The basic core of the riddle is now, I believe, mostly solved (even though there are still much to say about it. Two years later, in an interview with Playboy in 1964, about the writing of « Lolita », he confessed « She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle – its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. ». In an interview in 1962 for the BBC when asked on why he wrote “Lolita”: “(…) I’ve no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.”. Nabokov, as he admitted it, had hidden a riddle-game left for the benefit of the deserving reader. The work of collection of the references is far from complete I believe (there are even references behind references). Here’s a big part of what I have gathered. Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian author also fully fluent in English and in French. Some recurring (and sometimes almost out of place) elements in the book seem to beg for attention, and yet they’re left ignored and mute with their untold secrets. Despite the cleverness and thickness of literary references of Alfred Appel’s « The Annotated Lolita« , one can’t help thinking something’s missing. Secrets still lie within shadows hidden between the lines. We would think that such a scrutinized book would have given up its soul long ago, but we would be wrong. How many new readers realize the richness of what they have between their hands? Nabokov’s sophisticated playful mind left enough dark matter for curious minds to ponder and delve into it sixty years later. The prose of Nabokov alone is enough to fall under the spell of his witty text, but the charm of the novel is decupled by the amount of cultural references, symbolic images – and let’s not forget its humour! Also, Nabokov, as he admitted, left a riddle-game for the benefit of the deserving reader (although made for his own satisfaction): Lolita’s riddle. This already old novel (1955!) has made its way to the pantheon of the world most celebrated literature, despite its controversial nature, and continues to draw the attention of a constant number of readers throughout the world.
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