Popular music in Nabokov's Lolita, or Frankie and Johnny : a new key to Lolita? - article ; n°3 ; vol.72, pg 443-452

Barbara Wyllie

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Revue des études slaves - Année 2000 - Volume 72 - Numéro 3 - Pages 443-452
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La musique populaire dans Lolita de Nabokov ou Frankie and Johnny, une nouvelle clef pour Lolita ?
La musique n'est pas un élément dans l'art de Vladimir Nabokov qui a vraiment attiré l'attention des chercheurs. C'est parce que Nabokov, lui-même, a déclaré qu'il pouvait pas du tout écouter la musique, que ses oreilles et son cerveau n'était pas reliés. Mais, la musique, et précisément, la musique populaire joue un rôle très important dans son roman américain, Lolita. Il est clair que Nabokov a étudié les chansons populaires de l'époque pour créer sa jeune héroïne, et pour établir les dimensions du conflit qui caractérise les relations entre Humbert Humbert et Lolita. Outre la présence de la musique populaire américaine dans le roman, il y a une chanson contemporaine qu'on peut dire emblématise le combat entre Humbert Humbert, Lolita et Quilty : c'est la chanson traditionnelle Frankie and Johnny. Si l'on examine cette chanson et la chanson Carmen, que Humbert Humbert a chantée à Lolita, les similarités entre les deux apparaissent de manière évidente et l'on peut considérer cette chanson américaine comme un commentaire sur l'histoire de vengeance dans le roman.
10 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: REVUE_DES_ETUDES_SLAVES
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 47
• Langue: English

Extrait

Prof. Barbara Wyllie
Popular music in Nabokov's Lolita, or Frankie and Johnny : a
new key to Lolita?
In: Revue des études slaves, Tome 72, fascicule 3-4, 2000. pp. 443-452.
резюме
Популярная музыка в романе В. Набокова Лолита
Музыка, важный элемент Набоковского искусства, до сих пор не удостаивалась внимания ученых. Причиной послужили
высказывания писателя о его неспособности слушать и воспринимать музыку. Между тем, музыка, и особенно
популярные песни исполняют важную художественную функцию в романе Лолита. Текст не оставляет сомнений, что
Набоков изучал современную американскую музыку, желая сделать образ героини как можно реальнее и глубже
обозначить конфликт между ней и Гумбертом Гумбертом. Особенно одна модная в те времена песня Франки и Джони
типизирует столкновение Гумберта, Лолиты и Куильти. Сопоставление этой американской популярной песни с Кармен,
которую поет Гумберт Лолите, позволяет не только выявить аналогию, но и рассматривать ее как своеобразный
комментарий к теме мщения в романе.
Résumé
La musique populaire dans Lolita de Nabokov ou Frankie and Johnny, une nouvelle clef pour Lolita ?
La musique n'est pas un élément dans l'art de Vladimir Nabokov qui a vraiment attiré l'attention des chercheurs. C'est parce que
Nabokov, lui-même, a déclaré qu'il pouvait pas du tout écouter la musique, que ses oreilles et son cerveau n'était pas reliés.
Mais, la musique, et précisément, la musique populaire joue un rôle très important dans son roman américain, Lolita. Il est clair
que Nabokov a étudié les chansons populaires de l'époque pour créer sa jeune héroïne, et pour établir les dimensions du conflit
qui caractérise les relations entre Humbert Humbert et Lolita. Outre la présence de la musique populaire américaine dans le
roman, il y a une chanson contemporaine qu'on peut dire emblématise le combat entre Humbert Humbert, Lolita et Quilty : c'est
la chanson traditionnelle Frankie and Johnny. Si l'on examine cette chanson et la chanson Carmen, que Humbert Humbert a
chantée à Lolita, les similarités entre les deux apparaissent de manière évidente et l'on peut considérer cette chanson
américaine comme un commentaire sur l'histoire de vengeance dans le roman.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Wyllie Barbara. Popular music in Nabokov's Lolita, or Frankie and Johnny : a new key to Lolita?. In: Revue des études slaves,
Tome 72, fascicule 3-4, 2000. pp. 443-452.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/slave_0080-2557_2000_num_72_3_6675POPULAR MUSIC IN NABOKOV'S LOLITA,
OR FRANKIE AND JOHNNY: A NEW KEY ТО LOLITA?
PAR
BARBARA WYLLIE
Lolita, Nabokov' s best-known and most controversial novel, was published
in America in 1958. It has been read as many things, not simply as an account of
perverse sexual mania and paedophilia but a story of love, revenge and loss.
Lolita marked Nabokov' s arrivai on the post- war American literary scene,
and was intended to prove itself to be all- American. Of all the defining cultural
éléments of the novel, musie and especially popular musie has been largely
overlooked. This could partly be due to awareness amongst critics of Nabokov 's
declared inability to hear music, as if his brain and his ear had failed to connect,
and the conséquent irritation this caused him.1 Не also claimed to "loathe" both
popular music and jazz,2 an attitude echoed by many of his principal characters
Lolita'' s notorious hero, Humbert throughout his fiction, and particularly by
Humbert.
Nevertheless, it is évident that Nabokov took pains to include music in
Lolita in all its contemporary manifestations, and not simply as a means of gene-
rating a sensé of time and place. In creating his child heroine, it was necessary
for Nabokov to acquaint himself with every aspect of her world, and particularly
music. Contemporary popular music is Lolita' s domain, a domain anathema to
Nabokov 's culture of high European art and literature.
Serious critical examination of Nabokov' s use of popular music in Lolita
has been hampered by inaccuracy, the only commentary offered being on the
most overt reference in the novel — Humbert Humbert' s list of Lolita' s favou-
rite singers: "Sammy and Jo and Eddy and Tony and Peggy and Guy and Patti
and Rex."3 Alfred Appel has identified each of these artists, describing the style
of their music correctly as "sentimental songs of love and romance [which] were
arrangements" (No. 148/1, very corny, and backed by ludicrously fulsome string
1. See Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions, New York, McGraw Hill, 1973, p. 35:
'Why no music?'.
2. See, for example, ibid., p. 3, 18, 1 17.
3. Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, éd. Alfred Appel Jr., Harmondsworth,
Penguin, 1991, p. 148. All subséquent références are to this édition.
Rev. Etud. slaves, Paris, LXXII/3-4, 2000, p. 443-452. 444 BARBARA WYLLIE
p. 387). Не also cites Your Hit Parade for 1951 as a reliable reference guide to
the music in the novel. There is a problem with this, however. Although Appel
accurately identifies the style of popular music in the early 1950s, it is the wrong
period, since Humbert Humbert and Lolita are together between 1947 and 1949,
placing 1951 well outside the parameters of their affair.
There are three possible explanations for Appel' s oversight. Firstly, that he
was thinking not of the years of Humbert Humbert and Lolita' s affair, but of the
novel' s time-span which dates to 1952. This also suggests that he was unfamiliar
with the changing character of popular music between the late '40s and early
'50s and could therefore cite 1951 as a legitimate reflection of the type of music
Lolita would háve been listening to. Alternatively, it could be argued that Appel
was simply following the source of Humbert Humbert's list, which suggests that
it is ultimately Nabokov, who in spite of his efforts at thorough research, over-
looked the détails because he was essentially ignorant of the medium he was
attempting to locate.
An index card pictured in Brian Boyďs biography listš a séries of songs
Nabokov took from a jukebox of popular hits dating from 1945 to 1952 which
presumably provided the source for Humbert Humbert's list.4 The date of the
index card is established by two 1952 releases — Rosemary Clooney's Botch A
Me and Tony Bennetťs Here In My Heart. That Patti Page and Guy Mitchell are
mentioned by Humbert Humbert yet not included on Nabokov' s index card indi-
cates, however, that Nabokov knew of these singers independently and was not
relying entirely on this jukebox list as source materiál. Nevertheless he makes a
fondamental error in including them in Humbert Humbert's list, simply because
Mitchell' s first hit was with My Heart Cries For You in 1950 and Tony
Bennetťs was not until 1951 with Because OfYou. Nabokov' s compilation of
names for Humbert Humbert comprising stars of the 1950s and not the 1940s
provides the strongest indication of his cursory awareness of contemporary
popular music.
Nevertheless, the fact that music is présent at ail in Lolita, demonstrates
Nabokov 's récognition of its importance in contemporary American culture and
his intention to generate a crédible context for the novel. At the same time, in
respect of Humbert Humbert, such a discrepancy serves to further emphasize his
failure to completely and successfully assimilate Lolita' s culture, reinforcing his
sense of alienness and isolation in the face of a world he cannot understand.
First and foremost, music exists in the novel to amplify the conflict
between Humbert Humbert and Lolita. Lolita' s music establishes itself as an
oppositional force to Humbert's staunchly defended alien civilization.
The conflict of high and low cultures in the novel is essentially a conflict of
identities. Neither one or the other wins, in the sense that one is destroyed to
enable the other to exist, but there is a sense that America, as représentative of
low culture, ultimately has the stamina and universal appeal to éclipse the more
precious and exclusive high European culture which Humbert Humbert
represents. Nevertheless, Humbert Humbert is forced to concède to a culture
which he considers vastly inferior because it is both indiffèrent to and ignorant
of his own cultural héritage, yet he never relinquishes his superior Stance. After
ail, he considers himself to be not only a représentative, but a contributor to a
4. See Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov : the American Years, London, Vintage, 1993. POPULAR MUSIC IN NABOKOV'S LOLITA 445
great European tradition, but he does develop a level of understanding and
appréciation of America' s counter culture, which is évident in the détails of
Lolita' s world of music, magazines and movies.
Symbolic of the pervasive presence of contemporary popular music in the
novel is the radio. Radios provide a means of accessing a