"As Pat As Pat Could Be"?

[Tri Vuong]

Dear all my friends here.

I'm currently reading the famous novel "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov, and I am now stuck at this part:

Having shed her clothes with fascinating rapidity, she stood for a moment partly wrapped in the dingy gauze of the window curtain listening with infantile pleasure, as pat as pat could be, to an organ-grinder in the dust-brimming courtyard below.

Can someone please help me explain the meaning of the entire "As Pat As Pat Could Be"?

I know that people sometimes say "to stand pat" to describe the state of feeling satisfied, but I don't think this way of understanding can fit into the mentioned context above.

[kev67]

I am not sure. I suspect it means she was standing there nonchalantly.

[PeterL]

It is a play on the wexpression "stand pat" which is from poker and it means to keep the originally dealt cards in draw poker, rather than replace any. From that it also means to retain one's opinion, and it can also mean to simply stand. Lolit was nude and standing there "listening with infantile pleasure"; it is as if she were playing the world with what she initially drew.

[mona amon]

The girl referred to here is not Lolita but a young woman called Monique. She's a prostitute, past her nymphancy but still young enough to interest HH since he cannot get anything younger.

I've come across the expression "as pat as pat can be" but I don't know the exact meaning. Here I think it could mean something like apt, apposite, natural (one of the meanings of pat). I think he's trying to convey to us a sense of the girl's youth, as well as her experience. Shedding her clothes, and listening to the hurdy-gurdy man are both done with the same unselfconscious ease.

'Nonchalantly' works for me, too.

[ennison]

perfectly neatly / without blemish

[hawthorns]

The girl referred to here is not Lolita but a young woman called Monique. She's a prostitute, past her nymphancy but still young enough to interest HH since he cannot get anything younger.

This^

The expression, in this context, is really a blend of both the adj and adv. So 'performed with masterful fluency, fitting, apt for the occasion'.



Coincidentally, we're at almost the exact same place. I'm listening to the audiobook of Lolita read by Jeremy Irons. It's fantastic. The subject matter still creeps me out, but Nabokov's prose is intoxicating lol.