“In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea.” –Vladimir Nabokov


One day I was by the sea, sitting bright eyed with no stars in the sky. Of course I had Lo in hand and was making my way through the novel for the fifth time. Suddenly a wind blew and tore one of my pages. At that moment, I was devastated, thinking that the cruel wind had chilled and killed Lo. Luckily, Lolita held strong, but I was left with one missing page.


Parts of it I still remember. Fragmented parts still wash through my brain. Never have I read anything so beautiful. Lo-lee-ta. At a mere fifteen-years-old, my favorite book was Lolita; my favorite pastime, reading Lolita. As Nabokov said, “I have only words to play with.” And that was true for me too. By the third time I read it, I had the first chapter memorized. By the fifth time, I had the second chapter memorized. It was always on the tip of my tongue. I would recite it in the morning standing five foot seven in one sock. She was Lo, plain Lo at home. She was Lola in class. She was Lolita on the bookshelf. I would take a trip of three steps across the threshold and to my left on the top shelf lay three different Lolitas, spines turned out. My friends would laugh when I would recite the lines, but to me, Nabokov’s prose was more than just lines on the page. It was a beautiful tapestry woven of words.


Ladies and gentlemen, I, like Humbert Humbert, have a passion. A different kind of passion, thankfully, yet it is still a passion.


My passion for Lolita began long before I read the novel. It started when I was a young girl fascinated by the elegance of words, words like saplings in spring, abud with fresh, green possibility. I love the way words feel on the lips as they are pronounced. The way words lie on the tip of the tongue, or lodge in the back of the throat. The way words can be delicately formed into a sentence. (You can always count on a logophile for a fancy prose style.) The way words make their way out, out into the world, just as Lolita did. Young words, young girl. Either way they emerge bound to their owner. And that ownership is one I fantasize about.


For then, I will have finally mastered words. They will no longer choke me, they will no longer confine me, they will no longer hold me captive. Not everyone is given the power to write. But if one is, know that it is a dangerous thing. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door, he started a revolution that changed the world. Rather than purge oneself of this perilous power, one must turn it into something more, something better. Then the power will become, like Lolita to Nabokov, my sin, my soul.