Trigger Warning: Mentions of physical and sexual abuse
The Russian novel: a serious misunderstandingÂ
“Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms, she was always Lolita”.
Lolita, written by the Russian and naturalized American writer Vladimir Nabokov, was published for the very first time in France, in 1955, in its original language: English. Six American publishing houses initially refused to publish the novel as it stood, fearful of legal action or damage to their reputations. Maurice Girodias’ Olympia Press took the risk. The publisher specialized in pornographic literature but Nabokov didn’t know about that.
The novel is the fictionalized confession of Humbert Humbert, a thirty-seven-year-old professor of literature who has developed a sexual and sentimental obsession with a twelve-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, nicknamed Lolita. Humbert Humbert, about whom we only know what he wants to tell us, calls himself a “nympholept”, which means he is attracted to “nymphets”, under-age girls, preferably pre-pubescent who are sexualized through the eyes of mature man – without full awareness and understanding of the situation because of their young age. To use another term, Humbert Humbert is a hebephile. Hebephilia differs from pedophilia since the victims of adult sexual attraction are specifically children in their early teens, showing the very first signs of puberty, whereas pedophilia generally involves younger children.
“I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever, but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita”.
Humbert Humbert is imprisoned at the end of the story for the murder of the man who “stole” Lolita from him, another “nympholept”. The story goes that Humbert Humbert wrote his confessions in prison (where he died of a heart attack before his trial) and that it was a friend of his lawyer’s who decided to publish his writings, not only for their literary quality but also as a “clinical document” that “will rank among the classics of psychiatry” – the novel thus acknowledges that Humbert Humbert’s attraction and obsession for a prepubescent girl is not normal.
The book hadn’t received a review until Graham Greene ranked it among the top three books of 1955 in London’s Sunday Times. The editor of the London Sunday Express, John Gordon, took exception, retorting that the book was “the filthiest book [he had] ever read” and “sheer unrestrained pornography”. The United Kingdom Home Office sided with the editor of the London Sunday Express, also deeming the book pornographic and ordering customs officials to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. Lolita had to wait until 1959 to be published in the UK, while France banned the novel from 1956 to 1958 – a censorship that had little impact since the Gallimard publishing house was at the same time working in full legality on a French translation of the novel.
It took until 1958 before Lolita was finally published in the United States, by GP Putnam’s Sons. Nabokov knew his book would be a “time bomb”. It tackles two of the biggest taboos in the United States at the time: pedophilia (to include hebephilia) and incest (Humbert Humbert is not blood-related to Dolores Haze, but marries her mother and then becomes her only parent). According to Nabokov, these taboos are among the most important in the United States, along with the “resounding and glorious Negro-white marriage, producing a multitude of children and grandchildren; and a hardened atheist living a happy and useful life, dying in his sleep at the age of 106.” However, the book is a huge success.
Although Nabokov’s intentions in writing his book can still be questioned nowadays, many see in this novel a powerful and necessary condemnation of pedophilia as it can be defended by its practitioners. This is particularly true of Vanessa Springora, a French author and editor, who published Le Consentement (“The Consent”) in early 2020, in which she describes and denounces the hold writer Gabriel Matzneff had over her, having begun to have sexual relations with her when she was 14 and he 49. The book’s release provoked a resounding scandal, bringing Matzneff’s actions into the open, even though he made no secret of them in his books. Vanessa Springora, whose book quickly became a bestseller, says of Lolita: “I felt taken into account thanks to this book. I identified with her a lot”. Asked about the possibility of publishing a book such as Lolita in the age of the #metoo movement, Springora is categorical: to deprive oneself of such a book would be “aberrant”.