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Dmitri Nabokov and Dieter Zimmer on Michael Maar's Proto-Lolita
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EDNOTE. On March 19, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published literary journalist Michael Maar's article pointing to an obscure 1916 German story entitled "Lolita" as an ur-text for VN's LOLITA. The item was quickly picked up by Der Spiegel and newspapers from Moscow to Madrid. Meanwhile very people have (so far) had access to the German story itself. I understand that FAZ plans to publish the German story and that the (London Times Literarry Supplement) plans to publish a version of Michael Maar's article in an April issue.
Dmitri Nabokov and many Nabokov scholars have been queried by the world press--among them Dieter E. Zimmer, the leading German Nabokov expert and editor of the Rowohlt edition of VN's collected works. Dmitri Nabokov and Dr. Zimmer have given permission to NABOKV-L to make available their correspondence on the matter. [I have edited out passages not relevant to the Lolita story.]
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March 22, 2004 -- 3:30pm
----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri Nabokov
To: 'Dieter E. Zimmer'
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 6:58 PM
Subject: German pre-Lolita
Dear Dieter,
I see from the Frankfurt and Zurich papers, and Spiegel, that a short piece written by a journalist named Heinz von Lichberg in 1916 is being touted as a predecessor of Lolita because of certain similarities -- mainly, it seems, the title. Of course it's true that it is set in Spain, where the name is hardly a rarity. It also appears to be junk. Besides, my father had practically no German. I would guess it is either a journalistic tempest in a teacup or possibly a deliberate mystification. Do you think you could glance at it if it appears somewhere? It is very short. I am being pestered from Russia and elsewhere, and don't quite know what to say. By the way, I find "erlebten 15 Jahre lang gemeinsam in Berlin"in Sueddeutsche.de grossly
misleading.
My warm greetings, Dmitri
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From: Dieter E. Zimmer
Berlin, March 23, 2004 -- 8am
Dear Dmitri,
Since the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" published the article by Michael Maar on v. Lichberg's "Lolita" last Friday, I too have been pestered by German journalists who want to know what I think of the matter, and like you I am somewhat at a loss what to answer, except the obvious: that your father certainly did not steal "Lolita", neither from a Nazi writer nor from anybody else.
The whole thing is no mystification, however. There is that volume ofstories by one v. Lichberg (Heinz v. Lichberg, "Die verfluchte Gioconda: Grotesken", Darmstadt: Falken-Verlag, 1916), and one of the stories is entitled "Lolita"; it's about a fatal love affair. The author was never well-known -- I might as well delete the "well". I had never seen or heard his name mentioned before, though for decades I worked on the
literature pages of the biggest German weekly where all kind of news and rumours converged. I haven't read that story, and I won't easily have a chance to do so because the book is very hard to come by. (If I do, I'll send you a copy.) But Maar showed me the book and the story half a year ago, so I
can confirm it exists, and from the few sentences I picked up on that occasion it is rubbish.
If your father had ever seen it or heard about it, I am sure he would have given his girl some other name. Unfortunately, something always sticks. It is very cumbersome to disprove a wild theory. The burden of proof should be on those who advance it, but it is the other way around. Already I have seen notes in the press arguing once more that your father mystified the public when he contended that his German was poor
while actually he had a fluent knowledge of it and knew German literature very well so that the case would not seem as improbable as it would at first glance (as a matter of fact, Vadim Stark said so in an interview with "Izvestia"). It is Andrew Field's stale opinion resurrected, the one Field underpinned with that paragraph in Luzhin your father was supposed to have lifted from Bruno Frank's novel "Bruder
und Schwester", the one about the shop window decoration advertising a (Mont Blanc) fountain pen. By the way, I have found the proof that it cannot be this way (published in my book "Nabokovs Berlin"). Both your father and Frank must have seen the same shop window on Friedrichstrasse
in c. 1928, and your father described it correctly (a mechanical
mannekin with two faces) and Frank incorrectly (supplying the figure with two heads). The right description cannot have been deduced from the
wrong one.
"... lebten gemeinsam in Berlin" is silly, of course, one of the
inanities abounding again. One could not sue anybody for it, though. "Gemeinsam" is ambiguous. It may mean "together", but it may mean no more than "at the same time". The nasty thing is the innuendo that they must surely have known each other. In short, I think it is one of those bewildering coincidences that mean nothing, perhaps worth a side-note in a book on "Lolita" but not an international media affair.
I don't know how soon the present flurry is going to subside, but as in the case of the Agheyev novel, I am afraid some will remain convinced that the wildest suspicions are the truest.
Very warm greetings,
Dieter
Dmitri Nabokov and many Nabokov scholars have been queried by the world press--among them Dieter E. Zimmer, the leading German Nabokov expert and editor of the Rowohlt edition of VN's collected works. Dmitri Nabokov and Dr. Zimmer have given permission to NABOKV-L to make available their correspondence on the matter. [I have edited out passages not relevant to the Lolita story.]
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March 22, 2004 -- 3:30pm
----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri Nabokov
To: 'Dieter E. Zimmer'
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 6:58 PM
Subject: German pre-Lolita
Dear Dieter,
I see from the Frankfurt and Zurich papers, and Spiegel, that a short piece written by a journalist named Heinz von Lichberg in 1916 is being touted as a predecessor of Lolita because of certain similarities -- mainly, it seems, the title. Of course it's true that it is set in Spain, where the name is hardly a rarity. It also appears to be junk. Besides, my father had practically no German. I would guess it is either a journalistic tempest in a teacup or possibly a deliberate mystification. Do you think you could glance at it if it appears somewhere? It is very short. I am being pestered from Russia and elsewhere, and don't quite know what to say. By the way, I find "erlebten 15 Jahre lang gemeinsam in Berlin"in Sueddeutsche.de grossly
misleading.
My warm greetings, Dmitri
-------------------------------------------------
From: Dieter E. Zimmer
Berlin, March 23, 2004 -- 8am
Dear Dmitri,
Since the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" published the article by Michael Maar on v. Lichberg's "Lolita" last Friday, I too have been pestered by German journalists who want to know what I think of the matter, and like you I am somewhat at a loss what to answer, except the obvious: that your father certainly did not steal "Lolita", neither from a Nazi writer nor from anybody else.
The whole thing is no mystification, however. There is that volume ofstories by one v. Lichberg (Heinz v. Lichberg, "Die verfluchte Gioconda: Grotesken", Darmstadt: Falken-Verlag, 1916), and one of the stories is entitled "Lolita"; it's about a fatal love affair. The author was never well-known -- I might as well delete the "well". I had never seen or heard his name mentioned before, though for decades I worked on the
literature pages of the biggest German weekly where all kind of news and rumours converged. I haven't read that story, and I won't easily have a chance to do so because the book is very hard to come by. (If I do, I'll send you a copy.) But Maar showed me the book and the story half a year ago, so I
can confirm it exists, and from the few sentences I picked up on that occasion it is rubbish.
If your father had ever seen it or heard about it, I am sure he would have given his girl some other name. Unfortunately, something always sticks. It is very cumbersome to disprove a wild theory. The burden of proof should be on those who advance it, but it is the other way around. Already I have seen notes in the press arguing once more that your father mystified the public when he contended that his German was poor
while actually he had a fluent knowledge of it and knew German literature very well so that the case would not seem as improbable as it would at first glance (as a matter of fact, Vadim Stark said so in an interview with "Izvestia"). It is Andrew Field's stale opinion resurrected, the one Field underpinned with that paragraph in Luzhin your father was supposed to have lifted from Bruno Frank's novel "Bruder
und Schwester", the one about the shop window decoration advertising a (Mont Blanc) fountain pen. By the way, I have found the proof that it cannot be this way (published in my book "Nabokovs Berlin"). Both your father and Frank must have seen the same shop window on Friedrichstrasse
in c. 1928, and your father described it correctly (a mechanical
mannekin with two faces) and Frank incorrectly (supplying the figure with two heads). The right description cannot have been deduced from the
wrong one.
"... lebten gemeinsam in Berlin" is silly, of course, one of the
inanities abounding again. One could not sue anybody for it, though. "Gemeinsam" is ambiguous. It may mean "together", but it may mean no more than "at the same time". The nasty thing is the innuendo that they must surely have known each other. In short, I think it is one of those bewildering coincidences that mean nothing, perhaps worth a side-note in a book on "Lolita" but not an international media affair.
I don't know how soon the present flurry is going to subside, but as in the case of the Agheyev novel, I am afraid some will remain convinced that the wildest suspicions are the truest.
Very warm greetings,
Dieter