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Fw: Lichberg's "Lolita" - not my cup of tea
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EDNOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Ole Nyegard for his first-hand impressions of Herr von Lichberg's "Lolita".
----- Original Message -----
From: Ole Nyegaard
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 11:28 AM
Subject: Lichberg's Lolita - not my cup of tea
The Danish paper Politiken printed a Danish translation of the Lichberg short story (I'm sorry it is not available online).
Up till now, the Danish press has been running a couple of ignorant items (VN was a professor of entomolgy; Humbert is an old man seduced by a nymphet; the recurring word in all of them is "plagiat"; and so on and on - ad infinitum and in absurdium...) suggesting that VN somehow stole Lichberg's plot; but how you turn a 16 page long story into a 300 by merely stealing has yet to be explained. Out of a about 7-8 articles only 2 were decent.
Anyway, today the smoking gun was produced for the Danish readers - and what a disappointment, it's full of blanks!
First of all it is a terrible Hoffmannesque piece of junk, the plot inexpertly mimics the fantastic genre, if there ever was one, but reads more like a bumbling Baroness Blixen (Isaak Dinesen) on a bad day. This of course was to be expected.
Second - and far worse: that VN's Lolita in any way should be inspired by this limping pedestrian prose seems to me to be incredibly far fetched (still, to be fair, I have only read the translation).
Lichberg opens his story by mentioning Hoffmann, and VN has a story (isn't it "A Nursery Tale"? - my copy of the short stories is at the office) where the protagonist ends up in Hoffmannstrasse - the story has a young girl, and the devil too -big deal!
Llichberg's narrator rents a room in Spain at the inn of the young girl's father (!) - no Charlotte.
There's hardly any sex (no, not even that), but only some timid romance, a few nightmare sequences, two brothers fighting over her (cf. Hum. & Quilt.). Michael Maar suggests a link to "The Waltz Invention" (which I honestly still haven't read), the two brothers in Lichberg's story are named Aloy and Anton Walzer. I might be daft, but I fail to see how this connects to VN's Lolita.
It struck me, as I plodded my way through Maar's article that he has to collect his evidence not from one place but all over VN's work - well, at least: The Waltz Invention, the Nursery tale, and Lolita - and still it doesn't add up. The only thing that really links the short story with the novel is the title - the Spanish for diminutive for Dolores?
Has Michael Maar read Dostoevsky's "The Possessed"? Stavrogin's confession seems to me to be a much more obvious candidate for "predecessor". And what about the links to Edgar Allan Poe et al.?
Alexander Dolinin's article "Nabokov and "Third-Rate Literature" (On a Source of Lolita)" (in Elementa 1993 vol. 1), has some far better offers than Michael Maars tempest in a tepid teapot.
Best
Ole Nyegaard, Århus, Denmark.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ole Nyegaard
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 11:28 AM
Subject: Lichberg's Lolita - not my cup of tea
The Danish paper Politiken printed a Danish translation of the Lichberg short story (I'm sorry it is not available online).
Up till now, the Danish press has been running a couple of ignorant items (VN was a professor of entomolgy; Humbert is an old man seduced by a nymphet; the recurring word in all of them is "plagiat"; and so on and on - ad infinitum and in absurdium...) suggesting that VN somehow stole Lichberg's plot; but how you turn a 16 page long story into a 300 by merely stealing has yet to be explained. Out of a about 7-8 articles only 2 were decent.
Anyway, today the smoking gun was produced for the Danish readers - and what a disappointment, it's full of blanks!
First of all it is a terrible Hoffmannesque piece of junk, the plot inexpertly mimics the fantastic genre, if there ever was one, but reads more like a bumbling Baroness Blixen (Isaak Dinesen) on a bad day. This of course was to be expected.
Second - and far worse: that VN's Lolita in any way should be inspired by this limping pedestrian prose seems to me to be incredibly far fetched (still, to be fair, I have only read the translation).
Lichberg opens his story by mentioning Hoffmann, and VN has a story (isn't it "A Nursery Tale"? - my copy of the short stories is at the office) where the protagonist ends up in Hoffmannstrasse - the story has a young girl, and the devil too -big deal!
Llichberg's narrator rents a room in Spain at the inn of the young girl's father (!) - no Charlotte.
There's hardly any sex (no, not even that), but only some timid romance, a few nightmare sequences, two brothers fighting over her (cf. Hum. & Quilt.). Michael Maar suggests a link to "The Waltz Invention" (which I honestly still haven't read), the two brothers in Lichberg's story are named Aloy and Anton Walzer. I might be daft, but I fail to see how this connects to VN's Lolita.
It struck me, as I plodded my way through Maar's article that he has to collect his evidence not from one place but all over VN's work - well, at least: The Waltz Invention, the Nursery tale, and Lolita - and still it doesn't add up. The only thing that really links the short story with the novel is the title - the Spanish for diminutive for Dolores?
Has Michael Maar read Dostoevsky's "The Possessed"? Stavrogin's confession seems to me to be a much more obvious candidate for "predecessor". And what about the links to Edgar Allan Poe et al.?
Alexander Dolinin's article "Nabokov and "Third-Rate Literature" (On a Source of Lolita)" (in Elementa 1993 vol. 1), has some far better offers than Michael Maars tempest in a tepid teapot.
Best
Ole Nyegaard, Århus, Denmark.