more overt and fruitful, operations of the creative mind:

更为公开且更有成效创造性思维的智力操作过程:
from the charting of dangerous seas, to the writing of one of those

从测绘危险海域的海图到写作一本不可思议的
incredible novels where the author, in a fit of lucid madness,

小说其作者一阵神志清醒一阵疯癫痴狂
has set himself certain unique rules that he observes,

他为自己制定了必须遵守的独特规矩
certain nightmare obstacles that he surmounts,

设置了要去战胜的梦魇屏障
with the zest of a deity building a live world from the most unlikely

以神祗般的热请用最不可能的材料--
ingredients--rocks and carbon, and blind throbbings.

岩石和煤炭以及盲目的悸动来建造一个鲜活的世界
is, I think, for Nabokov,

我认为《洛丽塔》对于纳博科夫
a kind of chess problem.

如同一盘费解的棋局
The chess problem is: how can Nabokov make us identify

这个棋局是: 纳博科夫如何令我们认同
with a pedophile?

一位恋童癖
How can he produce, from these debased ingredients,

他是如何用这些劣质的材料创作出