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Re: "Tossing Hair" MOTIF in ADA and THE ENCHANTER
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Great observations, Mo.
I notice that in Lolita it’s only the sexually forward (like Ada) Annabel who tosses her hair, although in a way that Nabokov complicates:
She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion. [I.4]
The next use of “toss” in Lolita is from another female being forward, Charlotte, and forms an artfully delicate metaphor on “tossing the hair”:
“This is not a neat household, I confess,” the doomed dear continued, “but I assure you [she looked at my lips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me show you the garden” (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of the voice). [I.10]
The next occasion “toss” comes up it’s Lolita tossing the apple to catch it in the davenport scene: a very childish game in a context of a naive kind of emotional forwardness:
My heart beat like a drum as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning, subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit. She tossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it—it made a cupped polished plop.
Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple. (I.13)
Here the “toss” with its possible sexually-inviting connotation—not something Lolita is really aware of—and her sitting close to this new man in the house mingle innocence and an uncertain forwardness that Humbert leaps at.
And note that “toss” used in this way does not feature again in Lolita. What fine control on Nabokov’s part. Whether Quilty might have recorded Lo's tossing her hair, had he had a chance to write his memoir and thought the Lolita episode worth recording in his speckled past is another matter.
Sue Lyon I remember as tossing her full head of hair a number of times in the Kubrick film.
Brian Boyd
On 8/06/2016, at 9:08 am, Mo Ibrahim <mibraheem@GMAIL.COM<mailto:mibraheem@GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
Perusing through the motifs on AdaOnline, I read Boyd’s annotations that referenced the motif “tossing hair [Ada]”:
42.27: They went back to the corridor, she tossing her hair, he clearing his throat.
50.08-09: the self-conscious way she tossed back her hair [Merriam-Webster defines self-conscious as “intensely aware of oneself”]
120.26: her hair-shaking head: Ada tosses her hair when self-conscious (cf. 50.08-09).
189.26-27: tossing her head in a way she had when nervous or displeased
227.32-33: brushing away with rosy knuckles of her white hand the black-bronze hair from her temple:
298.05: jacket, standing with her hands behind her back, slightly rocking her shoulders, leaning her back now closer now less closely against the tree trunk, and tossing her hair
585.10: “Yes,” said Ada (aged eleven and a great hair-tosser)
Then I recalled that Nabokov wrote in The Enchanter then when the nymphet gave a "vigorous toss" to "her brown curls", she was displaying “flirtatiousness”, (p. 51).
I knew from Neil Strauss’ New York Times Best Seller The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists that “tossing hair” is considered an Indicator of Interest (IOI).
“As we talked, she held eye contact with me. She played with her hair. She looked for excuses to touch my arm. She leaned in when I leaned back. All the IOIs were there.” (p. 298)
Clearly, the pickup artists featured in The Game weren’t the first to associate hair fondling with seduction and Nabokov probably wasn’t the first to associate tossing hair with “flirtatiousness”. But what could have been Nabokov’s source(s) and is the “tossing hair” motif used in Nabokov’s other works?
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvabrin@humnet.ucla.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
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I notice that in Lolita it’s only the sexually forward (like Ada) Annabel who tosses her hair, although in a way that Nabokov complicates:
She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion. [I.4]
The next use of “toss” in Lolita is from another female being forward, Charlotte, and forms an artfully delicate metaphor on “tossing the hair”:
“This is not a neat household, I confess,” the doomed dear continued, “but I assure you [she looked at my lips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me show you the garden” (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of the voice). [I.10]
The next occasion “toss” comes up it’s Lolita tossing the apple to catch it in the davenport scene: a very childish game in a context of a naive kind of emotional forwardness:
My heart beat like a drum as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning, subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit. She tossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it—it made a cupped polished plop.
Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple. (I.13)
Here the “toss” with its possible sexually-inviting connotation—not something Lolita is really aware of—and her sitting close to this new man in the house mingle innocence and an uncertain forwardness that Humbert leaps at.
And note that “toss” used in this way does not feature again in Lolita. What fine control on Nabokov’s part. Whether Quilty might have recorded Lo's tossing her hair, had he had a chance to write his memoir and thought the Lolita episode worth recording in his speckled past is another matter.
Sue Lyon I remember as tossing her full head of hair a number of times in the Kubrick film.
Brian Boyd
On 8/06/2016, at 9:08 am, Mo Ibrahim <mibraheem@GMAIL.COM<mailto:mibraheem@GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
Perusing through the motifs on AdaOnline, I read Boyd’s annotations that referenced the motif “tossing hair [Ada]”:
42.27: They went back to the corridor, she tossing her hair, he clearing his throat.
50.08-09: the self-conscious way she tossed back her hair [Merriam-Webster defines self-conscious as “intensely aware of oneself”]
120.26: her hair-shaking head: Ada tosses her hair when self-conscious (cf. 50.08-09).
189.26-27: tossing her head in a way she had when nervous or displeased
227.32-33: brushing away with rosy knuckles of her white hand the black-bronze hair from her temple:
298.05: jacket, standing with her hands behind her back, slightly rocking her shoulders, leaning her back now closer now less closely against the tree trunk, and tossing her hair
585.10: “Yes,” said Ada (aged eleven and a great hair-tosser)
Then I recalled that Nabokov wrote in The Enchanter then when the nymphet gave a "vigorous toss" to "her brown curls", she was displaying “flirtatiousness”, (p. 51).
I knew from Neil Strauss’ New York Times Best Seller The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists that “tossing hair” is considered an Indicator of Interest (IOI).
“As we talked, she held eye contact with me. She played with her hair. She looked for excuses to touch my arm. She leaned in when I leaned back. All the IOIs were there.” (p. 298)
Clearly, the pickup artists featured in The Game weren’t the first to associate hair fondling with seduction and Nabokov probably wasn’t the first to associate tossing hair with “flirtatiousness”. But what could have been Nabokov’s source(s) and is the “tossing hair” motif used in Nabokov’s other works?
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvabrin@humnet.ucla.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvabrin@humnet.ucla.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L