Dear List,

To answer Maurice Couturier, let me remind you of some brute facts which are developed in my book “The Two Lolitas”. First of all, imagine you discover a collection of German short stories of which one, called “Atomit”, bears a strange resemblance to the early Nabokov play “The Waltz Invention”. Both of them treat the invention of a potentially devastating new weapon; both of them begin in the war ministry, and there are lots of other similarities. In Nabokov’s play, the grotesque hero (and his cousin of the same name) are called Waltz, German “Walzer”. Now, as you start to leaf through the German book, strangely so, you hit upon two brothers named “Walzer”. Hmm. Coincidence? Then you look at the title of the story with those Waltz brothers. And then you pale: The title is “Lolita”. And the story in its basic plot is very close to the one we all know. Now, can anyone with his right wits deny that this goes far beyond possible coincidence? Statistically speaking, there may very well be some other Lolitas before Lichberg’s one. But there are no Waltz brothers around. And since Nabokov must have read the story “Atomit”, he surely also read the story whose subject, elder man falls in love with a premature girl, certainly interested him for several years. This denial of simple logic has always amazed me. Could it be that any association between Lichberg, who later became a Nazi journalist and admirer of Hitler, and the maestro was slightly displeasing to the community?

Michael Maar