Public Gentility and Private Predation: German as a Linguistic Signal of Guilt in Lolita

Abstract

Humbert Humbert’s calculated use of the German language in Lolita reveals a unique linguistic performance that differs from his lapses into French and his general American-English structure. While the critical conversation surrounding Lolita has addressed its “exilic” qualities as both an American novel and a tale of emigr e fiction, scholars have yet to thoroughly interrogate Humbert’s use of the German language as a linguistic signal of confession which fractures his carefully constructed foreign façade. Throughout his narration, Humbert takes advantage of his handsome, foreign appearance and multilingualism by allowing his American observers to evaluate him based on their own stereotypical portraits of an aristocratic “old-world” European. Emphasizing this misconceived gentility, the narrator uses aurally discordant Germanic diction when relaying his tale to linguistically invalidate his claims to this sophisticated, paternal persona, only revealing in his writing the predatorial conniver just below the surface. Humbert’s use of German is sporadic; he interjects specific words or phrases which cacophonously signal the falsity of his seemingly noble lineage and conservative, continental paternity. As he weaves English, French, and German into a “salad” of linguistic forms, Humbert reflects his heritage as his father was “a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins” (Nabokov 9). Like several other naïve characters throughout the novel, both Mrs. Haze and Miss Pratt misinterpret Humbert’s foreign appearance, name, and conduct as harmless “oldworld reticence” (Nabokov 68). They permit the predator to live with his prey and pose as her “old-fashioned Continental father” (Nabokov 193). Allowing the constructed social distinction between “old-world” Europe and “new world” America to vouch for his gentility, Humbert’s use of the French language linguistically corroborates his calculated presentation of what Haegert terms the “ emigr e hero” — the European man of culture living in the new