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Fw: Nabokov, Lichberg, Maar, etc.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Dieter E. Zimmer" <mail@d-e-zimmer.de>
To: "Don Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
Cc: "Ulrich Greiner (Zeit)" <greiner@zeit.de>; "Alan Jenkins (TLS)"
<Alan.Jenkins@the-tls.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 12:51 AM
Subject: Nabokov, Lichberg, Maar, etc.
> I apologize for taking the floor once more. I don't want to stifle the
> debate. But there are some points I obviously haven't made clear enough in
> my previous postings.
>
> Michael Maar complained, in yet another article in the "Frankfurter
> Allgemeine", that some Nabokovians seemed to feel less enthusiastic than
> himself and even downright annoyed by his discovery of Lichberg's Lo. As I
> belong to that bunch, I can perhaps suggest why this may have been so. I
> considered it a nice find but without great importance and not deserving
the
> media attention it received. Why that?
>
> All the "resemblances" Maar sees in Lichberg's and Nabokov's stories serve
> him as evidence that Nabokov somehow must have owed them to Lichberg and
> that Lichberg's Lo could perhaps be considered a precursor of "Lolita".
That
> is, he is tacitly arguing that without Lichberg these features would not
> have been there, and "Lolita", if it existed at all, would be quite
> different from what it is. Now if this were really true; if Nabokov
> "cryptomnestically" borrowed them all; if he needed Lichberg's story,
> forgotten by everyone including himself, to suggest to him the general
plot
> ("man loves girl"), one of the locations ("building near water"), the
> narrational point of view ("ex lover telling the story"), the presence of
> some kind of demonism and so on, even the common name 'Lolita' -- all
> resemblances on different levels, in varying degrees of vagueness and
> unspecifity and each one of which Nabokov may have gotten from just about
> anywhere or nowhere (the search is on!) -- well, he surely would never
have
> been able to write "Lolita" or anything else you would care to read. Faced
> with intentional "similarities", we call them allusions, and each one may
be
> meaningful and deserving of a footnote in an annotated edition. (I myself
> have written thousands of such notes to Nabokov's Collected Works in
German
> and know very well what glee it provides to unravel even the less
> significant points, so I have a heart for Maar's feelings of triumph.) But
> the Lichberg "similarities" are elusive in themselves, and their proposed
> genesis is completely unclear. Great works of art just are not pieced
> together in this way, under the dictate of sundry topoi and tidbits once
> encountered in some other book and since forgotten. If Lichberg's Lo was a
> precursor (and a calculation of the odds tells us it wasn't), Nabokov has
> gleaned very little from it, and his readers should be thankful.
>
> Try to do it. Study the plausibility of the case by simulating a boat ride
> not upstream but downstream, from the source to the mouth. Sit down to
write
> a story "under the influence". Pull a dusty book you once read and
> subsequently forgot from the hindmost shelf and then without opening it
> write a story incorporating a few details from it, no matter how
unspecific.
> Even if cued in this way, you will not remember what details to
incorporate
> and how they should add up to form a story. And if you somehow contrived a
> story by guesswork, all its words would still be missing. So if by
> subconscious influence you do not produce anything, try to do it
> consciously. Take any name you like, say 'Emma', remember that Mme
Bovary's
> name was Emma, that the novel was about adultery, that its location had
> something to do with apples and that there was a pharmacy and a horse
> carriage in it, and then try to write a story of your own that
incorporates
> those details. You will succeed. If you are a good writer, you will
> gloriously succeed. Faced with six specific items of agreement, your
readers
> will rightly surmise that you were influenced by Flaubert's novel. The
> reviews will say so. If some even accused you of plagiarizing it, you
would
> stand helpless. Still you might feel the accusation a bit unjust, for
didn't
> you think up the story yourself? Wasn't it even more difficult to write
> because you had to take care of those pre-ordained agreements? How much
help
> had it been to know beforehand that your heroine's name must be Emma? Does
> it in any way explain your story if everybody now points to those six
items
> and says they are from Flaubert? Does it prove anything but the mere fact
> that you must have known "Mme Bovary"? Yet here you have six specific
> agreements that taken together make for a proven case of intentional
> "influence". In the Lichberg case you have one specific and about seven
> unspecific agreements, the working hypothesis that they were not intended,
> and a rather crushing likelihood that Nabokov did not know Lichberg's Lo
at
> all.
>
> So either Nabokov whom we had considered a most lucid writer actually was
> under the spell of some subconscious demons that dictated things to him
> which he would not have thought of himself; or he chose the most laborious
> way of writing, piecing his works together mosaic-like from scraps of
> obscure literature dimly remembered. It doesn't make sense either way. So
> what we resent may be the implication that Nabokov must have been crazy if
> he ever let or made things happen in this manner. I suspect there is
> something fundamentally wrong with a methodology that leads you to any
such
> conclusion.
>
> Carolyn Kunin urges us to wait until further research has turned up more
> evidence. If you think it's worthwhile, please go ahead. I predict that
> there will be more "similarities" of this order, especially if you extend
> your search for Lichbergiana to all of Nabokov's works, or for the sources
> of "Lolita" to all the books Nabokov probably never read -- and that none
of
> them will be more conclusive than the past ones.
>
> I never understood why anybody should be interested in improving Nabokov's
> command of the German language if not to be able to first project and then
> detect "hidden German influences". What if Nabokov did not pretend, and it
> really was poor? When I talked to him in the sixties and seventies, when
for
> thirty years I corresponded with Véra and him about my renderings, when I
> came across various bits of German in his works and had to decide whether
I
> should leave them faulty as they were or correct them, I had the
impression
> that his German was not as poor as he modestly claimed but that it
certainly
> was far from fluent. I am perfectly ready to believe that he did not want
to
> read any serious German literature without frequent support from a
> dictionary. So I think it is not likely that he should have undergone the
> ordeal for shoddy literature.
>
> As to Leonhard Frank's "Bruder und Schwester", he must have been
acquainted
> with it as the title is passingly and disdainfully mentioned in one of his
> stories ("The Reunion", 1931), but it would be rash to jump to the
> conclusion that he read all of it and was "influenced" by it. Frank's
novel
> was one of the big bestsellers of 1929, while the German translation of
his
> "King Queen Knave" was plodding along, largely ignored by the public; so
the
> book may have interested him in the same way as did Pasternak's "Dr.
> Zhivago" twenty years later. The influence is supposed to consist in the
> book's being about a case of happy incest and thus somehow leading to
"Ada".
> But would Nabokov really have needed Frank to make him aware that there
such
> a thing as incest and that it need not lead to catastrophe? But there also
> is an astounding specific agreement: a paragraph in "The Defense" is the
> description of a mechanical mannikin in a Berlin shop window that had also
> been described in Frank's novel published during the writing of "King
Queen
> Knave". It looked almost as if Nabokov had copied it straight out of
"Bruder
> und Schwester". This seems to be the strongest evidence imaginable: a
whole
> paragraph, almost verbatim! It certainly taxes the firmness your
conviction,
> gained otherwise, that Nabokov would never have done a thing like that.
> Still, he did not, and I proved it (in my book "Nabokovs Berlin"). Frank's
> mannikin has two heads, while Nabokov's has only one, with two faces, one
> smiling, the other ill-humored. The mannikin really existed, advertising
> fountain pens in a Mont Blanc store on Friedrichstrasse. It had one head
and
> two faces. Nabokov cannot have extracted the right description from the
> wrong one. They both must have seen and described that same mannikin, and
> Nabokov got it right while Frank got it wrong. So even the strongest
> evidence had been misleading. I dread the overwhelming crop of
unconclusive
> evidence a close parallel reading of "Ada" and "Bruder und Schwester" with
> Michael Maar's methodological eye will yield.
Dieter E. Zimmer, Berlin
May 14, 2004
------------------
PS. What all of this adds up to is a cautionary note concerning methodology
to all of us, including myself. Let's not think we have already made an
important discovery if we find that A, B and C in one text are somewhat
similar to A, B, C in some other text. Before we can even start to think
about precursors, influences etc., we will have to answer a few additional
questions. (1) Are A, B and C really similar? That is, how specific are the
similarities? (2) Is there a rational way in which A, B and C may have
wandered from one text to the other? Can we at least risk an informed guess
at how their migration might have come about? (3) Would it all make any
sense, given what we know about both texts and their authors? If we believe
we can skip these questions, we will be in a quagmire, and in the end nobody
will believe us.
PPS. I thank Don for kindly drawing attention to "Nabokovs Berlin", and I
would like to add that not only the images that make up more than half of
the book need no German but that most of the text doesn't either,
consisting
mainly of quotations from Nabokov's works dealing with Berlin. My own
comments are sparse.
------------------------------------
EDNOTE. A note on ADA and Leonard Frank's BRUDER UND SCHWESTER. I discuss
the Frank novel and its possible role in ADA and THE DEFENSE inThe Labyrinth
of Incest in Nabokov's Ada".Comparative Literature (Eugene, OR), 38, 1986,
pp. 224-255. (Also in my WORLDS IN REGRESSION, pp. 116-153.) The article,
inter alia, discusses the prevalence of the sibling incest theme in German
literature. In the matter of the mannikin, I am glad to see that I was
cautious in my conclusions.
>
>
From: "Dieter E. Zimmer" <mail@d-e-zimmer.de>
To: "Don Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
Cc: "Ulrich Greiner (Zeit)" <greiner@zeit.de>; "Alan Jenkins (TLS)"
<Alan.Jenkins@the-tls.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 12:51 AM
Subject: Nabokov, Lichberg, Maar, etc.
> I apologize for taking the floor once more. I don't want to stifle the
> debate. But there are some points I obviously haven't made clear enough in
> my previous postings.
>
> Michael Maar complained, in yet another article in the "Frankfurter
> Allgemeine", that some Nabokovians seemed to feel less enthusiastic than
> himself and even downright annoyed by his discovery of Lichberg's Lo. As I
> belong to that bunch, I can perhaps suggest why this may have been so. I
> considered it a nice find but without great importance and not deserving
the
> media attention it received. Why that?
>
> All the "resemblances" Maar sees in Lichberg's and Nabokov's stories serve
> him as evidence that Nabokov somehow must have owed them to Lichberg and
> that Lichberg's Lo could perhaps be considered a precursor of "Lolita".
That
> is, he is tacitly arguing that without Lichberg these features would not
> have been there, and "Lolita", if it existed at all, would be quite
> different from what it is. Now if this were really true; if Nabokov
> "cryptomnestically" borrowed them all; if he needed Lichberg's story,
> forgotten by everyone including himself, to suggest to him the general
plot
> ("man loves girl"), one of the locations ("building near water"), the
> narrational point of view ("ex lover telling the story"), the presence of
> some kind of demonism and so on, even the common name 'Lolita' -- all
> resemblances on different levels, in varying degrees of vagueness and
> unspecifity and each one of which Nabokov may have gotten from just about
> anywhere or nowhere (the search is on!) -- well, he surely would never
have
> been able to write "Lolita" or anything else you would care to read. Faced
> with intentional "similarities", we call them allusions, and each one may
be
> meaningful and deserving of a footnote in an annotated edition. (I myself
> have written thousands of such notes to Nabokov's Collected Works in
German
> and know very well what glee it provides to unravel even the less
> significant points, so I have a heart for Maar's feelings of triumph.) But
> the Lichberg "similarities" are elusive in themselves, and their proposed
> genesis is completely unclear. Great works of art just are not pieced
> together in this way, under the dictate of sundry topoi and tidbits once
> encountered in some other book and since forgotten. If Lichberg's Lo was a
> precursor (and a calculation of the odds tells us it wasn't), Nabokov has
> gleaned very little from it, and his readers should be thankful.
>
> Try to do it. Study the plausibility of the case by simulating a boat ride
> not upstream but downstream, from the source to the mouth. Sit down to
write
> a story "under the influence". Pull a dusty book you once read and
> subsequently forgot from the hindmost shelf and then without opening it
> write a story incorporating a few details from it, no matter how
unspecific.
> Even if cued in this way, you will not remember what details to
incorporate
> and how they should add up to form a story. And if you somehow contrived a
> story by guesswork, all its words would still be missing. So if by
> subconscious influence you do not produce anything, try to do it
> consciously. Take any name you like, say 'Emma', remember that Mme
Bovary's
> name was Emma, that the novel was about adultery, that its location had
> something to do with apples and that there was a pharmacy and a horse
> carriage in it, and then try to write a story of your own that
incorporates
> those details. You will succeed. If you are a good writer, you will
> gloriously succeed. Faced with six specific items of agreement, your
readers
> will rightly surmise that you were influenced by Flaubert's novel. The
> reviews will say so. If some even accused you of plagiarizing it, you
would
> stand helpless. Still you might feel the accusation a bit unjust, for
didn't
> you think up the story yourself? Wasn't it even more difficult to write
> because you had to take care of those pre-ordained agreements? How much
help
> had it been to know beforehand that your heroine's name must be Emma? Does
> it in any way explain your story if everybody now points to those six
items
> and says they are from Flaubert? Does it prove anything but the mere fact
> that you must have known "Mme Bovary"? Yet here you have six specific
> agreements that taken together make for a proven case of intentional
> "influence". In the Lichberg case you have one specific and about seven
> unspecific agreements, the working hypothesis that they were not intended,
> and a rather crushing likelihood that Nabokov did not know Lichberg's Lo
at
> all.
>
> So either Nabokov whom we had considered a most lucid writer actually was
> under the spell of some subconscious demons that dictated things to him
> which he would not have thought of himself; or he chose the most laborious
> way of writing, piecing his works together mosaic-like from scraps of
> obscure literature dimly remembered. It doesn't make sense either way. So
> what we resent may be the implication that Nabokov must have been crazy if
> he ever let or made things happen in this manner. I suspect there is
> something fundamentally wrong with a methodology that leads you to any
such
> conclusion.
>
> Carolyn Kunin urges us to wait until further research has turned up more
> evidence. If you think it's worthwhile, please go ahead. I predict that
> there will be more "similarities" of this order, especially if you extend
> your search for Lichbergiana to all of Nabokov's works, or for the sources
> of "Lolita" to all the books Nabokov probably never read -- and that none
of
> them will be more conclusive than the past ones.
>
> I never understood why anybody should be interested in improving Nabokov's
> command of the German language if not to be able to first project and then
> detect "hidden German influences". What if Nabokov did not pretend, and it
> really was poor? When I talked to him in the sixties and seventies, when
for
> thirty years I corresponded with Véra and him about my renderings, when I
> came across various bits of German in his works and had to decide whether
I
> should leave them faulty as they were or correct them, I had the
impression
> that his German was not as poor as he modestly claimed but that it
certainly
> was far from fluent. I am perfectly ready to believe that he did not want
to
> read any serious German literature without frequent support from a
> dictionary. So I think it is not likely that he should have undergone the
> ordeal for shoddy literature.
>
> As to Leonhard Frank's "Bruder und Schwester", he must have been
acquainted
> with it as the title is passingly and disdainfully mentioned in one of his
> stories ("The Reunion", 1931), but it would be rash to jump to the
> conclusion that he read all of it and was "influenced" by it. Frank's
novel
> was one of the big bestsellers of 1929, while the German translation of
his
> "King Queen Knave" was plodding along, largely ignored by the public; so
the
> book may have interested him in the same way as did Pasternak's "Dr.
> Zhivago" twenty years later. The influence is supposed to consist in the
> book's being about a case of happy incest and thus somehow leading to
"Ada".
> But would Nabokov really have needed Frank to make him aware that there
such
> a thing as incest and that it need not lead to catastrophe? But there also
> is an astounding specific agreement: a paragraph in "The Defense" is the
> description of a mechanical mannikin in a Berlin shop window that had also
> been described in Frank's novel published during the writing of "King
Queen
> Knave". It looked almost as if Nabokov had copied it straight out of
"Bruder
> und Schwester". This seems to be the strongest evidence imaginable: a
whole
> paragraph, almost verbatim! It certainly taxes the firmness your
conviction,
> gained otherwise, that Nabokov would never have done a thing like that.
> Still, he did not, and I proved it (in my book "Nabokovs Berlin"). Frank's
> mannikin has two heads, while Nabokov's has only one, with two faces, one
> smiling, the other ill-humored. The mannikin really existed, advertising
> fountain pens in a Mont Blanc store on Friedrichstrasse. It had one head
and
> two faces. Nabokov cannot have extracted the right description from the
> wrong one. They both must have seen and described that same mannikin, and
> Nabokov got it right while Frank got it wrong. So even the strongest
> evidence had been misleading. I dread the overwhelming crop of
unconclusive
> evidence a close parallel reading of "Ada" and "Bruder und Schwester" with
> Michael Maar's methodological eye will yield.
Dieter E. Zimmer, Berlin
May 14, 2004
------------------
PS. What all of this adds up to is a cautionary note concerning methodology
to all of us, including myself. Let's not think we have already made an
important discovery if we find that A, B and C in one text are somewhat
similar to A, B, C in some other text. Before we can even start to think
about precursors, influences etc., we will have to answer a few additional
questions. (1) Are A, B and C really similar? That is, how specific are the
similarities? (2) Is there a rational way in which A, B and C may have
wandered from one text to the other? Can we at least risk an informed guess
at how their migration might have come about? (3) Would it all make any
sense, given what we know about both texts and their authors? If we believe
we can skip these questions, we will be in a quagmire, and in the end nobody
will believe us.
PPS. I thank Don for kindly drawing attention to "Nabokovs Berlin", and I
would like to add that not only the images that make up more than half of
the book need no German but that most of the text doesn't either,
consisting
mainly of quotations from Nabokov's works dealing with Berlin. My own
comments are sparse.
------------------------------------
EDNOTE. A note on ADA and Leonard Frank's BRUDER UND SCHWESTER. I discuss
the Frank novel and its possible role in ADA and THE DEFENSE inThe Labyrinth
of Incest in Nabokov's Ada".Comparative Literature (Eugene, OR), 38, 1986,
pp. 224-255. (Also in my WORLDS IN REGRESSION, pp. 116-153.) The article,
inter alia, discusses the prevalence of the sibling incest theme in German
literature. In the matter of the mannikin, I am glad to see that I was
cautious in my conclusions.
>
>