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

Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 2:55 AM

Subject: Lolita and Schiller

Times Literary Supplement, April 9 2004, Letters to the Editor (p. 17):

Lolitas

Sir, - Another thought on Vladimir Nabokov's "name-games" alluded to in Michael Maar's fascinating article on the cloudy, forgotten origins of Lolita (April 2).

Dolores "Lolita" Haze becomes Mrs Schiller at the novel's end. Nabokov must have wanted to set the literary allusions running and it's also a nod to his (and the book's?) German past. Friedrich Schiller wrote a play in 1800-01 called Die Jungfrau von Orleans, about Joan of Arc, also a nymphet, also a gamine fatale, but a virginal one this time.

WILLIAM BOYD
4 Redburn Street, London SW3.