Recently, my friend and I were sitting in a beautiful cottage near Moscow. You know, there are summer evenings when everything is fine – and your kids run around, the meat is delicious and there is enough wine and you love what’s around you. And something we started talking about Nabokov. And a friend told me – all these immigrants, all these Brodskys, Nabokovs and your other Dovlatovs got a big Western award, a huge advantage, thanks to which they did not even have to try, and therefore there is no point in reading their books. Educated, middle-aged, experienced.
I thought why was he wrong. So, the idea sounds provocative and unacceptable, but it has some grain in it. Of course, Russian emigrants – Brodsky, Dovlatov and Limonov – all took advantage of their position due to a certain exoticism and interest in this exotic of the surrounding people. This does not take away their talents and objective achievements. But when it comes to Vladimir Nabokov, here, as with Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol’s Chief Inspector, “How I got to Alexander the Great, I can’t tell you what happened to him!”
Vladimir Nabokov was not a Russian immigrant in any negative sense of the word. He was the son of a wealthy and noble family, where it was customary to speak three languages - Russian, English and French. The family had to move to Berlin in 1919, even though they kept the Crimea until the last chance. Let’s say you have family jewels and they threaten to confiscate them. And for what bright future for the workers and peasants must you betray them? The Nabokov family broke up because of this. I didn’t have the strength to continue.
“Lolita” is the story of a girl who is seduced by an old but still strong man. The beginning of this novel lies in Nabokov’s most powerful book, The Gift. There, this story is told by a frankly obnoxious character. “Lolita” is often perceived precisely as a tale of seduction, an unequal and impossible adultery. But what if you look at it as the tragic story of a child?
In fact, this is exactly how Nabokov described it in his interviews. This is the story of a terrible event in the life of a child who has not yet realized himself as a subject. She has sexuality but she doesn’t understand it yet. Tragedy lies here. Humbert Humbert suffered from childhood trauma – ah! this trendy and relevant phrase – it enjoys vulnerability.
Vladimir Nabokov wrote this novel long and hard. However, that’s how any important and important business goes. He was immediately told by American publishing houses that anyone involved would be sent to jail for such a publication. Here is the puritanical morality of the USA in 1955. We are not against this common sense, we are quite ashamed of hypocrisy. Pornography is already legal in relevant theaters and private booths, but the story of abused children is not yet.
It will resonate much later that Hanya Yanigahara will publish her novel “A Little Life” in 2015, the sixtieth anniversary of “Lolita.” It is characterized by obsession with teeth and precisely this imposition of “childhood trauma”. When the texture of the work is very mediocre, but the text is positively perceived by the public, the current agenda is necessary.
Nabokov’s novel is somewhat distorted by the public in this sense. Although this has a perverse theme. In addition, the role was played by two film adaptations – Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne. The latter, as you know, played Jeremy Irons. And how could you not sympathize with such a charming actor? And now, due to a number of circumstances, in particular due to the fact that the novel was not published in the United States on time, due to the fact that it was published in France, because of the initially biased attitude towards it. Due to the perverted nature of our society, due to the film adaptations in which the (childish) image of women is overtly sexualized and objectified, the novel “Lolita” has become something very unflattering, almost forbidden, embarrassing. Although this is just great Russian literature. Literature written in English and later translated into Russian by the author. That’s how it happens. Great literature in Russian culture is sometimes “just”. It’s actually a masterpiece, but where there are thousands of such masterpieces, it’s commonplace. Vladimir Nabokov is not an immigrant at all because he never immigrated from Russian culture and the Russian language. Checkmate.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.