Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0000733, Wed, 4 Oct 1995 09:20:15 -0700

Subject
Re: Shakespeare and VN (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Alexander Dolinin <dolinin@facstaff.wisc.edu>

I wonder if Greg Wickliff's has noticed my piece on Russian Lolita
in the Garland Companion. On pages 325-26 I discuss a very important
allusion to King Lear that is revealed only in the Russian translation. Its
function, I think, is not unlike that of Shakespeare's subtext in "That in
Aleppo once..." -- both seem to indicate what "really" happened to the
heroines (the narrator of "Aleppo," like Othello, most probably killed his
wife and Lolita could have died in Elphinstone hospital, a victim of
"heterosexual Erlkonig," when HH, like Lear and the father in
Goethe/Zhukovsky's ballad, carried her in his arms).
Alexander Dolinin