Lolita as Goddess between Life and Death: From Persephone to the Poplars Mythical Allusions in Nabokov’s Lolita Zsuzsa Hetenyi INSTITUTE FOR SLAVIC STUDIES, ELTE UNIVERSITY, BUDAPEST Among the multiple literary allusions that envelop the epic structure of Nabokovs novels, mythology plays an important role.* Lolita is one of the best examples of how the web of overt or hidden citations transforms the meaning by enlarging the background of associations connected to heroes and their motives. Images that are closely attached to some Greek or Roman mythological patterns or archetypes are the object of investigation in this article. They form only one layerofthepolygeneticaPsystemoftheNabokoviannovel.Nabokovsaidinan interview that this nymphet is “mythical.”^ What then is mythical in Lolita^* The most striking of all the mythological allusions is Lolita’s parallel with Diana, a parallel that was discussed in aprevious paper of mine (Hetenyi, “Rimskiie siostry Lolity”). The present article aims to consider some hidden motifs of DemeterandPersephoneappearinginLolita’scharacterandtheeventsorobjects a r o u n d h e r. DemeteristheMotherGoddessoftheEarthandfertilityinGreekmythology. Thebest-knowntalefromHomer’sHymntoDemetertellsthestoryofPerse¬ phone, Demeter’s daughter by Zeus.® Initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries revealed the profound significance that lay behind their rituals. Persephone, Demeter’s only daughter, grew up among nymphs in company with Artemis, whose references also enrich Lolita’s character. Artemis is also identified by the RomanswithDiana(Grimal60;seealsobothHetenyiworkscited).Hades,the KingofUnderworld(brotherofZeus,andsoPersephone’suncle),fellinlovewith her and abducted her.® While Persephone was picking up alily (according to somemyths,thelily,ornarcissus,wasputtherebyZeus,asanaccompliceof Hades),thegroundopenedandHadesdraggedherdowntotheUnderworld. Demeterwanderedforninedaysandnightsovertheworldwithalightedtorchin her hands to find Persephone. Only Helios could tell her the truth. Demeter decided to abandon her divine role until her daughter was returned to her, and went to Eleusis to work as awet nurse. Demeter’s exile made the earth sterile, so ZeusorderedHadestoreturnPersephone,but,asinthemeantimeshehadeaten apomegranateseedthattiedhertoHadesforever,shewasnowhiswife.There¬ fore,acompromisewasreached:DemeterreturnedtoOlympus,andPersephone divided the year between the Underworld (one third of the year while the seed is in the ground) and the Earth. This is how the rhythm of sterile winter and fertile summer, with atransitional period in between, was formed. Intertexts,Vo\. 12, No. 1-2 2008 ©Texas Tech University Press 4 2 I N T E R T E X T S Demeter and Persephone are so important that they are often called simply the “Two Goddesses” in ancient Greek, without names. In Latin they are Ceres and Proserpina. In their honor there survived in Greek culture not only the wellknown Eleusinian initiation mysteries, held during nine days in September (ritu¬ ally repeating the nine-day wandering of Demeter), but also the Thesmophoria festivities held for three days in the middle of October, at the very end of the harvest .7 Demeters main symbols are the apple, the lily, the grain, the poplar, the wil¬ low, and the pig (Kerenyi, Eleusis 43, 55, 120-30, 130-44, 170-71; Grimal 122-24). If we read Lolita’s story through the lens of this mythological history, we can discern several archetypal parallels that enhance our understanding of what Nabokov meant by saying that his nymphet was “mythical.” First of all, Lolita is introduced in the novel indirectly; this method achieves a slow,gradual,eroticadvancementoftheplot.Amongthefewthingsmarkingher presence in the house before her first appearance are some objects, emblemati¬ callylinkinghertoDemeterandPersephone:“thebrowncoreofanapple,”“aglis¬ tening stone of one plum,” and at the very moment of her appearance, lilies (Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita [AL] 39, 41, 42). Lily is also aphonetic echo of Lolita’s name. The lily is attached to sexual meaning in the “romantic” {AL 170) sceneof“ruralamours”(AL171)whenLolitaandHumbertarecaughtnakedby the child twins and their mother, “who automatically added awild lily to her bou¬ quet”(AL171).Liliesandflowersdonotnecessarilyevokelifeandfertilityasthey oftendoincommonoreverydaysymbolism,becauseinthemythofDemeter they represent the transition to the otherworld or underworld, that is, death. PersephoneissurprisedbyHadesatthemomentofseeking,andfinding,alily. Flowers appear in the second abduction of Lolita in exactly the same double sense, but with more of the ill-omened meaning, exactly like in the myth. Hum¬ bert Humbert on his last visit to the hospital comes with alot of things for Lolita, including abouquet of wildflowers. He says the flowers were “gathered with my own gloved hands on amountain pass at sunrise” (AL 244)—the place that reminds him of their romantic “rural amour.” Nabokov includes astatement by Lolitatounderlinethesecond,darkersideoftheflowermotif...