The double Lottchen

A sensational find in things Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov, which is white everyone, which dived already once into the universe of its books, always for a surprise well. The indications and figures, which it wrote its texts, seem almost impenetrable nearly endlessly the internal allusions and outside purchases, and if a butterfly or a squirrel huscht by the scene, one can be nearly safe that more behind it puts than a piece nature. Now the work of the Russian exile writer, who brought it to 1955 with the novel "Lolita" skandalisierten appeared on English immediately and to world fame, a further secret seems to have been wrung out - by Michael Maar, which worked satisfactorily German "literature detective", who followed to a first reference of Rainer Schelling and which result of its search presented to last Friday in the "FAZ". Since that time the Nymphchen Lolita, Nabokovs most popular, probably in addition, abgruendigste figure, stands no longer alone on far corridor, but possesses around nearly four D! ezennien older relatives of same name, invented from a writer, whose name was so far as good as nobody a term.

A Spanish-German Lolita

"Lolita" is called eighteen sides a comprehensive narration, which appeared in the year 1916 in a narration volume with the title "the verfluchte Gioconda". Their author was the 25-year old Heinz von Lichberg (1891-1951), who brought it during the Weimar Republic as journalist and a writer to some admittingness, before he began 1937 a career in the armed forces. Lichberg was one of the two Live Radioreporter, to 30. January 1933, when Hitler was appointed the realm chancellor, the torch/flare course of the Nazis by the Brandenburger gate euphorically commentated. Its piece acts of cultivated man middle age, which comes itself on a Spain journey at the sea in a pension in-rented and with the blood-young daughter of the house, at whose first sight it strikes it the senses, one amour fou deeply felt, into their process it also to the sexual combination. At the end the girl dies, and which remains I storyteller, drawn by the experienced one, back.

"an easy feeling of the unreality and Déjà vu" adjusted itself with it with the reading, writes Michael Maar. Also Nabokovs Humbert Humbert, likewise a I storyteller, finds accomodation in a seanear pension, but instead of into him forcing upon the landlady he falls in love presently/immediately with their halbwuechsige daughter, who appears to it as wiedergeburt of its first childlike love at the sea, Annabel. Both texts the sudden moment of the Verzauberung is common, and in both cases Lolita takes over the initiative of the seduction - whereby their consequences, which time accordingly, by Lichberg far is more verbluemter described than of Nabokov, which escaped the censorship with its generous erotischen descriptions only scarcely. "the agreement of action core, is not striking telling perspective and name choice", writes Maar, meanwhile gives it "a logical law, which was told us, starting from when a certain number of Koinzidenzen stops, coincidence to be".

Conclusive indications

Can Vladimir Nabokov be really - consciously or unconsciously - by Lichbergs narration to its masterpiece lively? The outside circumstances do not exclude this: Nabokov had come 1922 to Berlin and remained until 1937, its German knowledge - 1947 it spoke fair knowledge "of" A - was sufficient there to get engaged with a German temporarily. The knowledge not only Hofmannsthals, Kafkas, Heines and Goethe is proven, but also by contemporary one like Leonard Franks novel "brother and sister" from the year 1929. Lichbergs piece could be thus quite guessed Nabokov into the hands.

Maar prove beyond that that the material had to interest Nabokov, to this 1934 the first draft to "Lolita" of a Nebenfigur of the novel "the gift" into the mouth had nevertheless already put. Later the short novel "the Zauberer" continued to unfold five years the topic. Meanwhile the chain of the daemonisch phantasmagorischen child women continues to go back, to the narration "a fairy tale" from 1926, whose final in the "hoping man route" plays. Of E. T. A. Hoffmann again is at the beginning of Lichbergs narration the speech. The name Walzer, which stands in Nabokovs Annabella drama "the rolling he invention" from 1938 as with Lichberg for a mysterious pair of brothers, offers a further reference point. A further strong indication supplies the fact to Maar with the fact that Lichbergs Lolita is subject to a curse and a daemonischen repetition obligation - dark teuflische connections, which finds also with Nabokov, who only a little at the lacquer of the! Erotik and the American way OF life scratches. Lolita is, then it formulated the Russian author once, a "unsterblicher Daemon, disguises as a child". There it does not surprise already nearly any longer that the effect of the dear charm (25 years) and the final of a dream-like murder scene in both works correspond.

Lolita - a double Lottchen? Proven for the time being nothing is, but is it the complexity of Maars argumentation, which makes a connection plausible. The quantity of the threads, which gather there, fits trefflich into the picture of Nabokovs literary Eklektizismus, and it strikes actually only the open identity of names, which one the Russian (same t) hiding artist, who never placed its genius under the Scheffel, would hardly have thought capable of. Certainly must be also said: If Lichbergs were real small Lolita a relevant source of inspiration, the Lolita large on Nabokovs does not throw a shade. Figure acquiring or motive conversions are a usual and legitimate artistic procedure. On the fact that new it develops has literature always already digested. "Lolita" was so far a Solitaer; the fact that it received a small sister does not do an abort to her meaning and is not the worst reason, the book again (or finally!) to read. It is hereby thanked Heinz von Li! chberg, sei's, of a magic, to which one can easily always purge.

Andreas's width stone