Maurice Girodias himself only accepts to publish the manuscript because he sees it as an apology for pedophilia which (dixit Nabokov) “ could lead to a transformation of social attitude towards this kind of love”. The major misunderstanding concerns the text as such and unfortunately occurs very quickly after the publication of “Lolita”: the crime of incest is forgotten and only remains in the collective unconscious a “ moving story of love”, or even worse, a book “ entirely devoted to the hopes, feelings, anguish of this middle-aged man, who becomes the slave of the child he loves” (if I believe the French newspapers of the time, “L’Express” and “Le Monde”). One minor misunderstanding regarded the text as pornographic – when it never is.Īnother misunderstanding assimilated the fictional narrator Humbert Humbert with the real author Nabokov. The manuscript, which struggled to find a publisher, landed with an obscure Parisian publisher – Maurice Girodias – to be published in the following years in the United States, experiencing a huge critical and commercial success. The permanent tension between the beauty of the form and the horror of the substance makes the text absolutely terrible. The disguise is also due to the very particular style of Nabokov, which captivates and hypnotizes the reader, both captivated by the beauty of the words and petrified by the perversion which permeates the text.
The disguise is due to the fact that it is the fictional pedophile Humbert Humbert who holds the pen.
“Lolita” is the story of a heinous crime – incest – disguised as a love affair. “Lolita” is the biggest literary misunderstanding of the past seventy years. Following the publication of the French novels, “Consent: A Memoir” by Vanessa Springora in January 2020 and “La Familia Grande” by Camille Kouchner in January 2021, should we speak of “Lolita”, this monument of modern literature published in 1955 by Vladimir Nabokov? Yes, a thousand times yes: we have to talk about “Lolita”, and more than ever.
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