Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] VN and Houssaye's Lolita
From: "Matthew Roth" <[email-masked]>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:49:02 -0400

Does it not seem likely that someone who had read both Lolitas told VN about Houssaye's novel? If so, that person may even have provided VN with a detailed synopsis.  I am reminded of a comment made by one of my colleagues regarding Shakespeare's surprising breadth of knowledge. He said that while we can to some degree reconstruct what books Shakespeare might have been able to read, we can't account for late night conversations in the tavern with his friends, and all of the other unpublished ways that knowledge is transmitted.
 
Matt Roth

>>> On 4/30/2008 at 12:50 PM, in message <[email-masked]>, NABOKV-L <[email-masked]> wrote:
Thanks for the key passage, Maurice. I didn't confirm that VN read
Houssaye, only that he knew of the novel's existence and wanted to check
it in the NYPL. But two of those diary entries were for 1970 and 1971,
suggesting he still needed the remind himself to look up the novel, yet
he had started writing TTs in 1969, and finished in 1971. 

The strangling of Armande was surely too central to the novel to have
been a late addition. And the scene below is both similar and
different--but the name would seem to be a clincher. All very puzzling.

Brian Boyd

-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of NABOKV-L
Sent: Wednesday, 30 April 2008 1:08 a.m.
To: [email-masked] 
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] VN and Houssaye's Lolita

[EDNOTE.  It occurs to me that the confluence--perhaps the mot
juste?--of VN's Lolita and Houssaye's Lolita, as puzzled out by Maurice,
Brian, and Stephen, should perhaps be clarified for posterity in a note
in The Nabokovian or elsewhere.  -- SES]

Maurice Couturier writes:

Thank you Brian for your confirmation that Nabokov had read this little
novel, but apparently after publishing "Lolita". And Stephen didn't use
the word "similar", sorry; I did, though, as you point out, it is not
totally the case, but close enough. 

Here is the passage in the novel:
"Je me ruai, j'enlaçai le corps nu avec une force formidable, jamais mes
bras n'avaient eu cette vigueur, je les sentais invincibles. Mais Lolita
se débattait, bondissait, menaçait de glisser et de m'échapper. Et ses
flancs secouaient les miens, et les volumes accomplis de son corps
passaient devant mes yeux affolés... Au fond de moi-même, palpitait
l'obscure pensée que la fleur n'était pas toute tombée, que la virginité
s'effeuillait un peu à chaque étreinte, que j'arriverais assez tôt pour
cueillir un dernier pétale oublié. A mesure qu'elle résistait,
étrangement incoercible, dominait ma rage de la possession, je
voulais Lolita à tout prix, séance tenante, parce que je comprenais que
je ne l'aurais jamais plus ensuite, qu'elle me haïssait, et je ne
pouvais pas ne pas l'avoir eue. Pour l'empêcher de remuer, l'endormir
une demi-seconde, et parce qu'elle allait appeler, pour cela seulement,
je plantai la lame en disant: 'Je vais la retirer.' Des bulles de sang
s'échappèrent d!
es narines, une mousse brune comme du chocolat. 'C'est un rêve',
pensai-je.

L'océan parut se soulever hors de la baie tel une trombe, et m'emporter,

misure! à l'odeur mille fois maudite!" (pp. 216-7) 

Maurice Couturier

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