Subject
Fw: Maar in the Times Literary Supplement responds to Dieter
Zimmer re Lichberg "Lolia"
Zimmer re Lichberg "Lolia"
From
Date
Body
EDNOTE. In his reply to Dieter Zimmer, Michael Maar ends his posting
(below) with the words: "Who is smiling here to whom - the paedophile
Humbert at a missed chance, or his creator at the lesser Spanish nymphet of
the aristocrat Lichberg, who had supplied the services of a page to the true
princess? Referential mania? If only one ever knew with this Rastelli."
The intrepid Suellen Stringer-Hye, compiler of the the surveys of VN in the
media, supplies the background and meaning of the name Rastelli--a famed
Japanese juggler.
My question to NABOKV-L subscribers: I seem to recall that VN refers to
Rastelli in one of his works (stories?). Does any one remember where???
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stringer-Hye, Suellen" <suellen.stringer-hye@vanderbilt.edu>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (129
lines) ------------------
> I had not heard of Rastelli.....
>
> <http://www.juggling.org/fame/rastelli/>
>
> --On Friday, May 07, 2004 10:57 AM -0700 "D. Barton Johnson"
> <chtodel@cox.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > EDNOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Manfred Voss for the following.
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Mvoscol@aol.com
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 4:44 AM
> > Subject: M. Maar in the Times Literary Supplement
> >
> > Times Literary Supplement May 7 2004, Letters to the Editor (p.
> > 17)
> >
> >
> > Lolita's Spanish friend
> >
> > Sir, - Dieter E. Zimmer's letter on the first Lolita (April 23)
> > deserves a reply, since his services to the German edition of
> > Vladimir Nabokov's works are exemplary.
> > It is, however, not always easy to identify the argument in the
> > matted tendrils of his communication. The less said about the
> > punitive irony of his "fourth possibility", the better for the
> > reputation of German humour. What Zimmer's story of Nabokov's
> > ostensible meeting with Kafka is supposed to show, apart from the
> > fact that Nabokov was prone to confused memories or
> > mystifications, remains as inscrutable as his side-swipe at
> > Nabokov's first biographer, Andrew Field, who has no more to do
> > with my essay than the author of Metamorphosis. Such distractions
> > aside, the kernel of Zimmer's argument comes down to this.
> > First, it "seems unlikely" to him that Nabokov knew Heinz von
> > Lichberg's story; which is his right, but not a sentence in
> > court. Zimmer's second, and more germane, contention is that the
> > differences between Nabokov's novel and Lichberg's story are
> > greater, and the resemblances smaller, than I have represented
> > them. His principal claims are that Lichberg's Lolita is neither
> > a child nor has anything demonic about her, and that the narrator
> > is glad to be rid of her.
> > In fact, Lichberg does not tell us the precise age of his Lolita
> > (Nabokov's is not eleven, as Zimmer would have it, but
> > twelve-and-a-half when Humbert takes her to the hotel). But this
> > is how the narrator who, like Humbert, falls in love with her at
> > first sight, describes her.
> > Lolita is "very young according to our Northern conceptions"; the
> > narrator wants to take "the child" into his arms; his little
> > Lolita seems to him a "begging child"; and in the depiction of
> > her death-bed the diminutives alone indicate that she is no
> > woman, but a child: "My beloved little Lolita lay in her small,
> > narrow bed [ihrem schmalen Bettchen] with wide-open eyes". If, as
> > Zimmer has it, this is a sexually mature "young woman between
> > fifteen and eighteen", my name is Quilty.
> > After Lolita's parting gift, moreover, the narrator remains under
> > her spell. (She leaves a white flower, soaked in her blood, on
> > his bed. An obscene variant of this sanguinary flower will
> > appear at Humbert's parting from Lolita.) Lichberg's Lolita is,
> > of course, not simply the victim of a curse, but herself connoted
> > as demonic - why otherwise does the narrator flee her threatening
> > love; why does her mark, the bite in his hand, still burn
> > twenty-five years later; and why does she merge in a dream-scene
> > withe the femme fatale and murdered ur-Lola: "It was not Lolita,
> > it was Lola - or was it Lolita after all?". Now to resemblances.
> > Here are the parallels between the two narratives: 1) The title
> > is identical, and the heroine has the same name. 2) She is very
> > young. 3) She is the daughter of a figure who lets a room by the
> > sea (lake), where the narrator wants to take a break. 4) She has
> > an affair with the narrator and seduces him. 5) She is, like the
> > later nymphet, half-demon and half-child. 6) The finale is a
> > grotesque, dream-like murder scene. 7) Nabokov's Lolita dies
> > after giving birth to a daughter; Lichberg's Lola is murdered
> > after the birth of her daughter. Each narrator is left alone,
> > brokenhearted, but Lolita makes him a writer.
> > Coincidence? It seems more likely that Nabokov should at some
> > point in his Berlin years have come upon a slender volume, whose
> > title "The Accursed Gioconda" might have appeared to promise
> > revelations about the secret of the Mona Lisa. One cannot exclude
> > pure accident - which I expressly did not, contrary to what
> > Zimmer suggests. The field of intertextual relations rarely
> > allows of hard proofs. As long as no actual diary entry noting a
> > particular reading - or some other proof that perhaps lies under
> > our nose - turns up, plausibility is the most that can ever be
> > attained.
> > There is a misunderstanding at work in the reactions of some
> > Nabokovians.. Even if Nabokov felt that a novel that was to be
> > written already existed platonically preformed in another sphere
> > and all he had to do was transport it into the reality of words,
> > his books did not swim towards him neatly wrapped in willow
> > baskets. The creative process works otherwise and, to a real
> > poet, nothing is lost: scraps of newspapers and daydreams,
> > mythologies and advertisements, Proust and the jukebox,
> > Shakespeare and sexologists - everything that shimmers through
> > Lolita. Nabokov's play with implications and allusions was
> > moreover inexhaustible. Alfred Appel's commentary on Lolita
> > occupies 140 densely printed pages. The name of Heinz von
> > Lichberg does not occur in it. But there is a passage in the
> > novel that leaves even the third possible explanation I advanced,
> > of cryptomnesia, wobbling slightly.
> > In the second chapter, Humbert Humbert watches Lolita among other
> > nymphets at the swimming-pool, and recalls that none ever
> > surpassed her in desirability, with a few exceptions: "once in
> > the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, the daughter of a
> > heavy-jawed nobleman, and another time 'mais je divague'". Why
> > did Nabokov introduce this Spanish daughter of a nobleman as the
> > only child capable of competing with Lolita? She lacks any
> > obvious function in the text. On the following pages she appears
> > inconspicuously once again as Lolita's little Spanish friend. She
> > is "the lesser nymphet, a diaphanous darling", with whom Lolita
> > jumps a rope. On leaving the scene with Lo, Humbert flashes a
> > smile at this "shy, dark-haired page-girl of my princess", who
> > thereupon disappears from the novel.
> > Who is smiling here to whom - the paedophile Humbert at a missed
> > chance, or his creator at the lesser Spanish nymphet of the
> > aristocrat Lichberg, who had supplied the services of a page to
> > the true princess? Referential mania? If only one ever knew with
> > this Rastelli.
> >
> > MICHAEL MAAR
> >
> > Stubenrauchstrasse 49, Berlin.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Stringer-Hye, Suellen
> Vanderbilt University
> Email: suellen.stringer-hye@Vanderbilt.Edu
(below) with the words: "Who is smiling here to whom - the paedophile
Humbert at a missed chance, or his creator at the lesser Spanish nymphet of
the aristocrat Lichberg, who had supplied the services of a page to the true
princess? Referential mania? If only one ever knew with this Rastelli."
The intrepid Suellen Stringer-Hye, compiler of the the surveys of VN in the
media, supplies the background and meaning of the name Rastelli--a famed
Japanese juggler.
My question to NABOKV-L subscribers: I seem to recall that VN refers to
Rastelli in one of his works (stories?). Does any one remember where???
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stringer-Hye, Suellen" <suellen.stringer-hye@vanderbilt.edu>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (129
lines) ------------------
> I had not heard of Rastelli.....
>
> <http://www.juggling.org/fame/rastelli/>
>
> --On Friday, May 07, 2004 10:57 AM -0700 "D. Barton Johnson"
> <chtodel@cox.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > EDNOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Manfred Voss for the following.
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Mvoscol@aol.com
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 4:44 AM
> > Subject: M. Maar in the Times Literary Supplement
> >
> > Times Literary Supplement May 7 2004, Letters to the Editor (p.
> > 17)
> >
> >
> > Lolita's Spanish friend
> >
> > Sir, - Dieter E. Zimmer's letter on the first Lolita (April 23)
> > deserves a reply, since his services to the German edition of
> > Vladimir Nabokov's works are exemplary.
> > It is, however, not always easy to identify the argument in the
> > matted tendrils of his communication. The less said about the
> > punitive irony of his "fourth possibility", the better for the
> > reputation of German humour. What Zimmer's story of Nabokov's
> > ostensible meeting with Kafka is supposed to show, apart from the
> > fact that Nabokov was prone to confused memories or
> > mystifications, remains as inscrutable as his side-swipe at
> > Nabokov's first biographer, Andrew Field, who has no more to do
> > with my essay than the author of Metamorphosis. Such distractions
> > aside, the kernel of Zimmer's argument comes down to this.
> > First, it "seems unlikely" to him that Nabokov knew Heinz von
> > Lichberg's story; which is his right, but not a sentence in
> > court. Zimmer's second, and more germane, contention is that the
> > differences between Nabokov's novel and Lichberg's story are
> > greater, and the resemblances smaller, than I have represented
> > them. His principal claims are that Lichberg's Lolita is neither
> > a child nor has anything demonic about her, and that the narrator
> > is glad to be rid of her.
> > In fact, Lichberg does not tell us the precise age of his Lolita
> > (Nabokov's is not eleven, as Zimmer would have it, but
> > twelve-and-a-half when Humbert takes her to the hotel). But this
> > is how the narrator who, like Humbert, falls in love with her at
> > first sight, describes her.
> > Lolita is "very young according to our Northern conceptions"; the
> > narrator wants to take "the child" into his arms; his little
> > Lolita seems to him a "begging child"; and in the depiction of
> > her death-bed the diminutives alone indicate that she is no
> > woman, but a child: "My beloved little Lolita lay in her small,
> > narrow bed [ihrem schmalen Bettchen] with wide-open eyes". If, as
> > Zimmer has it, this is a sexually mature "young woman between
> > fifteen and eighteen", my name is Quilty.
> > After Lolita's parting gift, moreover, the narrator remains under
> > her spell. (She leaves a white flower, soaked in her blood, on
> > his bed. An obscene variant of this sanguinary flower will
> > appear at Humbert's parting from Lolita.) Lichberg's Lolita is,
> > of course, not simply the victim of a curse, but herself connoted
> > as demonic - why otherwise does the narrator flee her threatening
> > love; why does her mark, the bite in his hand, still burn
> > twenty-five years later; and why does she merge in a dream-scene
> > withe the femme fatale and murdered ur-Lola: "It was not Lolita,
> > it was Lola - or was it Lolita after all?". Now to resemblances.
> > Here are the parallels between the two narratives: 1) The title
> > is identical, and the heroine has the same name. 2) She is very
> > young. 3) She is the daughter of a figure who lets a room by the
> > sea (lake), where the narrator wants to take a break. 4) She has
> > an affair with the narrator and seduces him. 5) She is, like the
> > later nymphet, half-demon and half-child. 6) The finale is a
> > grotesque, dream-like murder scene. 7) Nabokov's Lolita dies
> > after giving birth to a daughter; Lichberg's Lola is murdered
> > after the birth of her daughter. Each narrator is left alone,
> > brokenhearted, but Lolita makes him a writer.
> > Coincidence? It seems more likely that Nabokov should at some
> > point in his Berlin years have come upon a slender volume, whose
> > title "The Accursed Gioconda" might have appeared to promise
> > revelations about the secret of the Mona Lisa. One cannot exclude
> > pure accident - which I expressly did not, contrary to what
> > Zimmer suggests. The field of intertextual relations rarely
> > allows of hard proofs. As long as no actual diary entry noting a
> > particular reading - or some other proof that perhaps lies under
> > our nose - turns up, plausibility is the most that can ever be
> > attained.
> > There is a misunderstanding at work in the reactions of some
> > Nabokovians.. Even if Nabokov felt that a novel that was to be
> > written already existed platonically preformed in another sphere
> > and all he had to do was transport it into the reality of words,
> > his books did not swim towards him neatly wrapped in willow
> > baskets. The creative process works otherwise and, to a real
> > poet, nothing is lost: scraps of newspapers and daydreams,
> > mythologies and advertisements, Proust and the jukebox,
> > Shakespeare and sexologists - everything that shimmers through
> > Lolita. Nabokov's play with implications and allusions was
> > moreover inexhaustible. Alfred Appel's commentary on Lolita
> > occupies 140 densely printed pages. The name of Heinz von
> > Lichberg does not occur in it. But there is a passage in the
> > novel that leaves even the third possible explanation I advanced,
> > of cryptomnesia, wobbling slightly.
> > In the second chapter, Humbert Humbert watches Lolita among other
> > nymphets at the swimming-pool, and recalls that none ever
> > surpassed her in desirability, with a few exceptions: "once in
> > the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, the daughter of a
> > heavy-jawed nobleman, and another time 'mais je divague'". Why
> > did Nabokov introduce this Spanish daughter of a nobleman as the
> > only child capable of competing with Lolita? She lacks any
> > obvious function in the text. On the following pages she appears
> > inconspicuously once again as Lolita's little Spanish friend. She
> > is "the lesser nymphet, a diaphanous darling", with whom Lolita
> > jumps a rope. On leaving the scene with Lo, Humbert flashes a
> > smile at this "shy, dark-haired page-girl of my princess", who
> > thereupon disappears from the novel.
> > Who is smiling here to whom - the paedophile Humbert at a missed
> > chance, or his creator at the lesser Spanish nymphet of the
> > aristocrat Lichberg, who had supplied the services of a page to
> > the true princess? Referential mania? If only one ever knew with
> > this Rastelli.
> >
> > MICHAEL MAAR
> >
> > Stubenrauchstrasse 49, Berlin.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Stringer-Hye, Suellen
> Vanderbilt University
> Email: suellen.stringer-hye@Vanderbilt.Edu