway between woman and child, half-demon, half-angel, halfbeast, half-beauty. Because of her very ambivalence, the nature of Lolita resists Humberts attempts to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets (134; all quotations are from The Annotated Lolita). His desire to seize her ambiguous nature proves difficult to fulfill: The beastly and the beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix and I feel I fail to do so utterly. Why? (135). Thus, he repeatedly complains of his failure at capturing the nymphets beauty in words: A poet mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbed nose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannot recall it today. (44) The remnants of the destroyed poem offer instances of the methods Humbert uses to complete his impossible task of fixing the unfixable in words. In this short excerpt, the reader is given only parts of the girls body. The constant fragmentation process at work in the various depictions of nymphets relies on the three points that the present essay offers to develop: first, the metonymical devicesin the above example, there is even a mise en abyme of metonymy: for each fragment of Lolita, Humbert focuses on a part of the part that stands for the wholethe lashes of the eyes, the freckles on the nose, the down on the limbs. Second, it is to be noticed that these fragments are extremely precise details. Such detailing will be paralleled with the importance Nabokov gave to detail in his scientific, academic, and literary careers. 1. Proust uses the term tre de fuite to define Albertine.

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The third point will underline the recurrence of markings on the bodyhere, above, the frecklesin the evocations of nymphets, for their metatextual function. The Metonymical Essence of Desire The text strives toward a thorough description of the bodies of nymphets while never managing to provide an overall image. Descriptions of nymphets are but an incomplete collage of pieces. This is due not only to the changing nature of nymphets, but also, as Peter Brooks underscored, to the very character of descriptive prose, which he defines as inherently metonymical (102). The written text cannot supply a complete picture of its object, but has to articulate it word by word, limb by limb. Hence every description of a nymphet relies on a tension between movement (the changing nature of the girl) and stasis (the describing process that tries to fix her in words). As Humbert cannot give the reader a complete and stable picture of his beloved Annabel and Lolita, he relies heavily on metonymy, rehearsing body parts and playing on ellipses. The suggestive power of metonymy enables the narrator to evoke indescribable fragments of the nymphets body, through an implicit and contiguous displacement. The following example illustrates both his trouble portraying nymphets and the metonymical device: I would like to describe her face, her waysand I cannot, because my own desire blinds me when she is near. I am not used to being with nymphets, damn it. If I close my eyes I see but an immobilized fraction of her, a cinematographic still, a sudden smooth nether loveliness, as with one knee up under her tartan skirt she sits tying her shoe. (44) Humbert, like Cupid, is blinded; and he is consequently reduced to depicting his imagined Lolita. It is the only image he can really master, like a cinematographic stilla metaphor that aptly reflects the conjunction of move and halt. Yet even in the controlled realm of his imagination, he just provides a fragment, a fraction of her. The very complex phrase a sudden smooth nether loveliness deserves close analysis. This image metamorphoses the abstract concept of loveliness into a very sensual and concrete part of Lolitas body, thanks to the zeugma that alliteratively brings together two epithets, the temporal adjective sudden, and the tactile adjective smooth. The effect produced is close to synaesthesia, as three senses are involved: sight, touch, and hearing (through the sound effects). A scrutiny of the sound patterns also reveals that the tension between movement and stasis is reflected in the rhythmical structures.

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The accumulation of monosyllabic words confers a regularity on the end of the sentence, as if its cadence is slowed down by spondees closing the paragraph. Moreover, the alliterations reveal the effort to control the texts rhythm: after the tender alliteration in n (a sudden smooth nether loveliness, as with one knee up under), duplications of h, t, s, and sh (her tartan skirt she sits tying her shoe) create a sound chiasmus that frames the word she. Yet, despite the control marked in the chiasmic structure, the surface of the text is stirred by repressed desirethe still is blurred. The chiasmus is indeed not completely perfect, and, behind the screen of mastered spondees and chiasmus, behind the euphemism nether loveliness, between the skirt and the shoe, the observers desire can be read. As Roland Barthes says, in Le plaisir du texte, the most erotic place of the body is where clothing gapes [...]; it is intermittence [...] that is erotic2 (17). As this example illustrates, fragmentation rules the descriptions of Lolita and her likes in the novel: a complete picture, what Barthes calls the total body (le corps total) is never given, nor can it be given, due to the metamorphosing nature of nymphets bodies.3 It is in the blank between skirt and shoe that desire is revealed. Indeed, the depiction of these twofold creatures persistently relies on ellipsis. Descriptions obliquely hint at parts of the girls body that remain in the unsaid, while attention is directed onto non-sexual parts. Humberts portrait of Lolita in her tennis outfit illustrates this technique: The white wide little-boy shorts, the slender waist, the apricot midriff, the white breast-kerchief whose ribbons went up and encircled her neck to end behind in a dangling knot leaving bare her gaspingly young and adorable apricot shoulder blades with that pubescence and those lovely gentle bones, and the smooth, downward-tapering back. (231) This is an important passage: Humbert says he cherishes the memories of Lolita playing tennis, and Nabokov himself indicated that the tennis scenes were part of the nerves of the novel (316). Here, in this seemingly topto-toe description of Lolita, displacements abound. One should first notice the hypallage gaspingly, which is more relevant to qualify the gazer than the gazed. The text circles around the breasts and the pubic area, by lightly 2 . lendroit le plus rotique dun corps [est] l o le vtement bille [...]; cest lintermittence, [...] qui est rotique, (17); my translation. 3. The numerous parallels that can be drawn between nymphets and butterflies have been underscored by many critics, notably Alfred Appel, Jr.; see The Annotated Lolita, 327 and 33840.

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enveloping them in white tennis clothes that are like veils over the desired body. Humbert seems to relish in the white fabric in which his solipsized nymphet is clad. Her body looks as if it had shrunk: her bust is reduced to a midriff, even her shoulders are a softened structurethat pubescence and those lovely gentle bonesand her downward-tapering back seems to disappear under the wide white shorts. It is as if the white garment invaded the textual space, in order to suggest the flesh it covers. Indeed, as Jenefer Shute has pointed out, clothing reveals more than it conceals (540). The nymphets pulsating body remains in the ellipsis, in the white blanks between the lines of the text. Eroticism is much more suggestive when it withholds information and lets the readers imagination fill in the blanks; indeed the nymphet is never depicted naked: nudes never appear, unless under a fantasized form. Let us examine one of the few instances of an undressed nymphet. Walking up the steps to room 342 of The Enchanted Hunters hotel, in which he locked and drugged Lolita in order to be able to take advantage of her sleeping body, Humbert describes the image that has been haunting his nights for long months and that he hopes to find behind the door: In the course of evocations and schemes to which I had dedicated so many insomnias, I had gradually eliminated the superfluous blur, and by stacking level upon level of translucent vision, had evolved a final picture. Naked, except for one sock and her charm bracelet, spreadeagled on the bed where my philter had felled herso I foreglimpsed her; a velvet ribbon still clutched in her hand; her honey-brown body, with the white negative image of a rudimentary swimsuit patterned against her tan, presented to me its pale breastbuds; in the rosy lamplight, a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock. (125) Even though naked is emphatically placed at the opening of the description, the evocation of the body itself is delayed. The reader is given only accessories, another form of clothing. In addition, the chosen accessories belong to crucial thematic networks: the white sock is one of the main Lolita-motifs, as it is the element foreshadowing the nymphets presence in the Haze house (39): a few lines after Charlotte Haze picked it up from the floor, Lolita appears on the stage of the novel. The white sock is a highly erotic object for Humbert, as it is also with one of her anklets that he deceives Charlotte when she is out, attending church (81). As for the charm bracelet, it echoes the enchantment (my philter, the hotels name) and fairy tale motifs that run throughout the novel, and in the Enchanted Hunters episode in particular. In the second part of Humberts fantasy, once the body is finally disclosed,

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the white color is used again through the metaphor of film development, which betrays the absent presence of a clothing itemLolitas bathing suit. Just as film development reverses the white and black of the negative, the function of the white color, in this vision of the nymphets body, is the reverse of the one it had in the tennis garment portrait, outside Humberts fantasies. This time, it is in the white absence of clothing that appear the sexual parts that were veiled by the tennis outfit. The white color is not a veil here, since on the contrary it points to the removal of the veil. In the white spaces underlined by the tan, the nymphets sleeping body is objectified (see the repetition of its). Yet another type of veil envelops Lolitas breasts and pubis, the veil of the metaphors that ornament the text. Nabokovs extraordinary stylistic refinements are illustrated here: the floral image in the pale breastbuds echoes the archetypal Proustian blooming young girl, and in the delicate floss-image of a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock, the caress of the alliterations in l, s, p, and t is paired with the twinkling assonance in i. Another example illustrates the recurrent devices used in the descriptive process. It is taken from Humberts diary: Changeful, bad-tempered, cheerful, awkward, graceful with the tart grace of her coltish subteens, excruciatingly desirable from head to foot (all New England for a lady-writers pen!), from the black ready-made bow and bobby pins holding her hair in place to the little scar on the lower part of her neat calf (where a roller-skater kicked her in Pisky), a couple of inches above her rough white sock. Gone with her mother to the Hamiltonsa birthday party or something. Full-skirted gingham frock. Her little doves seem well formed already. Precocious pet! (49) Once more, Humbert first introduces the nymphets ambiguity, and then pretends he is about to give a complete picture of Lolita; but the description from head to foot is to be taken literally, as he only provides one detail of her head (another accessory, the bow), and one detail of her foot (the scar above the recurrent white sock), with an ellipsis of what lies in-between. Once more, there is no mention of the body itself, but of her dress, and in the evocation, her breasts are again veiled by a metaphor. In addition to the metonymical and elliptical devices, the fragmented portrait is characterized by a close-up on details. Brian Boyd underscored the recurrence of this feature of Nabokovs style: Rather than try to capture the whole, Nabokov tries to vivify the part. So he chooses an off-centre detail: She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. (149)

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The persistent use of detail is an essential feature not only for the creation of patterns in the novel, like the sock-motif for instance, but also for the depiction of nymphets. Every detail of her bright beauty Descriptions entail a slowing down of the narrative, or even a halt in the development of the plot. Hence narratologists such as Grard Genette dubbed them descriptive pauses (133). When Nabokovs text pauses on a detail of the nymphets body, the suspension of narrative progression and the dilatation of the moment of description are reinforced by a slowing down of the rhythm of the sentence itself. The detail being the focal point of the description, the impression of stalling, of coming to a halt, is thus enhanced. This suspension effect can be illustrated by examining the preceding quote from the novel. If one focuses upon the first detail Humbert gives of Lolita, the black ready-made bow and bobby pins holding her hair in place, one can sense how the sensual alliteration in labials is followed by an alliteration in h, that provokes a slowing down of the rhythm, accentuated by the verb in -ing form. The text prolongs the close-up on the accessories by affixing a relative clause losing itself in Lolitas hair. A similar technique enables the narrator to linger on the second detail: the little scar on the lower part of her neat calf (where a roller-skater kicked her in Pisky), a couple of inches above her rough white sock. Here, the lingering process is carried out through the parenthesis that analeptically recalls the cause of the scar, and through the extremely detailed location of the mark conveyed by the anatomical precision, and the measurement data. Indeed, the utmost precision that characterizes these spots of desire is striking. For instance, the evocation of Lolitas outfit in the same passage: her full-skirted gingham frock, though briefly sketched, gives detailed information on the shape, cut, and material of the dress. Another vision of Lolitas garment can illustrate the Nabokovian use of detail. The following excerpt is taken from the beginning of the famous divan scene: She wore that day a pretty print dress that I had seen on her once before, ample in skirt, tight in the bodice, short-sleeved, pink, checkered with darker pink, and, to complete the color scheme, she had painted her lips and was holding in her hollowed hands a beautiful, banal, Eden-red apple. (57) The nymphets body again has to be guessed under the profusely detailed description of her clothes, punctuated by paired alliterations that give a rhythm to the portrait. The different parts of the dress and the different color

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nuances of the fabric are meticulously rehearsed in a long series of adjectives. Lolita is a parodic Eve: she is not naked but fully dressed, and in pink, the color of her age, and not of the fatal apple. Yet the ambiguity of the nymphet is reflected in the ambivalence of the color scheme, which evolves from adolescent pink to the red color of the fruit of sin. Lolita is further affiliated to adult women by the lipstick she used to match her body to her dress. The lipstick is given more importance in the screenplay Nabokov wrote for the novel. In the conversation following Humberts discovery of Lolita sunning itself in the backyard, Lolita explains to Humbert how she hides her lipstick from her mother: HUMBERT: Does your mother allow lipstick? LOLITA: She does not. I hide it here. She indraws her pretty abdomen and produces it from under the band of her shorts. (4344) This passage bears obvious echoes of the description of Lolita in the novels discovery scene, which is also structured on details: 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 [...]. (39, emphasis mine) Nabokov thus uses details (the lipstick and the precisely exact echoes of the novel) to create correspondences between the novel and its dramatization. The central role of details recalls Nabokovs preference for the particular over the general. In Strong Opinions, he repeatedly stated his aversion for common objects and his fondness for unique detail: I believe in stressing the specific detail; the general ideas can take care of themselves (55). In an earlier interview, he underlined the major part detail played in both his artistic and his scientific work: As an artist and scholar I prefer the specific detail to the generalization, images to ideas, obscure facts to clear symbols, and the discovered wild fruit to the synthetic jam. (7) Nabokov had an entomological practice of detail that his literary creations largely reflect. For him, there was no real separation between art and science, especially when it comes to detail: In high art as in pure science, detail is everything (Strong Opinions 168). Details are also essential because they endow the characters with powerful verisimilitude.

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Details prove to be crucial elements for the creation of a convincing referential illusion. They are the ideal spots for reality effectseffets de rel, a concept forged by Roland Barthes (89). Nabokov was aware of the mimetic power of details. He thus documented himself in order to provide as many real details to his reader as possible, so that Lolita seemed totally verisimilar. The material kept by the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress contains some notes on the physical transformations that teenage girls undergo at specific times. Found amongst these items are charts depicting the evolution of the bodily measurements of adolescent females, which Nabokov copied from various books. This research is echoed in the following excerpt in which Humbert is about to go shopping for Lolita: One of my guides in these matters was an anthropometric entry made by her mother on Los twelfth birthday (the reader remembers that KnowYour-Child-Book). I had the feeling that Charlotte, moved by obscure motives of envy and dislike, had added an inch here, a pound there; but since the nymphet had no doubt grown somewhat in the last seven months, I thought I could safely accept most of those January measurements: hip girth, twenty-nine inches; thigh girth (just below the gluteal sulcus), seventeen; calf girth and neck circumference, eleven; chest circumference, twenty-seven; upper arm girth, eight; waist, twentythree; stature, fifty-seven inches; weight, seventy-eight pounds; figure, linear; intelligence quotient, 121; vermiform appendix present, thank God. (107) Not only is the nymphets body literally detailed, but it is also scientifically digitized. The presence of mathematical measurements and anatomical vocabulary strengthens the illusion of reality. Different from scientific precision, some truly original details also stand for reality effects: She was bare-footed; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polish and there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe. (51) The two traces on the nymphets feet not only seem extremely realistic, but they again place her on the threshold between childhood and womanhood. The adhesive tape relates her to the first, and the cherry-red polish to the latter. The hybrid nature of Lolita is reaffirmed in these tiny but extremely sensual details. In his Lectures on Literature, Nabokov underlined the sensual quality of details by saying that one should notice and fondle details (1). With that statement in mind, it can be said that on such sensuous bodies as those of nymphets, details are burning with sensuality. This is memorably perceived in

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the scene when Humbert discovers Lolita, and reincarnates his lost Annabel in her: I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight [...] 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 shortsthat last mad immortal day behind the Roches Roses. (39) The identification and affiliation of the two nymphets is made through a detail: the mole on Lolitas hip. In his Lectures on Russian Literature, Nabokov said that details are the sensual spark without which a book is dead (xixii), and this one mole provides a perfect example of sensual spark. In addition to the prevailing sensuality, the nymphets body seems to be mapped by the kiss, as the euphemism my southbound mouth indicates, and the alliteration in labialsabdomen 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 shortsmirrors the contact of lips and skin. Yet there remains one paradox about detail. Though it is the ideal basis for reality effects, thanks to its mimetic force and the sensual aura around it, it also betrays the referential illusion itself. Indeed, Nabokovs prose, when it explores detail, attracts the readers attention to its written quality, through the various sound effects, daring metaphors, variations in rhythm, and other stylistic aspects that produce a metatextual effect. Those details are thus as textual as they are sensual. The Body as Text In Lolita, the fragmentation process leads to an enhancement of desire spots, which call to mind Barthess notion of punctum. This notion was developed in his study of photography, entitled La Chambre Claire. Barthes defines punctums as the details that break the continuity of the background and directly reach the viewer/reader (4748). When related to Lolita, one can say that the details of the nymphets body can be considered literary punctums. It is fascinating to note that, very often, these details are similar to signs on the nymphets body. Their recurrence is striking, from the very first description of Lolita (see above) to the last. In fact, the crenulated imprint on Annabels hip is not only a sensual detail, but also a textual one. As the word imprint indicates, it is a sign that relates her body to a page on which a text is printed. As Peter Brooks has demonstrated, the bodily marking not only serves to recognise and identify, it also indicates the bodys passage into the realm of

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the letter, into literature (22). The nymphets body is thus textualized, semiotizedturned into a sign meant to be deciphered. Brooks has also underscored the erotic value of those signs: What presides at the inscription and imprinting of bodies is, in the broadest sense, a set of desires: a desire that the body not be lost to meaningthat it be brought into the realm of the semiotic and the significantand, underneath this, a desire for the body itself, an erotic longing to have or to be the body. [...]where it concerns writing a body, creating a textual body, the interplay of eros and artistic creation is particularly clear. (22) Numerous echoes of Humberts narrative strategy are to be found in this analysis: indeed, beyond the goal of fixing once for all the perilous magic of nymphets lies Humberts desire to recapture his past romance, make Lolita his, and redeem the life he imposed on her through artistic creation. Moreover, the persistent focus on the signs dotting Lolitas body has a metatextual function: it assimilates those inscriptions to written signs. The present essay will now focus upon the typically Nabokovian recurrence of body signs that establish the nymphets body as a text. Two types of signs can be distinguished: body marks (moles, freckles, dimples) and markings on the body (scars, insect bites, traces). As we have seen, the nymphets bodies display dots on their surfaces. The various moles, freckles, or dimples are consciously chosen because they work as signs on the skin. If one examines Nabokovs revision of the translation of Lolita into French, kept by the Berg Collection, New York Public Library, one may notice that the author wanted the dark-brown mole on Lolitas side to be translated as signe brun fonc (dark-brown sign, my emphasis).4 Whenever Humbert describes his beloved nymphet, he prefers highlighting the tiny elements that punctuate Lolitas body over providing a complete picture of her. Going back to the destroyed madrigal quoted in the introduction, one can notice that freckles are the central element of the evocation, underlined by an alliteration in f: A poet mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbed nose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannot recall it today. (44)

4. Quoted by arrangement with the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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This would-be poem is an important structural passage, as it is the center of a network of echoes that resound throughout the text: Lolitas gray eyes, freckles, and downy limbs indeed form motifs that are woven into the texts fabric. These punctums provide an interesting framing effect, as the three of them recur in the last description of Lolita. The freckles are the first element to re-appear: She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her head looked smaller [...] and her pale-freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. (269) Her nymphic essence seems to have been eaten up by her pregnancy: the elements in the madrigal are still present, but they are all faded. Further on in the course of his last encounter with Lolita, Humbert realizes he still loves her, even in this faded version. At this moment, the original words and colors of the madrigal resurface: I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with anothers child, but still gray-eyed, still sootylashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine. (278, emphasis mine) Another instance of the sensual and textual dots on Lolitas skin are the dimples that adorn her pubescent body. For example, Humbert celebrates the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent frock (59). By referring to the whole of her person with the adjective dimpled, Humbert extends the marking onto the totality of her body. Another extremely original use of this adjective can be found: Humbert refers to her dimpled dimness (131). In this metaphor one can find the tension between precision (the dimples) and imprecision (dimness) that characterizes many descriptions of the nymphet (see the pattern of haze and mist in the novel). The two antagonistic notions are delicately joined by the alliteration in d, providing an eerie mix of hazy darkness and sensual spots of desire. Another category of punctums is the markings left by some exterior element that scars, bruises, or scratches the surface of the heroines skin. Unlike the freckles or moles which have always been present on the body, these signs inscribe the nymphets body with time, as they are the trace of some past event. Some of these signs are permanent, like the sensual detail noticed earlierthe little scar on the lower part of her neat calf (where a roller-skater kicked her in Pisky) (49). In the key episode of Lolita playing tennis, the narrator points to another permanent detail dotting her desired body:

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Did I ever mention that her bare arm bore the 8 of vaccination? That I loved her hopelessly? That she was only fourteen? (234) The declaration of love seems to rely on that sensual marking that epitomizes the interplay of the visual and the textual: indeed the form of the marking itself is reproduced into the written text, and is a signthe figure 8. Some of the markings dotting the bodies of nymphets are impermanent, like the crenulated imprint (39) on Annabels side, which, though temporary, was never forgotten by Humbert. He even uses one of these markings as a pretext to touch Lolita. In the divan scene, approaching the climactic moment, he notices a bruise on her leg: Look, look!I gaspedlook what youve done, what youve done to yourself, ah, look; for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruise on her lovely nymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged and slowly envelopedand because of her very perfunctory underthings, there seemed to be nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin [...]. (6061) The narrators excitement is divulged by the repetitions and hesitations in his stammering speech. The fact that the bruise is a pretext for him to caress Lolita is all the clearer as Humbert feels the need to swear the bruise was there. The marking appears as the key opening the way to the underside of Lolitas frock: a similar alliteration in h resounds in Humberts huge hairy hand and the hot hollow of her groin, thus subtly betraying the aim of Humberts hand. This essay will end on a last close-up on the heroines body. This is the first sight Humbert has of Lolita when he comes to pick her up at Camp Q, after long weeks of separation: She was all rose and honey, dressed in the brightest gingham, with a pattern of little red apples, and her arms and legs were of a deep golden brown, with scratches like tiny dotted lines of coagulated rubies, and the ribbed cuffs of her white socks were turned down at the remembered level [...]. (111) This depiction gathers a large number of Lolita-motifs, such as the white sock, the tan motif, or the rose-theme. The idea of pattern is even mise en abyme by the mention of the pattern of little red apples that doubly echoes the divan scene: the apple and the gingham frock recall the apple she held and the dress she wore on that sunny Sunday morning.

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The element to be stressed here is the scratches like tiny dotted lines of coagulated rubies that Humbert notices. These markings clearly establish the semiotization of Lolitas body, as the comparison parallels the scratches with punctuation dots, thus metamorphosing her brown limbs into a texts page. Moreover, in his analysis of punctums, Barthes related this notion to a texts punctuation (49): an extremely apt analogy here. The gem metaphor that renders Lolitas dried blood preciously enhances the paradoxical beauty of the painful trace. The assonance in ai and the alliterations in l, t, and d that punctuate the text seem to mimic the red dotting on her skin. Moreover, the sound patterns contain a resonance of the consonants in Lolitas name, and also carry an obvious echo to the opening of the novel: She was Dolores on the dotted line (9). From Dolores on the dotted line to a Dolores dotted with sensual details, Nabokov parallels Lolitas desired body to a text through sensual as well as textual signs. The recurrence of these dots is yet another original way for the author to foreground the written, fictional quality of his creation. This technique of semiotization of the nymphets body has to be underlined, as it is an unnoticed aspect of the metatextual strategies Nabokov persistently uses, as many critics have otherwise noted. Looking back once again on the destroyed madrigal, one can sense another paradox. Indeed, even if Humbert experienced difficulty in trying to fix the nymphets twofold nature and ambiguous beauty in words, the remnants of his destroyed piece of verse somehow provide a little poem in prose: A poet mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbed nose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannot recall it today. (44) The alliterative inflexions (five asymmetrical freckles, bobbed, blond, brown) and assonantic echoes in a, ei, ai, o and au create a musical regularity punctuated by the anaphora to the, which brings to mind the tradition of blazons. Such a hybrid form of prose and poetry seems to be the only one that can approach Lolitas beauty, because it is harmonious with her own hybrid nature. Lolita is the title, the first and last word of a beautiful novel, but it is through the dots punctuating her body that the blending of nymphet and text is sensually recalled: Lolita and Lolita are indeed the same.

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