----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Cc: Carolyn Kunin
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: break down your door for owning a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita ...

Hello, Don
    the reference was not only to a caged animal at the Jardin des Plantes, but this same place ( Jardin des Plantes ) has been repeatedly quoted by Nabokov and linked to a "caged seduction".  One such instance, during his Flaubert lecture, we have Emma Bovary´s trip inside a closed-cab along the streets in Rouen that passes Le Jardin des Plantes!  ( in the first carriage-seduction scene, we have Rodolphe and  Paris; in the second cab-seduction and road-scene, we find León and Rouen ).
Check the reference to Les Jardin des Plantes there, on page 165 ( Bowers edition).
I cannot remember the other two references to this place written by VN. It always appeared to me as a sort of icon for not only imprisionment, rambles but for perversion and decadence. 
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 2:12 PM
Subject: Fw: break down your door for owning a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita ...

EDNOTE. I think it was the Paris zoo.
 
----- Original Message -----
From: George Shimanovich
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: break down your door for owning a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita ...

It is no surprise that smooth talking, progressive apes are attracted to novel inspired by view of caged ape in Berlin Zoo.
 
George Shimanovich