68.04: (the dutiful daughter came too late):
could be a sarcastic echo of *Le Pere Goriot* in the previous
chapter. Dying Goriot called for his beloved daughters,
but neither would not come to see their father in time.
68.05-06: another American writer, also
residing in Switzerland: probably alludes
to VN.
68.09-10: a graveled path with streams of
bubbly rainwater running on either side: I think I have seen a scene like
this in VN's works--I cannot recall where.
68.13-14：She now wore again the pretty pageboy
hairdo of the past and the same orange blouse: Cf. "Shall I now see her in
dreams with those new eyebrows, that new long hair? . . . Will the next dream
still stick to her Japanese-doll hairdo?" (Ch. 13).
68.17: and turned out to be a totally
different girl: Cf. "and abruptly changing into a goggled stranger" (Ch. 15).
68.19: in Morocco: The Othello
theme.
69.25: a can of apricot juice: I have been puzzled--why apricot juice? Is
there anything behind it? Are apricots a special product there?
70.03-06: when a timid editor made the artist change "slender" to "plump,"
or "brown" to "blond" he disfigured both the image and the niche where it stood
and the entire chapel around it: In the next chapter, HP finds "the author
*had* made her [Julia] fair-haired, and played down the Eurasian quality
of her beauty."
70.13-14: with a little knowing air, as the
French say: Is "with a little knowing air" originally a literal
translation of "avec un petit air entendu"? I thought the English
idiom was commonly used. Or "as the French say" refers
to such snobbery in literary salons?
70.27-28: the tongue tended to substitute an
"l" for the second of the three "t's": reminds the reader how to
pronounce "Lolita." Cf. "'Lolita' should not be pronounced in the English or
Russian fashion . . . but with a trill of Latin "l" and a delicate toothy
"t" (SO 138).
71.04: "So long and soon see": As a
character, Mr. R. does not know that he will never see HP again;
as the narrator, he knows that he will see him rather soon, after 30
pages.
Akiko Nakata