"A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine..."
- Humbert is literally scouting for girls and Nabokov brought up the Girl Scouts. Is this a great joke or a terrible metaphor?
- Word choices that indicate Humbert wants us to feel bad for him: normal man, madman, infinite melancholy, poison loins.
- Word choices that indicate Humbert is kind of proud of himself: normal man, artist, super-voluptuous flame (keeping in mind that a "flame" is generally indicative of passion in a positive way).
- Normal seems like way too vague a word for Humbert, especially considering the rest of this page.
- What does "subtle spine" mean? Subtle has a few definitions, and even if Humbert is using the most common one, I'm having a hard time figuring out how "spine" relates there. Spine as in the metaphorical backbone? Totally, completely lost on this one.
- The first sentence implies that there is always one nymphet in a group of girls, so is Humbert really as picky he's describing? My guess is a resounding NO.
- "Poison" and "loin" have a bit of a rhyme going on, which makes me feel like Humbert wants us to appreciate that little chunk of sentence as poetically pleasant, even though he's down talking his fetish.
I'm going to answer ALL these questions. "Girl scouts" - this represents a civil institution typical of the '50s and considered entirely innocent, but it affords Humbert a chance to look at girls of the age he prefers. The references to "sunniness" and so on underscore that this is a typical American institution. And, yes, it's also a joke. Humbert's "singularity" - he thinks of his strange tastes as something that makes him special is contradicted by his claim to be "normal." He is deliberately creating a paradoxical or split image: he is normal but also horrendously warped. Lots of language (including "poor" Humbert) indicates that he is soliciting sympathy. The "subtle spine" is, in Hinduism or Ayurvedic medicine, the line of energy (or "prana") that we all possess. At the base of the spine is the source of this "fire." It's called the "energy body" - a spiritual idea. I think H.H.'s various interests throughout the book prove that he is not really that picky... the pickiness is an argument, not for normalcy, but for his aesthetic sophistication. Who is picky if not a connoisseur? The homophonic moments and repeated sounds and puns throughout the book distract attention from what is being said. This is Nabokov's technique but also Humbert's psychology.
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