Subject
VN Bibliography: Rowohlt Nabokov LOLITA screen play (fwd)
Date
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EDITOR's NOTE. If you are a serious VN scholar, especially of LOLITA, you
may wish to take particular note of the following item. It is NOT merely a
German translation of VN's LOLITA screen play but includes much Nabokov
script that DID NOT appear in the 1974 English edition of the script.
------------------------------
Vladimir Nabokov. _LOLITA. EIN DREHBUCH_ (Lolita A Screenplay). Nach den
Originalposkripten zusammengestellt und ubersetztz von Dieter E. Zimmer.
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1999. 343pp. ISBN 3 498 04664 0
The Hamburg publisher Rowohlt is in the process of publishing a handsome
25-volume set of VN's works in German. Sixteen volumes are now available.
The Editor of the series is Dieter E. Zimmer, Germany's leading
Nabokovian. In many respects, the series is the best edition of Nabokov
in any language--thanks to the efforts of Zimmer who has supplied a
stunning editorial apparatus for each volume. Anyone who writes about a
Nabokov work without first checking the prefaces, notes, and afterwords of
the Zimmer edition is being unnecessarily rash. The latest volume (15/2)
is among the editor's greatest contributions to Nabokov studies.
The importance of this edition lies in the long and troubled history of
Nabokov's LOLITA script. The screenplay VN originally submitted to Kubrick
& Harris was far too long for filming. Nabokov put it through many
versions in response to Kubrick's criticisms. In the end, Kubrick used
very little of Nabokov's script(s), although the novelist's name was
retained as the writer of the 1962 film. After protracted legal problems,
Nabokov published a version of hi unperformed script in 1974 with
McGraw-Hill. This version, however, was incomplete. Nabokov's papers,
now in the NYPL's Berg Collection, contain many longer texts and variants.
Dieter Zimmer's volume is the first to include all of this material.
Zimmer's aim has been to produce a coherent, readable script incorporating
as much of VN's material as possible. The reintroduced dialogue and
scenes are in a distinctive typeface so that the reader can easily
recognize the new material. The restored text greatly expands the 1974
published version. In some cases it was not possible to ascertain
precisely where in the restored text some of the remaining fragments
should go. The editor has included a seventy-page appendix with the these
texts.
Zimmer's "Afterword" is a long, thoughtful essay about the
script's transition from novel to script, the many intermediate versions,
and subsequent incarnations (play, musical, the Schiff-Lyne film). It is
required reading for anyone who writes about the film versions of LOLITA.
--------------------------
In a personal communication to NABOKV-L Dieter Zimmer offers the following
explanation of his editorial procedure.
"..... everything that was impossible to fit into the running text
of the screenplay with any certainty went into the appendix. But by far the
greater part of the appendix is made up of alternative sequences - that is
sequences that would have been perfectly possible to fit in but where
fitting them in would have meant relegating sequences from the published
text to the appendix.
The most important of them is the "Goff" alternative. The published
screenplay reduced the killing of Q. at the beginning to a few hints, while
the long typescript has an extended scene which by itself could have been
fitted in. But throughout it H.H. has Q. wear that Goff mask (the way
Sebastian Knight avoids the description of Goodman's face by symbolically
covering it with a mask). Nabokov's reason for the mask is obvious: he did
not want to give away Q.'s face at the beginning of the film. Q. was to be
present and hidden at the same time. Kubrick did not have any qualms about
showing Q. from the very outset, so he restituted his own version of the
killing scene, without mask or anything to cover up Q.'s identity. Now once
Nabokov had introduced the odd mask, he obviously felt the need to
legitimatize it, and he did so by rewriting the abduction scene at the end
where he has Q. wear the same mask when he comes to get Lolita from the
motel. So for the editor, fitting in the full killing scene would have
meant fitting in the alternative Elphinstone sequence as well and taking
out the one Nabokov himself had opted for, and that would have been a
rather radical change which I don't think would have had his approval.
The idea of course was not to produce a jumble of scraps of text with
explanatory footnotes and brackets and so on, but to arrive at a readable
text that would contain as much of the entire material as possible without
altering the basic structure of the screenplay as it was published and to
assemble everything else into the appendix. I don't know if I have
succeeded, but it may be that there is no ideal solution to the problem,
the long typescript really being the "physical mess" Nabokov called it."
may wish to take particular note of the following item. It is NOT merely a
German translation of VN's LOLITA screen play but includes much Nabokov
script that DID NOT appear in the 1974 English edition of the script.
------------------------------
Vladimir Nabokov. _LOLITA. EIN DREHBUCH_ (Lolita A Screenplay). Nach den
Originalposkripten zusammengestellt und ubersetztz von Dieter E. Zimmer.
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1999. 343pp. ISBN 3 498 04664 0
The Hamburg publisher Rowohlt is in the process of publishing a handsome
25-volume set of VN's works in German. Sixteen volumes are now available.
The Editor of the series is Dieter E. Zimmer, Germany's leading
Nabokovian. In many respects, the series is the best edition of Nabokov
in any language--thanks to the efforts of Zimmer who has supplied a
stunning editorial apparatus for each volume. Anyone who writes about a
Nabokov work without first checking the prefaces, notes, and afterwords of
the Zimmer edition is being unnecessarily rash. The latest volume (15/2)
is among the editor's greatest contributions to Nabokov studies.
The importance of this edition lies in the long and troubled history of
Nabokov's LOLITA script. The screenplay VN originally submitted to Kubrick
& Harris was far too long for filming. Nabokov put it through many
versions in response to Kubrick's criticisms. In the end, Kubrick used
very little of Nabokov's script(s), although the novelist's name was
retained as the writer of the 1962 film. After protracted legal problems,
Nabokov published a version of hi unperformed script in 1974 with
McGraw-Hill. This version, however, was incomplete. Nabokov's papers,
now in the NYPL's Berg Collection, contain many longer texts and variants.
Dieter Zimmer's volume is the first to include all of this material.
Zimmer's aim has been to produce a coherent, readable script incorporating
as much of VN's material as possible. The reintroduced dialogue and
scenes are in a distinctive typeface so that the reader can easily
recognize the new material. The restored text greatly expands the 1974
published version. In some cases it was not possible to ascertain
precisely where in the restored text some of the remaining fragments
should go. The editor has included a seventy-page appendix with the these
texts.
Zimmer's "Afterword" is a long, thoughtful essay about the
script's transition from novel to script, the many intermediate versions,
and subsequent incarnations (play, musical, the Schiff-Lyne film). It is
required reading for anyone who writes about the film versions of LOLITA.
--------------------------
In a personal communication to NABOKV-L Dieter Zimmer offers the following
explanation of his editorial procedure.
"..... everything that was impossible to fit into the running text
of the screenplay with any certainty went into the appendix. But by far the
greater part of the appendix is made up of alternative sequences - that is
sequences that would have been perfectly possible to fit in but where
fitting them in would have meant relegating sequences from the published
text to the appendix.
The most important of them is the "Goff" alternative. The published
screenplay reduced the killing of Q. at the beginning to a few hints, while
the long typescript has an extended scene which by itself could have been
fitted in. But throughout it H.H. has Q. wear that Goff mask (the way
Sebastian Knight avoids the description of Goodman's face by symbolically
covering it with a mask). Nabokov's reason for the mask is obvious: he did
not want to give away Q.'s face at the beginning of the film. Q. was to be
present and hidden at the same time. Kubrick did not have any qualms about
showing Q. from the very outset, so he restituted his own version of the
killing scene, without mask or anything to cover up Q.'s identity. Now once
Nabokov had introduced the odd mask, he obviously felt the need to
legitimatize it, and he did so by rewriting the abduction scene at the end
where he has Q. wear the same mask when he comes to get Lolita from the
motel. So for the editor, fitting in the full killing scene would have
meant fitting in the alternative Elphinstone sequence as well and taking
out the one Nabokov himself had opted for, and that would have been a
rather radical change which I don't think would have had his approval.
The idea of course was not to produce a jumble of scraps of text with
explanatory footnotes and brackets and so on, but to arrive at a readable
text that would contain as much of the entire material as possible without
altering the basic structure of the screenplay as it was published and to
assemble everything else into the appendix. I don't know if I have
succeeded, but it may be that there is no ideal solution to the problem,
the long typescript really being the "physical mess" Nabokov called it."