Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0004496, Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:59:20 -0700

Subject
QUERY: Hairy Hermaphrodite in Lolita?
Date
Body
------------------ I posed this question to Zoran Kuzmanovich at the
Cornell conference, but we could not resolve it to our (or at least my)
satisfaction.

In Part 1 of Lolita, at the very beginnning of Chapter 27 (p. 109 in the
rev. ed. of The Annotated Lolita), Humbert says:

"Finally, I did achieve an hour's slumber--from which I was aroused by
gratuitous and horribly exhausting congress with a small hairy
hermaphrodite, a total stranger."

What's the literal meaning of this sentence? I had always assumed that
Humbert was being bitten by a mosquito (it is August, after all), but my
husband the biologist assures me that hermaphroditic insects are extremely
rare. Nabokov, needless to say, knew his insects. Any ideas?

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Holy Cross College
Worcester, MA 01610
ssweeney@holycross.edu