That uncles figure so much in Lolita recalls a revelation in Speak, Memory: that Vladimir’s uncle Ruka took his then-nine-year-old nephew onto his knee and fondled him repeatedly “with crooning sounds and fancy endearments” until the boy’s father called for him from the veranda. The real-life scene seems to foreshadow the famous fictional one of Humbert achieving orgasm with Dolores on his lap. Humbert, of course, believes his emission to be furtive—that the girl doesn’t know. But Nabokov, in his description, leaves it up to the reader to decide what Lolita knew.
This is important.
There may have been a time where Nabokov was a survivor of abuse as well.
