Subject
Fw: A modest proposal from Michael Maar (with a note from the
editor)
editor)
From
Date
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EDNOTE. In view of the spirited postings on Michael Maar's controversial
hypothesis, I take the opportunity to rerun his message of April 5 and
invite his response.
As a personal aside, I would remark that MM is more sinned against than
sinning. His article was, it seems to me, openly speculative. It was not he,
but many less responsible journalists who jumped in with the ugly (and
idiotic) plagiarism business. Although I strongly suspect MM is mistaken in
positing the von Lichberg-VN connection, it is not in itself absurd. I
myself have written a good many articles and notes proposing connections
that now seem less plausible to me than they did at the time. As a reviewer
of a multitude article and book manuscripts submitted for publication, I
have seen a great many assertions of "kinship" that were put forward with
much less care than Michael Maar's. I endorsed some of these, although I did
not believe the assertions were true. If the cases were possible,
interesting, and well-argued, it seemed to me they deserved the
consideration of other specialists. I close by noting that very few people
have actually had the opportunity to read the von Lichberg story.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Maar" <michael.maar@snafu.de>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 10:10 AM
Dear list,
It is an ironic situation. Since my doctoral work on Thomas Mann and
Hans Christian Andersen (1995), forms and patterns of intertextuality have
been, if I may say so, my daily bread. But whether the cases in point were
Richard Wagner and Heinrich von Kleist, Anthony Powell and Proust, Nabokov
and Keats or Schopenhauer, or Joanne K. Rowling and Nabokov, not once did
even a shadow of the silly and illiterate concept of ‘plagiarism’ appear in
my writing. Never I have written anything that could give rise to such a
charge against, of all people, Vladimir Nabokov, the very word being absurd
in connexion with him. On the contrary, while leaving all other hypotheses
for the parallels between Heinz von Lichberg's “Lolita” and Nabokov's novel
open for evaluation, this was the only one I strictly and repeatedly
excluded. Headlines and international press agencies have distorted and
sensationalized my essay, but this is a fact I am not responsible for.
Readers of my full text in the TLS can judge for themselves
if there is anything disparaging of Nabokov in it. I look forward to
scholarly discussion, without tilting at windmills, of my argument for
resemblances between the two Lolitas, and of the range of possible
explanations for them, and hope that the list will be one of its arenas.
>
>
> With best wishes
> Michael Maar
>
>
hypothesis, I take the opportunity to rerun his message of April 5 and
invite his response.
As a personal aside, I would remark that MM is more sinned against than
sinning. His article was, it seems to me, openly speculative. It was not he,
but many less responsible journalists who jumped in with the ugly (and
idiotic) plagiarism business. Although I strongly suspect MM is mistaken in
positing the von Lichberg-VN connection, it is not in itself absurd. I
myself have written a good many articles and notes proposing connections
that now seem less plausible to me than they did at the time. As a reviewer
of a multitude article and book manuscripts submitted for publication, I
have seen a great many assertions of "kinship" that were put forward with
much less care than Michael Maar's. I endorsed some of these, although I did
not believe the assertions were true. If the cases were possible,
interesting, and well-argued, it seemed to me they deserved the
consideration of other specialists. I close by noting that very few people
have actually had the opportunity to read the von Lichberg story.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Maar" <michael.maar@snafu.de>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 10:10 AM
Dear list,
It is an ironic situation. Since my doctoral work on Thomas Mann and
Hans Christian Andersen (1995), forms and patterns of intertextuality have
been, if I may say so, my daily bread. But whether the cases in point were
Richard Wagner and Heinrich von Kleist, Anthony Powell and Proust, Nabokov
and Keats or Schopenhauer, or Joanne K. Rowling and Nabokov, not once did
even a shadow of the silly and illiterate concept of ‘plagiarism’ appear in
my writing. Never I have written anything that could give rise to such a
charge against, of all people, Vladimir Nabokov, the very word being absurd
in connexion with him. On the contrary, while leaving all other hypotheses
for the parallels between Heinz von Lichberg's “Lolita” and Nabokov's novel
open for evaluation, this was the only one I strictly and repeatedly
excluded. Headlines and international press agencies have distorted and
sensationalized my essay, but this is a fact I am not responsible for.
Readers of my full text in the TLS can judge for themselves
if there is anything disparaging of Nabokov in it. I look forward to
scholarly discussion, without tilting at windmills, of my argument for
resemblances between the two Lolitas, and of the range of possible
explanations for them, and hope that the list will be one of its arenas.
>
>
> With best wishes
> Michael Maar
>
>