Re: a question
john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Sun, 17 Jan 1999 14:32:50 -0500
Hi all,
By a strange coincidence, Nabokov and *Lolita* are being discussed
currently on two lists I am reading; this one and the Tom Waits list. On
the Waits list today there appeared the following little excerpt from an
interview with VN, which I thought might give people here grist for
discussion. I have a number of my own ideas about the book (which I have
taught only once) and about the man (I use his *Lectures on Russian Lit.*
in a course now and again) but will be content here to read the debate and
not enter into the specifics of the Freudian questions (which I think are
even more complicated than is being hinted at in the discussion -- if, that
is, one wants to actually read the relevant Freud texts and then make a
decision about whether, for instance, it would be most useful to approach
the book via the object-relations route that most people here have been
going or via a Lacanian one (as I would be more tempted to do, given both
N.'s playing with the materiality of language and its relationship to the
unconscious and his continual derision of certain over-institutionalized
Freudian formulae).
Anyway, here are the words from the interview as posted to the Waits list
by Jeff Ward:
You have written a shelf of books in English as well as your books in
Russian. And of them only Lolita is well known. Does it annoy you to be the
Lolita man?
No, I wouldn't say that, because Lolita is a special favorite of mine. It
was my most difficult book-the book that treated of a theme which was so
distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special
pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real.
Were you surprised at the wild success when it came?
I was surprised that the book was published at all.
Did you, in fact, have any doubts about whether Lolita ought to be printed,
considering its subject matter?
No; after all, when you write a book you generally envisage its publication,
in some far future. But I was pleased that the book was published.
What was the genesis of Lolita?
She was born a long time ago, it must have been in 1939, in Paris; the first
little throb of Lolita went through me in Paris in '39, or perhaps early in
'40, at a time when I was laid up with a fierce attack of intercostal
neuralgia which is a very painful complaint-rather like the fabulous stitch
in Adam's side. As far as I can recall the first shiver of inspiration was
somehow prompted in a rather mysterious way by a newspaper story, I think it
was in Paris Soir, about an ape in the Paris Zoo, who after months of
coaxing by scientists produced finally the first drawing ever charcoaled by
an animal, and this sketch, reproduced in the paper, showed the bars of the
poor creature's cage.
Did Humbert Humbert, the middle-aged seducer, have any original?
No. He's a man I devised, a man with an obsession, and I think many of my
characters have sudden obsessions, different kinds of obsessions; but he
never existed. He did exist after I had written the book. While I was
writing the book, here and there in a newspaper I would read all sorts of
accounts about elderly gentlemen who pursued little girls: a kind of
interesting coincidence but that's about all.
Did Lolita herself have an original?
No, Lolita didn't have any original. She was born in my own mind. She never
existed. As a matter of fact, I don't know little girls very well. When I
consider this subject, I don't think I know a single little girl. I've met
them socially now and then, but Lolita is a figment of my imagination.
Why did you write Lolita?
It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after
all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no
social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just
like composing riddles with elegant solutions.
And then there's the following from a '69 interview, posted to the Waits
list by Jeff as well:
"By inclination and intent I avoid squandering my art on the illustrated
catalogs of solemn notions and serious opinions; I dislike their pervasive
presence in the works of others. What ideas can be traced in my novels
belong to my creatures therein and may be deliberately flawed. In my
memoirs, quotable ideas are merely passing visions, suggestions, mirages of
the mind. They lose their colors and explode like football fish when lifted
out of the context of their tropical sea."
Both of these citations seem relevant to the discussion of the Nab./Humbert
question.
That's all from here -- the semester rolls on and the work overtakes me and
I need lunch...
--John