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Lo (1,6) Little Monique
May. 20th, 2013 07:43 amHumbert did not only ogle little girls when he was a young man. He relates the time he hooked up with a young little prostitute who at least bore a "nymphic echo" of what he so sorely wanted. He begins, “I remember walking along an animated street on a gray spring afternoon somewhere near the Madeleine.”
Mr. Appel notes that the Madeleine is “a church in Paris (a very prominent landmark, and the fact that H.H. encounters a streetwalker here alludes slyly to the fact that the church is named after Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute.”
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
A short slim girl passed me at a rapid, high-heeled tripping step, we glanced back at the same moment, she stopped and I accosted her. She came hardly up to my chest hair and had the kind of dimple round little face French girls so often have, and I liked her long lashes and tight-fitting tailored dress sheathing in pearl-gray her young body which still retained - and that was the nymphic echo, the chill of delight, the leap in my loins - a childish something mingling with the professional wiggle of her small agile rump.
I asked her price, and she promptly replied with melodious silvery precision (a bird, a very bird!) “One hundred francs.” I tried to haggle but she saw the awful lone longing in my lowered eyes, directed so far down at her round forehead and rudimentary hat (a band, a posy); and with one beat of her lashes: “Too bad,” she said, and made as if to move away. Perhaps only three years earlier I might have seen her coming home from school! That evocation settled the matter.
She led me up the usual steep stairs, with the usual bell clearing the way for the monsieur who might not care to meet another monsieur, on the mournful climb to the abject room, all bed and bidet. As usual, she asked at once for her small gift, and as usual I asked her name (Monique) and her age (18). I was pretty well acquainted with the banal way of street walkers. They all answer “dix-huit” - a trim twitter, a note of finality and wistful deceit which they emit up to ten times per day, the poor little creatures. But in Monique’s case there could be no doubt she was, if anything, adding one or two years to her age. This I deduced from many details of her compact, neat, curiously immature body.
Having shed her clothes with fascinating rapidity, she stood for a moment …. With her brown bobbed hair, luminous grey eyes and pale skin, she looked perfectly charming. Her hips were no bigger than those of a squatting lad; in fact, I do not hesitate to say (and indeed this is the reason why I linger gratefully in that gauze-gray room of memory with little Monique) that among the eighty or so grues I had had operate on me, she was the only one that gave me a pang of genuine pleasure.
-- “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But after only a few meetings, Monique loses that nymphic echo in Humbert’s jaded eyes, and he bids the reader to let her go from our story thus: “So let her remain, sleek, tender Monique, as she was for a minute or two: a delinquent nymphet shining through the matter-of-fact young whore.” Yes, we can see the brutality of the man creeping through. He is hungry, and he is only going to want more.
Mr. Appel notes that the Madeleine is “a church in Paris (a very prominent landmark, and the fact that H.H. encounters a streetwalker here alludes slyly to the fact that the church is named after Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute.”
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
A short slim girl passed me at a rapid, high-heeled tripping step, we glanced back at the same moment, she stopped and I accosted her. She came hardly up to my chest hair and had the kind of dimple round little face French girls so often have, and I liked her long lashes and tight-fitting tailored dress sheathing in pearl-gray her young body which still retained - and that was the nymphic echo, the chill of delight, the leap in my loins - a childish something mingling with the professional wiggle of her small agile rump.
I asked her price, and she promptly replied with melodious silvery precision (a bird, a very bird!) “One hundred francs.” I tried to haggle but she saw the awful lone longing in my lowered eyes, directed so far down at her round forehead and rudimentary hat (a band, a posy); and with one beat of her lashes: “Too bad,” she said, and made as if to move away. Perhaps only three years earlier I might have seen her coming home from school! That evocation settled the matter.
She led me up the usual steep stairs, with the usual bell clearing the way for the monsieur who might not care to meet another monsieur, on the mournful climb to the abject room, all bed and bidet. As usual, she asked at once for her small gift, and as usual I asked her name (Monique) and her age (18). I was pretty well acquainted with the banal way of street walkers. They all answer “dix-huit” - a trim twitter, a note of finality and wistful deceit which they emit up to ten times per day, the poor little creatures. But in Monique’s case there could be no doubt she was, if anything, adding one or two years to her age. This I deduced from many details of her compact, neat, curiously immature body.
Having shed her clothes with fascinating rapidity, she stood for a moment …. With her brown bobbed hair, luminous grey eyes and pale skin, she looked perfectly charming. Her hips were no bigger than those of a squatting lad; in fact, I do not hesitate to say (and indeed this is the reason why I linger gratefully in that gauze-gray room of memory with little Monique) that among the eighty or so grues I had had operate on me, she was the only one that gave me a pang of genuine pleasure.
-- “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But after only a few meetings, Monique loses that nymphic echo in Humbert’s jaded eyes, and he bids the reader to let her go from our story thus: “So let her remain, sleek, tender Monique, as she was for a minute or two: a delinquent nymphet shining through the matter-of-fact young whore.” Yes, we can see the brutality of the man creeping through. He is hungry, and he is only going to want more.
