Friday 3 August 2007

How Lolita Walks

As we're back onto movement again, here's Humbert Humbert lusting after Lolita:

Friday. Saw her going somewhere with a dark girl called Rose. Why does the way she walks - a child, mind you, a mere child! - excite me so abominably? Analyze it. A faint suggestion of turned in toes. A kind of wiggly looseness below the knee prolonged to the end of each footfall. The ghost of a drag. Very infantile, infinitely meretricious.

You'll find Nabokov's Lolita in every 'top 100 novels' list. It's a tremendous novel; the prose is highly poetic with high regard for devices of sound, although I did find myself overwhelmed by the adjectives.
'Nabokov was a synesthete and described aspects of synesthesia in several of his works. In his memoir Speak, Memory, he notes that his wife also exhibited synesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colors with particular letters.' [Source: wikipedia.]

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