April 16, 2004

The only immortality you and I may share It turns out Vladimir Nabokov may have stolen elements of his most famous novel from a 1916 short story in called "Lolita". To make matters worse, the pseudonymous author of the story, Heinz von Lichberg, later became a Nazi journalist. The Nabokov family has rejected claims of plagiarism, but the literary world is abuzz with debate over the muddled distinctions beteen reference, intertextuality, borrowing, and theft.
posted by canterel 20 years ago
  • There seems to be a fairly well established tradition of cribbing stories in literature. Shakespeare ripped off "Romeo and Juliet" from an earlier tale. The Booker-award winning "Life of Pi" was stolen. Even that money machine Harry Potter looks like he came from another writer's craptacular rendition.
  • the email from dmitri n. that the articles quote, in its (short) entirety:   ----- Original Message -----   From: Dmitri Nabokov   To: 'Dieter E. Zimmer'   Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 6:58 PM   Subject: German pre-Lolita   Dear Dieter,   I see from the Frankfurt and Zurich papers, and Spiegel, that a short piece written by a journalist named Heinz von Lichberg in 1916 is being touted as a predecessor of Lolita because of certain similarities -- mainly, it seems, the title. Of course it's true that it is set in Spain, where the name is hardly a rarity. It also appears to be junk. Besides, my father had practically no German. I would guess it is either a journalistic tempest in a teacup or possibly a deliberate mystification. Do you think you could glance at it if it appears somewhere? It is very short. I am being pestered from Russia and elsewhere, and don't quite know what to say. By the way,  I find "erlebten 15 Jahre lang gemeinsam in Berlin"in Sueddeutsche.de grossly misleading.   My warm greetings,   Dmitri -------------------------------------------------
  • I don't think the plot itself is what makes Lolita amazing; it's the way Nabokov presents the story to us that makes it what it is. I have to agree with the Observer article, though; Lolita is nothing compared to Pale Fire, which just might get my vote for best fucking novel ever written. It's a shame nine out of ten people would consider the former the masterpiece, simply because its subject matter is more controversial (I am a sweet young girl who'd totally do Vladimir if he asked me to. If he wasn't, you know, dead and all). That said, I'd be interested in reading Lichberg's novella, just out of curiosity. And Leviathan, I never read Rah and the Muggles, but I swear I had a book about a group of kids in wizarding school when I was growing up. It lacked the whole Epic Battle Between Good and Evil facet of the Potter stories, but the rest, from what I remember, was remarkably similar (I want to say the characters communicated by owl, but I could be making that up). I wish I knew the name of it; I looked through my old books this summer and couldn't find it anywhere.
  • leviathan, the allegations of plagiarism in the Potter affair were dismissed by a court. Why? Seems the woman making them said she had had printed privately a small run of some booklets with a similarly named character which she sold in bus-stops to people travelling with kids. However, a fire burned down the woman's garage -- in which she said the unsold booklets had been stored, if memory serves me -- so she hadn't any copies to produce in court. /and tarradiddle diddle diddle dee!
  • i agree. nabokov is a stylistic genius. that is what makes his books so exceptional, above all. and i also agree that pale fire is incredible, and incredibly overlooked. its plot sounds rather dull if distilled for the purpose of summary. but the text itself is so rich and detailed.... i don't think it would make me think any less of nabokov or the book if the speculations about lolita turned out to be correct.
  • Yes, well said, babywannasofa, I entirely agree (well, except that I don't think I'd do Vladimir even if he were alive. Then again, you know, Frank Harris was rampantly heterosexual by his own account, but said if Shakespeare asked him... ) I reckon Harry Potter is a pastiche of Enid Blyton based on an idea by Terry Pratchett.
  • This film stole everything from Stanley Kubrick.
  • "The only immortality you and I may share..." Hold on. Once it's online it becomes shared/stored material. Unless something untoward (like the fall of civilization as we know think of it) occurs, everything on monkeyfilter, for example, is data which will afford countless headaches and marvels for the students of tomorrow, for all we know centuries to come. So monkeys, as far can be determined/guessed, are all immortal. Your great great grandchildren may conceivably look up this data some year and discover what kind of hero(ine)/sage/ninny they are descened from Note: monkeyfilter has creative commons copyright [see bottom of page]
  • Actually, bees, I worry about the permanence of online work or information - as a historian, I am very aware of how easy it is to delete emails or other internet communication compared to letters or printed material. So far, governments and businesses keep a lot on paper anyways - but what about those emails replacing letters, one of the most valuable sources? And if anyone is going to accuse Rowling of plagiarism, they have to get in behind the bespeckled English and magically talented protangonist of the Books of Magic - though I read somewhere Gaimen didn't care, since he doubted she had ever seen it. The only shame is that if they ever make a movie of Books, there might be pressure from the studios to change the character to avoid looking like they were copying Potter. I haven't read Lolita, but I did see the power-point presentation. (actually - I have heard someone read the first page, and the language so intigued me I've been wanting to read it since - and I will look for Pale fire too.)
  • Offhand, I'd say it's about equally likely that it's simple coincidence or that Nabokov saw or heard about the original story and the name and basic plot stuck in a corner of his mind until he came to write his own story. I think it's extremely unlikely that he actually read the story, because his German was not very good and he had plenty of reading to do in Russian, French, and English. Certainly it's a tempest in a teapot; the greatness of Nabokov and Lolita is unaffected by the putative existence of some hapless predecessor. And I dissent from the emerging consensus here: I like Lolita considerably better than Pale Fire, which I consider (like much late Nabokov) too clever by half. But then my favorite of his novels is Dar (The Gift), so I'm weird.
  • That Harry Potter claim is complete crap (just to add to the dogpile): that woman had/has a site up which "proves" she invented this and that, but having seen it once a few years ago I can't be arsed digging it up again. Her claims are extremely feeble. *nominates favourite Nabokov as Despair, for obscure personal reasons*
  • languagehat, you would like Dar the best, most Russian speakers seem to (at least anecdotally/from my experience). I agree that most of Nabokov's later stuff gets awfully clever, but I've always felt that it works in Pale Fire in a way that it doesn't in some of his other works.
  • i also love the real life of sebastian knight, his first english novel
  • Incidentally, those few examples I gave were to illustrate a broader point I didn't flesh out but others did. It doesn't matter who blathers about such and such young nympho or star-crossed lovers or young wizard. What matters is the definitive version of a story, so those who claim Nabokov is a plagairist can suck it.
  • jb, maybe electronic material is more easy to delete or modify. But unlike printed media is more easy to produce and distribute which makes it available to more people and gives a deeper insight into the personality of those who create them (when not modified or falsified), just look at blogs. Maybe most of the published material is really unworthy of preserving yet will be preserved more easily than printed media by those who really care for them. And we'll always have printers alongside computers.
  • Zemat - I agree that the openness of electronic media is fascinating - but I was very happy when I learned that there were projects around to archive the web. I'm totally biased in all this, but I'm the kind of historian who doesn't read literature or government records or anything that is normally considered important to preserve - I tend to study the daily life of ordinary people, so things like shopping lists, date books and letters to friends are the sorts of things that I think would be fascinating to historians of the future. But can we seriously be expected to keep our shopping lists? I certainly don't, though I do save email obsessively. Webpages may one day be a terrific source, but only if someone conciously saves them. /always willing to derail in a historical direction
  • Re that Power Point thingy, both "l"s in "Lolita" come from exactly the same spot on the palate for me, and I would suspect this is true of a majority of native speakers of English.
  • *planning to sell jb loads of logs of chat sessions for future anthropological studies*
  • Is the palate thing a reference to the books - something about repeating the sound of the name? I seem to remember that in hearing the beginning. Zemat: don't worry - already have my own. All I have to do is cryogenically freeze myself for 500 years, and I am golden! :)
  • Yeah, it's from the very beginning of the book.
  • Well, I haven't read Pale Fire in years, so it's probably time for me to give it another go.
  • babywannasofa: I think the book you're referring to is Witch Week. It's part of a series the rest of which I've not read. It had an interesting background history in it that I think involved Cromwellian persecution of witches.