Subject
Code :Dates in Lolita. (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Yvan Chaxel <yvan@apg.ph.ucl.ac.uk>
Everything seems to have been said on the riddle now, especially after the
note of Brian D. Walters. I nevertheless hereby send the full note that I had
intented to send, but then split up in order to make it more appealing for
potential riddle breakers. The treatment I suggest is quite similar to
Brian Gross's one. Let me also underline the originality of the geometrical
resolution chosen by T. Chapman Wing. The discrepancy found between what the
arithmetic and the prose says, is also discussed.
( The answer is then followed by some comments )
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Nabokovians,
While re-reading the beginning of Lolita I've been struck by a very odd and
intriguing sentence which, at the first glimpse seemed utterly obscure but
turned out to be followed by some others which, in turn, built up a consistant
riddle. This enigma, which almost sneaks its way through the first 40 pages
of Lolita, seems to shed some new light on the very beginning of the novel. It
offers the reader willing to hack the code a new angle to tackle the story.
The funny thing about it, is that the answer to this riddle is almost as
puzzling as the riddle itself. It urges the reader to track all allusions to it
up to chapter 19 of part one to understand the full mechanism of the enigma.
But let's submit its compact version to your sagacity:
The question is to find when ( which year ) that particular "summer" took place.
1_ "Oh when ? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was
that summer."
2_ "I was born in 1910, in Paris".
3_ " But the mimosa [ the mimosa of that particular summer ] grove ...
until at last 24 years later, I broke her [Annabel's] spell by
incarnating her in another [Lolita]."
4_ "Now, at 12, she [Lolita] was a regular pest."
All the information in brakets is just meant to clarify the riddle for someone
who wouldn't know anything about the novel. No extra information should be
seeked from the book in order to find the answer. A corollary question
could be to find out in which year Lolita was born, and in which year
Humbert Humbert met Lolita for the first time. The correct answer should not
only give these dates but also prove that it's the unique possible answer; it
should also try to explain the discrepancy found between the result and what
the text urges to believe.
(The answer is then followed by some comments)
Answer
------
(Sorry, but all page references correspond to my own book (Penguin edition))
The set of 4 assertions written above can be reduced into a high-school
arithmetic problem if we call x the year of that particular summer, y the year
of birth of Lolita and z the year of their first encounter.
1 and 2 become: y=2.x -1910
3 becomes: z-x=24
4 becomes: z-y=12
The determinant of this system is:
| 2 1 0 |
|-1 0 1 | = 3
| 0 -1 1 |
It is therefore not equal to 0, which assures us to obtain a unique, non
trivial solution, which is:
x=22
y=34
z=46
Such a solution, even if very satisfying from the mathematical point of view,
becomes quite embarrassing when compared to the text. Indeed, the story
strongly urges the reader to believe that this summer took place in 1923.
The two allusions to the date of this summer are found p11 ("... this was
just before sending me, in the autumn of 1923, to a lycee in Lyon
( where we were to spend three winters); but alas, in the summer of that year,
he was touring Italy with Mme de R. and her daughter, and I had nobody to
complain to, nobody to consult.") and p18 (" When I was a child and she was a
child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my
own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952,
after twenty-nine years have elapsed, ...").
Undisputable evidences also point out that the year of HH's first encounter
with Lolita is 1947, June more specifically ( "... with a golden year, 1947..."
" a few days before I moved into the Haze house, and the little diary which I
now propose to reel off ... covers most of june.")
In a brave attempt to elucidate this mysterious mismatch, I substituted another
version of the 3rd assertion, digged out p39, in which H.H. contradicts himself
("The 25 years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and
vanished "). Is that intentional ? Is that meant to show how HH's brain
flodded by adrenaline, looses track of time, as he sees Lolita for the first
time ? Anyway this replacement turned out to be of little help because
the system gives as a solution:
x=23
y=36
z=48
... which is correct for the year of H.H.'s affaire with Annabel, but still
doesn't explain the odd results for y and z.
So, was this riddle set up on purpose to mislead a reader fond of chessboard
enigmas and arithmethic riddles? Of course not, the answer is much more trivial
and is given by the revellation of Lolita's birthdate p81 ("On Lo's twelfth,
January 1, 1947, ..."). It thus leads to the following succession of events:
H.H's birthdate: 1910
H.H.'s encounter with Annabel: summer 1923
Lolita's birth: 1935-01-01
H.H.'s encounter with Lolita: June 1947
The very reason for the slight mismatch between the riddle's result and the text
comes from the "about" of the first assertion. For the sake of easyness, it was
then translated in the set of equations as an "exactly", whereas it should have
been understood as "plus or minus 18 months" ( 18 months being the average
between 12 and 24 months, depending on when H.H. is born in the year ).
Some comments:
--------------
The question of knowing whether the riddle perfectly matches with the text is
probably of no importance. On the other hand, I have found quite funny that a
book dedicated to a 12 year old girl contains in its first lines such an odd
sentence ("Oh when ? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was
that summer."), a bit like one of these highschool arithmetic problem we all
suffered on ( << In how many years, the sum of the age of Fred (10) and
Julie(6) will be half of the sum of their parents' age (both 35) >>, hum, does
it ring a bell ? ).
But, beyond the arithmetic, it's the way the riddle appears in the story that
is interesting: it's not given as a block, that the reader has to solve. It's
rather a snake that the reader has to hunt through the lines. The
first assertion sounds like an attractive mystery ( 3 unknows in 1 sentence ),
but the second one, already, sounds more like the beginning of a clue, just
enough to tell the reader that there is some consistency and that the other
crucial sentences must be somewhere in the text; up to him to reconstruct the
puzzle. Indeed, the way this riddle has been dispatched in the text highly
reminds a detective story, or rather, the tortuous twists and turns of a chess
game problem. A game within the text, a detective story, a chess problem...
none of that sounds really too unfamiliar for Nabokov; just to mention the eye
and the idea that the whole book is meant to be a game, or more perniciously: a
test. Who's able to crack the identity of the eye ? Who's able to crack the
riddle and to find out which year was Lolita born, before the text explicitly
mentions it ? But really, this riddle inlayed in the text, would rather remind
me Pale Fire than The Eye, just as if, suddenly, the little music of this
riddle embedded in the chronicle of a murder, would come as the echo of the
chronicle of a murder embedded in a poem ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yvan CHAXEL | email: yvan@apg.ph.ucl.ac.uk | AAAA PPPP L
Atmospheric Physics Lab. | phone: + 0171 380 71 63 | A A P P L
University College London | fax: + 0171 380 71 61 | AAAA PPPP L
67-73 Riding House Street |(from abroad dial 44171,not 0171)| A A P L
LONDON. W1P 7PP. UK. | | A A P LLLL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything seems to have been said on the riddle now, especially after the
note of Brian D. Walters. I nevertheless hereby send the full note that I had
intented to send, but then split up in order to make it more appealing for
potential riddle breakers. The treatment I suggest is quite similar to
Brian Gross's one. Let me also underline the originality of the geometrical
resolution chosen by T. Chapman Wing. The discrepancy found between what the
arithmetic and the prose says, is also discussed.
( The answer is then followed by some comments )
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Nabokovians,
While re-reading the beginning of Lolita I've been struck by a very odd and
intriguing sentence which, at the first glimpse seemed utterly obscure but
turned out to be followed by some others which, in turn, built up a consistant
riddle. This enigma, which almost sneaks its way through the first 40 pages
of Lolita, seems to shed some new light on the very beginning of the novel. It
offers the reader willing to hack the code a new angle to tackle the story.
The funny thing about it, is that the answer to this riddle is almost as
puzzling as the riddle itself. It urges the reader to track all allusions to it
up to chapter 19 of part one to understand the full mechanism of the enigma.
But let's submit its compact version to your sagacity:
The question is to find when ( which year ) that particular "summer" took place.
1_ "Oh when ? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was
that summer."
2_ "I was born in 1910, in Paris".
3_ " But the mimosa [ the mimosa of that particular summer ] grove ...
until at last 24 years later, I broke her [Annabel's] spell by
incarnating her in another [Lolita]."
4_ "Now, at 12, she [Lolita] was a regular pest."
All the information in brakets is just meant to clarify the riddle for someone
who wouldn't know anything about the novel. No extra information should be
seeked from the book in order to find the answer. A corollary question
could be to find out in which year Lolita was born, and in which year
Humbert Humbert met Lolita for the first time. The correct answer should not
only give these dates but also prove that it's the unique possible answer; it
should also try to explain the discrepancy found between the result and what
the text urges to believe.
(The answer is then followed by some comments)
Answer
------
(Sorry, but all page references correspond to my own book (Penguin edition))
The set of 4 assertions written above can be reduced into a high-school
arithmetic problem if we call x the year of that particular summer, y the year
of birth of Lolita and z the year of their first encounter.
1 and 2 become: y=2.x -1910
3 becomes: z-x=24
4 becomes: z-y=12
The determinant of this system is:
| 2 1 0 |
|-1 0 1 | = 3
| 0 -1 1 |
It is therefore not equal to 0, which assures us to obtain a unique, non
trivial solution, which is:
x=22
y=34
z=46
Such a solution, even if very satisfying from the mathematical point of view,
becomes quite embarrassing when compared to the text. Indeed, the story
strongly urges the reader to believe that this summer took place in 1923.
The two allusions to the date of this summer are found p11 ("... this was
just before sending me, in the autumn of 1923, to a lycee in Lyon
( where we were to spend three winters); but alas, in the summer of that year,
he was touring Italy with Mme de R. and her daughter, and I had nobody to
complain to, nobody to consult.") and p18 (" When I was a child and she was a
child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my
own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952,
after twenty-nine years have elapsed, ...").
Undisputable evidences also point out that the year of HH's first encounter
with Lolita is 1947, June more specifically ( "... with a golden year, 1947..."
" a few days before I moved into the Haze house, and the little diary which I
now propose to reel off ... covers most of june.")
In a brave attempt to elucidate this mysterious mismatch, I substituted another
version of the 3rd assertion, digged out p39, in which H.H. contradicts himself
("The 25 years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and
vanished "). Is that intentional ? Is that meant to show how HH's brain
flodded by adrenaline, looses track of time, as he sees Lolita for the first
time ? Anyway this replacement turned out to be of little help because
the system gives as a solution:
x=23
y=36
z=48
... which is correct for the year of H.H.'s affaire with Annabel, but still
doesn't explain the odd results for y and z.
So, was this riddle set up on purpose to mislead a reader fond of chessboard
enigmas and arithmethic riddles? Of course not, the answer is much more trivial
and is given by the revellation of Lolita's birthdate p81 ("On Lo's twelfth,
January 1, 1947, ..."). It thus leads to the following succession of events:
H.H's birthdate: 1910
H.H.'s encounter with Annabel: summer 1923
Lolita's birth: 1935-01-01
H.H.'s encounter with Lolita: June 1947
The very reason for the slight mismatch between the riddle's result and the text
comes from the "about" of the first assertion. For the sake of easyness, it was
then translated in the set of equations as an "exactly", whereas it should have
been understood as "plus or minus 18 months" ( 18 months being the average
between 12 and 24 months, depending on when H.H. is born in the year ).
Some comments:
--------------
The question of knowing whether the riddle perfectly matches with the text is
probably of no importance. On the other hand, I have found quite funny that a
book dedicated to a 12 year old girl contains in its first lines such an odd
sentence ("Oh when ? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was
that summer."), a bit like one of these highschool arithmetic problem we all
suffered on ( << In how many years, the sum of the age of Fred (10) and
Julie(6) will be half of the sum of their parents' age (both 35) >>, hum, does
it ring a bell ? ).
But, beyond the arithmetic, it's the way the riddle appears in the story that
is interesting: it's not given as a block, that the reader has to solve. It's
rather a snake that the reader has to hunt through the lines. The
first assertion sounds like an attractive mystery ( 3 unknows in 1 sentence ),
but the second one, already, sounds more like the beginning of a clue, just
enough to tell the reader that there is some consistency and that the other
crucial sentences must be somewhere in the text; up to him to reconstruct the
puzzle. Indeed, the way this riddle has been dispatched in the text highly
reminds a detective story, or rather, the tortuous twists and turns of a chess
game problem. A game within the text, a detective story, a chess problem...
none of that sounds really too unfamiliar for Nabokov; just to mention the eye
and the idea that the whole book is meant to be a game, or more perniciously: a
test. Who's able to crack the identity of the eye ? Who's able to crack the
riddle and to find out which year was Lolita born, before the text explicitly
mentions it ? But really, this riddle inlayed in the text, would rather remind
me Pale Fire than The Eye, just as if, suddenly, the little music of this
riddle embedded in the chronicle of a murder, would come as the echo of the
chronicle of a murder embedded in a poem ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yvan CHAXEL | email: yvan@apg.ph.ucl.ac.uk | AAAA PPPP L
Atmospheric Physics Lab. | phone: + 0171 380 71 63 | A A P P L
University College London | fax: + 0171 380 71 61 | AAAA PPPP L
67-73 Riding House Street |(from abroad dial 44171,not 0171)| A A P L
LONDON. W1P 7PP. UK. | | A A P LLLL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------