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Alois Humbert sent a letter to Charles Darwin regarding a hummingbird
sphinx moth that tried to extract nectar from wallpaper flowers. When
considering VN’s refutal of “survival of the fittest” -citing the
exuberance of butterfly mimicry- this hummingbird moth seems an anomaly
that VN would enjoy. He has seemingly transcribed the image into Ada
where
a room is papered with a hummingbird motif. Humbert Humbert calls
himself “Humbert the Hummer” and refers to himself as a hummingbird in
his
nonsense poem to Lo. He also notes the hundreds of gray hummingbirds at
the
Mexican border “probing the throats of dim flowers” as he contemplates
crossing with his nymphet. These pedophile “hummingbirds” (as noted in
an
earlier archive discussion) may actually be sphinx moths misnamed by
Humbert. The hummingbird theme continues in Lolita when John Farlow
(who
is concerned with Lolita’s whereabouts) “actually manages to hit a
hummingbird” with a gun. This is noted just after the same Farlow urges
Humbert to send news of the girl. Humbert is also indebted to Fred
Beale
who ran over Humbert’s unwanted wife and then described the ordeal with
his
hummingbird pencil.
Alois Humbert’s misguided moth seems a fitting analogy to Humbert who
manages to wield only a two-dimensional relationship with Lolita as
the “dim and adorable regions” of Dolores Haze are “absolutely
forbidden”
to Humbert.