“Nymphet” or victim? How Véra Nabokov perceived the misunderstanding surrounding “Lolita”

The misunderstanding around the character of Lolita, created by the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, appeared very quickly, shows a diary kept by the writer’s wife, Véra, which appears on Wednesday October 4 in France. Hurricane Lolita (diary 1958-1959) is published for the first time by Éditions de L’Herne, even before being available in the language in which it was written, English. Véra engages in a critique of the criticism which accompanied in the United States the much commented Lolita. The famous novel, which was adapted for the cinema by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, tells the story of the relationship between a narrator who, at the start, is 37 years old and his partner’s daughter, Dolores, 12 years old.

The tour de force is to offer the justifications of this man who explains that this Lolita seduced him, voluntarily, while denouncing the logic of a pedophile. But, too often, the protagonist was seen as a provocateur, which she was in no way. Véra Nabokov noticed it in September 1958, a month after the book was released in English. “Everyone (or almost) (…) is enthusiastic. However, I would like someone to notice the tender description of this child’s helplessness, her pathetic dependence on the monstrous Humbert Humbert, and her heartbreaking courage along”, she writes.

Saved from the fire

Vladimir and Vera Nabokov, Russian emigrants to Berlin in the 1920s, who arrived in the United States in 1940, formed a very close-knit couple. She, who was crucial in the writing of his work, by being a typist, secretary, literary agent, archivist and even driver, since he never learned to drive, worked hard to erase her role. We thus published the Letters to Vera by Vladimir Nabokov but she made sure his answers disappeared. And a famous anecdote has it that she saved the drafts of Lolitawhich her husband wanted to burn, not being sure he wanted to complete and publish such a provocative novel.

The diary, which they started together and which she wrote essentially alone, lay dormant in Nabokov’s archives at the New York Public Library. No one had cared about its existence, or had taken the time to be interested in it, until the publishers of L’Herne took the author as the subject of an issue of their Cahiers. It is also released on October 4.

“We were the discoverers of the treasure. And we must thank Andrew Wylie, who allowed us to consult these archives”, says editor Laurence Tâcu. This American literary agent, the executor of the Nabokovs, should have the newspaper published in English in 2024. “At first, we thought we would publish extracts. But we found that Véra Nabokov’s vision, very particular and very interesting, deserved a volume publication.“, she adds.

“Little literary sister”

After Véra, others insisted on dispelling a misunderstanding which owes a lot to the image of the actress Sue Lyon with a lollipop in her mouth. Exactly what Nabokov doesn’t want on the cover of his book, notes his wife. In sad tigerone of the flagship works of the literary season in France, in the running for the Goncourt Prize, Neige Sinno, 46 ​​years old, raped by her stepfather for many years, has come back against those who misread the book and retained only the film.

In Les Cahiers de L’Herne, Vanessa Springora, 51 years old, the author of the story The consentwhich evokes the pedophile practices of the writer Gabriel Matzneff, describes Lolita as “literary little sister”. She displays all the clues which show a non-consenting Lolita facing her rapist. “The form of their dialogues often remains equivocal, but their meaning is more and more explicit, precise, frontal”, she judges.