EDNOTE. Maurice Couturier, editor of the Pleiade edition of Nabokovs collected works, is the leading French authority on Nabokov. In addition to the monographs mentioned below, I would call your attention to his excellent article

Lolita et la France by Maurice Couturier at www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/coutlol1.htm . This article is germane to the current flap about the von Lichberg LOLITA in showing, inter alia, the substantial history of pre-Lolitas in French literature.

----- Original Message -----

From: Maurice Couturier

To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 12:58 AM

Subject: Re: Fw: Query: source for quote

I am pleased to inform you of the publication of my latest book, Nabokov ou la cruauté du désir; lecture psychanalytique (Seyssel: Ed. Champ Vallon), 26 euros. (372 pages)

It is while translating Lolita into French for the Editions Gallimard, an experience which was intensely enjoyable from an esthetic perspective but somewhat disturbing ethically, that I felt the need to write about the cruelty of desire in Nabokov’s novels. I had made some tentative incursions in that direction in my doctoral dissertation years ago, but more timidly than Roland Barthes (who sat on my doctoral panel) would have wished. I raised the subject more boldly in Nabokov ou la tyrannie de l’auteur (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, Collection Poétique, 1993) but without undertaking a systematic reading of the author’s works from a psychoanalytic angle.

I do not claim to analyze Nabokov of course; I study his works in depth with the tools proposed by psychoanalysis, and particularly by Lacan whose theory of the subject of desire provides a better understanding of the characters, of the unfolding of the stories, and even of the linguistic games played by Nabokov. The great magician, despite his arch criticism of Freud, subtly understood the workings of the psyche and the unconscious. He also knew how powerful desire and cruelty were to bind the esthetic relation between author and reader, a subject I raised in two previous books, Textual Communication: a Print-Based Theory of the Novel (London and New York: Routledge, 1991) and La figure de l’auteur (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, Collection Poétique, 1995).

Chapter 2 – Aphanisis
The failures of desire (three short stories)
The Defense or the evanescence of the real
     The child without qualities
     The Name of the father
     The Thing at bay
     Desire in abeyance
     The death impulse
Conclusion

Chapter 3 – Sadism
1 – Domestic sadism: Laughter in the Dark
     Doctoring one’s aphanisis
     The ridiculous lover
2 – Political sadism: Invitation to a Beheading
     The cleft subject
     Cruelty and pretence
     The fear of death

Chapter 4 – Need: King, Queen, Knave
1 – The bad subject
2 – The other as narcissistic object
3 – The cruelty of need
4 – The return of the symbolic father
5 – The sadistic laughter
Conclusion

Chapter 5 - Demand: Lolita
1 – Narcissus’ needs
2 – Narcissus’ absolute object
3 – Aphanisis
4 – The ordeal of want
Conclusion

Chapter 6 – Being-one: Ada
1 – Engendering desire
2 – The other as phallus
3 – Desire in abeyance
4 – The return of the tragic: Lucette
5 – Being-one as a prelude to death
Conclusion

Chapter 7 – Denial
1 – The self denied: Despair
2 – The other denied: Pale Fire
3 ? Ousting the protagonist: Transparent Things
4 – Self-caricature: Look at the Harlequins!
Conclusion: I am here for no one