Nabokov’s Switzerlands: Discovery, Recovery, and Ayn Rand’s Atlantis

In the essay “On a Book Entitled Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov singles out as one of the “nerves of the novel” Humbert Humbert’s recollection of an epiphany. Looking down from a mountain trail at a small mining town and hearing the sounds of children at play, Humbert had realized: “then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.” The setting of this scene was inspired not only by a specific lepidopterological expedition, but by Nabokov’s memory of Switzerland’s scenery and by his observation of an American equivalent.