Subject
Rastelli in Maar in the Times Literary Supplement, Plus EDQUeRY
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Date
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----- Original Message -----
From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 7:47 PM
Subject: Fw: Maar in the Times Literary Supplement responds to Dieter Zimmer
re Lichberg "Lolita"
> 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
From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 7:47 PM
Subject: Fw: Maar in the Times Literary Supplement responds to Dieter Zimmer
re Lichberg "Lolita"
> 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