s his reader with "two kinds of visual memory" associated with the two central nymphets in his life, Annabel and Lolita. The first is Humbert's remembrance of Annabel, whose image he "skillfully recreates in the laboratory of [his] mind, with [his] eyes open". Notably, he recalls her appearance through the artifice of literature, seeing her in descriptive terms, such as "honey-colored skin" and "big bright mouth". The second type of visual memory surfaces with Lolita, unhampered by words as her "objective, absolutely optical replica" is "instantly evoked, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of [his] eyelids". Whereas Annabel's imaginative resurrection involves a piecing together of fragments, Lolita's image is projected onto Humbert's closed eyelids as a unified whole.Lolita marks a departure from this realm, however, as Humbert projects her onto a screen, she is crowned a starlet. This difference in artistic media, however, does not constitute an absolute rift between Annabel and Lolita. In fact, Humbert places Annabel in a position that is continuous with Lolita's spotlight space center-stage. Annabel is Lolita's prototype, her precursor. Humbert is "convinced ... that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel". Despite the fact that Lolita "eclipses completely her prototype", then, Humbert still finds it necessary to cite Annabel not only as his first love but also as his point of entry into the art of what terms "nympholepsy".Yet as Humbert falls deeper under the spell of Lolita's star quality, he becomes more insecure and anxious, concerned with whether he is really a plausible romantic figure in her teeny-bopper world.Throughout this novel, we see that Humbert’s love for Lolita sends him on many painful paths. Her feelings for him wasn’t as deep as his feelings for her. This novel goes to show that love works in mysterical ways. ...
