Nabokov’s Lolita? Or von Eschwege’s? Von Lichberg?
So, I’m apparently the last person to grab this gravy-train, and I feel like I’m dressed in my best and covered in Thanksgiving sauce. Or something. But The basic plot of Nabokov’s Lolita is very similar to the earlier (1916 to Nabokov’s 1956) version, an 18 page ‘novella’ which sounds about average short story length, but hey, who’m I to tell those crazy Germans (and the author did become a prominent Nazi journalist) what to call their pedophilia? Anyway, here’s the opening paragraph of a John Lethem essay from Harper’s recently called Love and Theft…
Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a preteen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.
The author of the story I’ve described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov’s novel.
OK, paragraph and a sentence, big deal. Anyway, he gave the original author a different name than what I’d read on the St. Petersburg website, where there was an article titled “Nabokov was no plagurist, say his admirers” but seeing as the head of the Nabokov Museum offered such unbiased insight as “He couldn’t understand German well enough to read such literature.” But seeing as he lived in Berlin for 13 years, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Museum officers are worried about Job security.
Jonathon Lethem’s essay goes on to talk about Cryptomnesia which is: the appearance in consciousness of memory images which are not recognized as such but which appear as original creations. New word for today. Whee. Have a pleasant day.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:54 am
I would like to begin by saying that i have not yet read Jonathem Lethem’s essay in full and am not critiquing it. This post just led to this thought. Nabokov stealing the plot of his novel is mildly interesting but not at all significant. It probably is true, wether conciously or in the fashion the word of the day implies. He after all did it quite overtly to Chekov’s The Lady with the Dog in his story Spring in Fialta. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because it’s only the plot, the least important part of the story when you’re dealing with literature. What makes Lolita Lolita is Nabokov’s style.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Ahhh, but what makes Dwayne Dwayne? Is it the stupid late 80’s glasses? That’s actually exactly what they talked about in the articles actually… “Little of what we admire in Nabokov’s Lolita is to be found in its predecessor; the former is in no way deducible from the latter.” -Lethem.
But… still interesting. Like they’ve never found an original copy of a Shakespearian manuscript, nor found Shakespeare’s library… interesting questions. Was Christopher Marlowe a British spy? I like to think so…