Volume 1, Number 8 · December 12, 1963
Nabokov: the Prose and Poetry of It All
By F.W. Dupee
Readers of Lolita may recall that Humbert Humbert, who delivers himself of the contents of the book while in confinement awaiting trial for murder, is something of a poet. 'You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style,' he says, and you can count on this particular murderer for scattered flights of verse as well. His are 'occassional poems' in the most invidious sense possible. His muse materializes only intermittently, and when she does it is in response to situations of a kind that do not, as a rule, give rise to la poèsie pure—or whatever we may call the opposite of occasional poetry.
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