Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Biographical Outline
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and References
- 1 Introduction: A VN Survey
- 2 VN: The Critic
- 3 VN: Grand Master of the Short Story
- 4 VN: The Russian Novelist – Mary to The Gift
- 5 The Lolita Phenomenon
- 6 ‘PaleFire’/Pale Fire
- 7 Ardor in Ardis: Ada
- 8 Looking at the Harlequins
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Lolita Phenomenon
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Biographical Outline
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and References
- 1 Introduction: A VN Survey
- 2 VN: The Critic
- 3 VN: Grand Master of the Short Story
- 4 VN: The Russian Novelist – Mary to The Gift
- 5 The Lolita Phenomenon
- 6 ‘PaleFire’/Pale Fire
- 7 Ardor in Ardis: Ada
- 8 Looking at the Harlequins
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
What is here termed ‘the Lolita phenomenon’ is envisaged as something rather broader than just another glance at the text of this particular novel and its controversial reception. It also involves at least the noting of assorted pre-texts, a difficult publishing history, a screenplay by Nabokov, two film adaptations, and an ever-raging debate over the ever-sensitive issues of paedophilia and child abuse.
When publishing his third collection of short stories in English, in 1975, Nabokov claimed that he was ‘eerily startled to meet a somewhat decrepit but unmistakable Humbert escorting his nymphet in the story I wrote almost half a century ago’ (TD 43). In the story in question, ‘A Nursery Tale’ of 1926, we indeed encounter:
a tall elderly man in evening clothes with a little girl walking beside – a child of fourteen or so in a low-cut black party dress… .[the protagonist's] glance lit on the face of the child mincing at the old poet's side; there was something odd about that face, odd was the flitting glance of her much too shiny eyes, and if she were not just a little girl – the old man's granddaughter, no doubt – one might suspect that her lips were touched up with rouge. She walked swinging her hips very, very slightly, her legs moved close together, she was asking her companion something in a ringing voice … (TD 57)
Even earlier, in 1924, it is worth remembering, Nabokov had translated Lewis Carroll 's Alice in Wonderland into Russian. In The Gift, a decade or so later, Boris Ivanovich Shchyogolev has his own familial situation (with step-daughter Zina Mertz) in mind when he proposes the following plot for a novel:
From real life. Imagine this kind of thing: an old dog – but still in his prime, fiery, thirsting for happiness – gets to know a widow, and she has a daughter, still quite a little girl – you know what I mean – when nothing is formed yet, but already she has a way of walking that drives you out of your mind – A slip of a girl, very fair, pale, with blue under the eyes – and of course she doesn't even look at the old goat. What to do? Well, not long thinking, he ups and marries the widow. Okay.
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- Vladimir Nabokov , pp. 57 - 72Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999