W

Walton Inn: [Lolita] A restaurant in Beardsley which Humbert describes as tacky and unsanitary.

Wace: [Lolita] The town where Humbert loses Lolita for a brief period of time. When she returns she claims to have run into an old classmate and lost track of time.

Weiss, Melanie: [Lolita] explorer and psychoanalyst who compiled the folio Bagration Island, containing over 800 pictures of penises she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea.

West, Mr.: [Lolita] Humbert's designation for his west-door neighbor on Thayer St. in Beardsley, with whom he has no contact.

Who's Who in the Limelight: [Lolita] An entertainment magazine that contains "actors, producers, playwrights, and shots of static scenes." In the 1946 edition Humbert finds the page which he refers to as a coincidence that "poets love."

Widworth, Mass.: [Lolita] There on August 5, 1955, the supercilious John Ray, Jr. pens the foreword to Lolita.

Wills, Helen: [Lolita] The top female tennis player in the world for eight years (1927-33 and 1935). Her book Tennis is one of the books Humbert travels sixty miles to get for Lolita. Interestingly, Humbert mentions only that Wills had one the National Junior Girls Singles at age fifteen.

Wimbeldon: [Lolita] Humbert imagines that Lolita would have been a tennis star, competing in the Wimbeldon tournament were it not for him.

'Windbreaker': [Lolita] Humbert's mental designation for a boy who happens to speak to Lolita outside a restaurant in Beardsley.

Windmuller, Louise: [Lolita] Daughter of Mr. Windmuller.

Windmuller, Mr.: [Lolita] A resident of Ramsdale who desires to have his identity suppressed by John Ray, Jr. He was responsible for Humbert's financial concerns in Ramsdale.

"Wingstroke": This story was written in October, 1923, and published the following January. The setting, a luxurious ski-resort called Zermatt, recalls a trip taken by Nabokov with Bobby de Calry, a Cambridge friend, to St. Moritz in December, 1921. (Notes)
This story revolves around Kern, a 35-year-old man with no country to call home, his attraction to Isabel, a beautiful English woman in the room next to his, and his relationship with Monfiori, a man fluent in billiards and the Bible. Kern travels between depression and elation, and back again, as an affair with Isabel prospers only to fail. He feels defeated by fate, sees no future, and decides to commit suicide. In a drunken stupor he tells Monfiori of his plans; Monfiori's response is asking to be present when it happens. Revolted Kern returns to his room, realizes Isabel's door is open, and enters her room to ask for her love, for tomorrow he will die. She flees the room, and soon after an angel flies in through the window. In a panic, Kern knocks the angel out with a guitar and locks him in a wardrobe. Kern gets his gun to kill the angel, but the wardrobe is empty. Isabel is scared because she met the angel the night before on the slopes and entertained him in her room late that night, and now fears revenge. As she is telling Kern this, he is writing a farewell letter to be sent the next morning. When he awakes, in a confusion, Isabel is gone, as is his letter. He is in a good mood, feeling like a god because he is in complete control of his life, and goes outside to watch the ski-jump competitions. He finds Monfiori just as Isabel takes her jump. In mid-air, Kern sees the flash he saw the night before as the angel approached the room, and Isabel falls to the ground, dead, her rib cage crushed. The story ends as Kern turns to go upstairs to kill himself and invites Monfiori, who hastily accompanies him.
The title of the story, "wingstroke," is what Kern sees as the cause of death.
Fate guides the story. Kern interprets Isabel being in the room next door, and that the number of her room is equivalent to his age, as being clues that Fate intends the two of them to be together. Also, after his wife's death, he begins a string of affairs, leading up to this one, to take revenge on Fate.
The gaze, and correspondingly eyes, is an important theme in the story. Kern feels like he is being watched each time he is in the reading room and as he plays pool. He looks out of windows and into mirrors to try to get a glimpse of who is watching. Isabel's eyes are the source of his attraction, and while they dance he sees the other couple as not having eyes at all. He is always looking for Isabel, and Monfiori keeps a close watch on Kern.
The angel is referred to as the wind and rustling, a glimmer in the air, as well as a bark (Kern first guesses that Isabel has a Great Dane in her room). It is the glimmer that Kern sees before Isabel is knocked out of the air.
Ribs are also mentioned in many places. The pattern of moonlight on Kern's ceiling resembles ribs; he crushes a rib of the angel's wing in the wardrobe door; Isabel's ribs are crushed.

"The Wood Sprite": First published January 7, 1921, under the pen-name Vladimir Sirin, this was Nabokov's first published story and one of the first he wrote. (Notes)
In this short story, the unnamed narrator has an encounter with a former Forest Elf. The reality of the encounter is ambiguous, because the narrator cannot distinguish between hallucination and fact. Like the narrator, the Elf, or Wood Sprite, is a Russian émigré, forced to flee by the Russian Revolution. The Elf is a figure from the narrator's youth; he occupied the woods where the child played and grew up. Now he tells the narrator of the destruction of the woods and his homestead, as well as the violence that has taken over the country. All of Nature's other spirits, including Water and Field Sprites, have also fled, leaving Russia's natural environment lifeless, silent, and still, because they were her "inspiration, beauty, and enchantment" (5).
There are a few themes in this short story. Fleeing/emigration appears in many works, such as "Russian Spoken Here" and Bend Sinister, and is a major biographical element, as in Speak, Memory. The reality of the encounter is debated by the narrator throughout the story. The Elf is consistently described in a nature-related way: he perches like a bird, "pines" instead of worries, has eyes like wet leaves, and has the subtle scent of the woods.

Woolsey, John M.: [Lolita] The Supreme Court justice who cleared James Joyce's Ulysses of obscenity charges. Woolsey, John M. [Lolita] The Supreme Court justice who cleared James Joyce's Ulysses of obscenity charges.

Return to top of page for new search.