Lolita’s Tennis

Lolita’s Tennis

I make it a habit (a ritual) to (re-)read a chapter of Lolita every Christmas day. Yesterday was no exception; I chose chapter 20, in which Lolita’s tennis game is lovingly described. Here we are told of “the indescribable itch of rapture that her tennis game produced in me—the teasing delirious feeling of teetering on the very brink of unearthly order and splendor” (230). The chapter is a moral turning point for the enraptured Humbert and deeply moving. But that is not the topic of this brief essay: I was struck by the clear expertise Nabokov reveals about his own tennis game. I knew he was a player and sometime teacher of the game, so I decided to google the topic. To my delight and amazement, I was informed that he was actually an excellent player with professional ambitions at one time (playing in the Davis cup for Russia before the revolution—sadly thwarted). He was admitted to top clubs in Berlin in the interwar years based purely on his skill and performance. The boy could play! He was an enthusiast and accomplished with it. How I wish I could see his backhand! The man was a genius! Now I will play the game with renewed dedication and religiosity. I made a point of hitting yesterday against the wall, working on my left hand. If only I could meet him on a tennis court and hit some balls! I wonder how hard he could hit. Lolita, we are told, had a first-class game—skilled and graceful—but her will to win had been destroyed by her relationship with her stepfather. That tells you a lot about Nabokov’s compassion for his divine creation.[1]

[1] As it happens, a tennis friend of mine, Paul, a Rumanian, was at the wall too, teaching his granddaughter how to play. She was about Lolita’s age and having her first lesson, patiently and devotedly given by her grandfather. He was doing what Humbert signally failed to do, as he ruefully acknowledges. The symmetry was positively Nabokovian.