Alfred Appel Jr, noted that "Lolita is the last book one would offer as "autobiographical," but even in its totally created form it connects with the deepest reaches of Nabokov's soul. Like the poet Fyodor in The Gift, Nabokov could say that while he keeps everything "on the very brink of parody. . . there must be on the other hand an abyss of seriousness, and I must make my way along this narrow ridge between my own truth and a caricature of it." Lolita and "the deepest reaches of Nabokov's soul"?

I was carried over to Lolita's opening lines and wondering how to translate "my sin, my soul" into Portuguese ("loins" is also rather complicated to render correctly*). Margarida Vale de Gato may have already found her interpretations in Portugal's Portuguese - and is it possible for her to share it with us?

In Brazilian Portuguese, Jorio Dauster wrote: "Lolita, luz de minha vida, labareda em minha carne. Minha alma, minha lama." Breno Silveira (1959) chose: "Lolita, luz de minha vida, fogo de meus lombos. Meu pecado, minha alma." Sergio Flaksman (2011): "Lolita, luz da minha vida, fogo da minha carne. Minha alma, meu pecado."

Jorio Dauster creates a clever wordplay alternating "my soul, my mud" (difficult to render it back in English and the alternating letters in "alma/lama")

For me, one of the translation problems lies in how the direct choice sounds: "minha alma" (often set down as "minh'alma").

If I should happen take any liberties (VN forbid), I'd evade the issue altogether and write something like "alma do meu pecado" ( soul of my sin ), a rather dangerous choice but, in a sense, a rewarding one.

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* - In French: "Lolita, lumière de ma vie, feu de mes reins. Mon péché, mon âme" (Maurice Couturier)