L O L I T A
You find the text of Lolita here
in Russian, here
Lolita, by Heinz von Lichberg, here
Lolita 'was created by Nazi journalist'
By Hannah Cleaver
(Filed: 20/03/2004)
Lolita, the temptress whose seduction of an older man caused a sensation when published by Vladimir Nabokov and a scandal when filmed by Stanley Kubrick, was originally the creation of a leading Nazi journalist, according to an analysis published in Berlin yesterday.
A novella, published in 1916 by Heinz von Eschwege, describes a girl called Lolita who obsesses and then seduces the narrator. The narrator, who is lodging in her house while on holiday, is distraught when the girl dies at the end of the story - astoundingly similar to Nabokov's book, published in 1956, claims Michael Maar, a literary scholar.
"The name is the same, the title, the fact that it is written in the first person," he told the Telegraph. "There is a close description of first seeing Lolita, looking into her eyes and seeing she was more than a girl, more than a child. The narrators are lodgers and both have passionate affairs and then Lolita dies."
Mr Maar has also drawn other parallels between the books, including several details concerning the sub-plots running through the stories. He came across the von Eschwege book by accident while at a party, when a teacher suggested that the Lolita name and story was not new.
"We had quite an argument about it and he gave me the novella he had," said Mr Maar. "So I started researching it, which was quite difficult because it was written under a pseudonym. The author had been a lieutenant in the First World War before joining the [Nazi] party in 1933."
Von Eschwege, who wrote under the name Heinz von Lichberg, became a well known journalist in the Third Reich, not least for his commentary on national radio of Adolf Hitler's torch-lit procession to the Reichstag after becoming chancellor in 1933.
Yet by this time von Lichberg had already published his 18-page story in which a man, looking for a quiet place for a holiday, travels to Spain and ends up renting a room in Alicante where he soon engages in eye contact with his host's daughter Lolita - and is enchanted.
"When you read it today and compare it with the [Nabokov] novel, you do get a light feeling of surreality and deja vu," wrote Mr Maar in yesterday's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
"The accordance of the stories' cores, the perspective from which they are told and the choice of name are amazing. Unfortunately there is not a logical rule which would tell us when a certain number of coincidences stop being chance."
Yet von Eschwege and Nabokov lived in the same area of Berlin for 15 years, he explained, admitting that it was possible that the Russian might have read the earlier work.
Mr Maar said that in his eyes Nabokov's reputation remained undiminished. "What you can see is that the theme itself is nothing. The first novel is not of great artistic merit, but then the master takes the subject and creates a work of art."
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Fri., August 06, 2004 Av 19, 5764
Lo. Lee. Ta. Did she have a precursor?'
By Michael Handelzalts
Fifty years ago four respected American publishers considered it, and found literary merit in it, but decided - after each was offered the manuscript - not to publish a novel entitled "Lolita," written by a distinguished professor of literature by the name of Vladimir Nabokov. The justification was that the subject matter - concerning a mature white, single male (the narrator), who was being seduced by a "nymphet" - could cause legal and moral problems.
Oddly enough, in
these times of free speech and a progressive, modern approach to morality and
literature, and in the absence of any censorship, at least in the democratic
West - it seems that a book that is sympathetic to a pedophile would raise many
more eyebrows. But that is another matter.
Who was she, and whence came she? The answers seem to be unequivocal, set in the
beautifully alliterative first paragraph: "Lolita, light of my life, 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. ... Did she
have a precursor? She did, indeed she did."
The precursor was not only the one certain, initial girl that the narrator,
Humbert Humbert, loved in the princedom by the sea, one Annabel. The German
scholar Prof. Michael Maar wrote in March (in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
and in English in The Times Literary Supplement) that Heinz von Lichberg - who
subsequently became, under his real name, Heinz von Eshwege, a Nazi radio
commentator, - published an 18-page story entitled "Lolita" in an obscure
collection of stories called "Accursed Gioconda" in 1916. It was a story of a
male lodger seduced by the prepubescent daughter - the eponymous Lolita - of the
landlord. Maar is confident than Nabokov, who lived in Berlin when the story was
published, read it a long time before he completed the first version of his own
story, in Russian, in 1939, and before he turned it into a full-length novel in
English in 1954.
But Maar does not think it was a case of plagiarism by Nabokov. He thinks it was
a case of "cryptomnesia," a term Karl Jung used when he found traces of a story
by the German poet Justinus Kerner in Nietsche's "Also Sprach Zarathustra."
Nabokov forgot that he should have remembered a story he had read once. He
thought that he was inventing it.
Failing to find a publisher for his book in the United States, Nabokov enlisted
help from his literary agent in Europe, and she put him in touch with Olympia
Press in Paris. The publisher Maurice Girodias was more than happy to have on
his list a book "about which I had so often dreamed but never found: the
treatment of one of the major forbidden human passions in a manner both
completely sincere and absolutely legitimate." The book was published in English
in Paris in September 1955. Nabokov was not aware at that time that Girodias had
on his list books by Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett, and also volumes entitled
"Debbie's Bidet" and "Tender Thighs."
Then Graham Greene named the book as one of his books of the year for 1955 in
the TLS. John Gardner in The Daily Express denounced it as "sheer unrestrained
pornography." The British government, which had an account to settle with
Girodias, who was smuggling printed pornography into England, prodded the French
Home Office to ban the sale of "Lolita" in France. Girodias, unaided by Nabokov,
who preferred to sit on the lines and remain impartial, fought the ban in the
courts and won. The U.S. Customs Service - surprisingly and wisely, after
checking the contents of the volume in question - did not stop the import of the
book's translation in English into the U.S.
By 1958 the time was ripe for publication of the book in the U.S. By then
relations between Girodias and Nabokov had become strained for the very simple
reason that the publisher was rather neglectful in providing royalty statements
and monies due.
Walter Minton, the president of Putnam's, acquired the American rights to the
book. It became an American best-seller for seven weeks in 1958. In 1950 Nabokov
unilaterally terminated his contract with Girodias.
Local angle
The English edition of "Lolita" that I hold in my hand carries the imprint of
the Olympia Press. It was printed in Israel for Olympia by Steimatzky's Agency,
by Offset Sh. Monson, Jerusalem. "Export of this edition is prohibited in
Israel," it says there.
Eri Steimatzky was in high school at the end of the 1950s. He remembers that at
that time, Israel had no foreign currency to spare. Importing books was out of
the question. His father, Yehezkel, came up with the idea of printing English
best-sellers in Israel. The first book in the series was "Dr. Zhivago". The
second book was "Lolita," and this is the only volume of the 70 in the
English-language series that Steimatzky does not have in his collection. He
offered to buy my copy.
In the `60s, Girodias and Nabokov exchanged lengthy and heated arguments in the
Evergreen Review. There was no love lost between the two, and both of their
imaginations and memories and senses of ironies worked, it seems, in overdrive.
Among other things, Girodias wrote (about his strained relations with the author
in 1959): "Three weeks later I received a letter from Minton chiding me for
having given my agreement to sell the Israeli rights for `Lolita' to a man named
Steimatzky. I had nothing to do with that as it had been Mrs. Nabokov herself
who had insisted on having us offer the rights to Steimatzky. I said so but
nobody thought of apologizing to me for that silly incident."
That is one of the very few points on which Nabokov did not comment.
In May of this year the TLS reviewed Vera Nabokov's biography. One Brian Gilmore
wrote a letter, which was printed, telling readers that when his father was a
child, a Russian student stayed in their house. Gilmore's aunt, Lottie, 11 at
that time, helped Vladdie - that was the student's name, he lived in her room -
catch butterflies. Gilmore raised the possibility (based on his fathers'
stories) that Aunt Lottie served as the inspiration for Lolita.
In July Gilmore asked the readers to disregard his first letter. His aunt asked
him to write the following clarification: "She wants me to emphasize that he
(the Cambridge student) was the epitome of propriety and correct behavior. She
had a serious row with her brother (my father) when he made `those scandalous
allegations and imputations,' adding that `he was nothing but a scoundrel and a
blackguard'".
Don't think for a moment that this is a laughing matter. Gilmore concludes: "I
would be most grateful if you would publish this corrective letter as my aunt
has threatened to strike me from her will."
Fifty years later, Lolita's fame (and infamy?) live on.
N Z Z Online
22. März 2004, 02:11, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Das doppelte Lottchen
Ein sensationeller Fund in Sachen Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov, das weiss jeder, der schon einmal ins Universum seiner Bücher eingetaucht ist, ist stets für eine Überraschung gut. Schier unerforschlich scheinen die Zeichen und Figuren, die er seinen Texten eingeschrieben hat, fast endlos die inneren Anspielungen und äusseren Bezüge, und wenn einmal ein Schmetterling oder Eichhörnchen durch die Szene huscht, kann man fast sicher sein, dass mehr dahinter steckt als ein Stück Natur. Nun scheint dem Werk des russischen Exilschriftstellers, der es 1955 mit dem auf Englisch erschienenen und sogleich skandalisierten Roman «Lolita» zu Weltruhm brachte, ein weiteres Geheimnis abgerungen worden zu sein - von Michael Maar, dem bewährten deutschen «Literaturdetektiv», der einem ersten Hinweis von Rainer Schelling nachging und das Ergebnis seiner Recherche letzten Freitag in der «FAZ» vorstellte. Seither steht das Nymphchen Lolita, Nabokovs populärste, wohl aber auch abgründigste Figur, nicht mehr allein auf weiter Flur, sondern besitzt eine um fast vier Dezennien ältere Verwandte gleichen Namens, erfunden von einem Schriftsteller, dessen Name bisher so gut wie niemandem ein Begriff war.
«Lolita» heisst eine achtzehn Seiten umfassende Erzählung, die im Jahre 1916 in einem Erzählungsband mit dem Titel «Die verfluchte Gioconda» erschien. Ihr Verfasser war der 25-jährige Heinz von Lichberg (1891-1951), der es während der Weimarer Republik als Journalist und Schriftsteller zu einiger Bekanntheit brachte, bevor er 1937 eine Karriere in der Wehrmacht begann. Lichberg war einer der beiden Live-Radioreporter, die am 30. Januar 1933, als Hitler zum Reichskanzler ernannt wurde, den Fackelzug der Nazis durchs Brandenburger Tor euphorisch kommentierten. Sein Stück handelt von einem kultivierten Mann mittleren Alters, der sich auf einer Spanienreise am Meer in einer Pension einmietet und mit der blutjungen Tochter des Hauses, bei deren erstem Anblick es ihm die Sinne verschlägt, eine amour fou erlebt, in deren Verlauf es auch zur sexuellen Vereinigung kommt. Am Ende stirbt das Mädchen, und der Ich-Erzähler bleibt, vom Erlebten gezeichnet, zurück.
«Ein leichtes Gefühl der Unwirklichkeit und des Déjà-vu» habe sich bei ihm bei der Lektüre eingestellt, schreibt Michael Maar. Auch Nabokovs Humbert Humbert, ebenfalls ein Ich-Erzähler, kommt in einer seenahen Pension unter, doch statt in die sich ihm aufdrängende Hauswirtin verliebt er sich augenblicklich in deren halbwüchsige Tochter, die ihm als Wiedergeburt seiner ersten kindlichen Liebe am Meer, Annabel, erscheint. Gemeinsam ist beiden Texten der jähe Moment der Verzauberung, und in beiden Fällen übernimmt Lolita die Initiative der Verführung - wobei deren Folgen, der Zeit entsprechend, von Lichberg weit verblümter beschrieben werden als von Nabokov, der mit seinen freizügigen erotischen Schilderungen nur knapp der Zensur entging. «Die Übereinstimmung von Handlungskern, Erzählperspektive und Namenswahl» sei frappierend, schreibt Maar, indes gebe es «kein logisches Gesetz, das uns verraten würde, ab wann eine bestimmte Anzahl von Koinzidenzen aufhört, Zufall zu sein».
Kann Vladimir Nabokov wirklich - bewusst oder unbewusst - von Lichbergs Erzählung zu seinem Meisterwerk angeregt worden sein? Die äusseren Umstände schliessen dies nicht aus: Nabokov war 1922 nach Berlin gekommen und blieb dort bis 1937, seine Deutschkenntnisse - 1947 sprach er von «a fair knowledge» - reichten aus, sich mit einer Deutschen vorübergehend zu verloben. Nachgewiesen ist die Kenntnis nicht nur Hofmannsthals, Kafkas, Heines und Goethes, sondern auch von Zeitgenössischem wie Leonard Franks Roman «Bruder und Schwester» aus dem Jahr 1929. Lichbergs Stück könnte Nabokov also durchaus in die Hände geraten sein.
Maar weist darüber hinaus nach, dass der Stoff Nabokov interessieren musste, hatte dieser doch schon 1934 den ersten Entwurf zu «Lolita» einer Nebenfigur des Romans «Die Gabe» in den Mund gelegt. Fünf Jahre später entfaltete der Kurzroman «Der Zauberer» das Thema weiter. Indes reicht die Kette der dämonisch-phantasmagorischen Kindfrauen weiter zurück, bis zur Erzählung «Ein Märchen» von 1926, deren Finale in der «Hoffmann-Strasse» spielt. Von E. T. A. Hoffmann wiederum ist zu Beginn von Lichbergs Erzählung die Rede. Einen weiteren Anhaltspunkt bietet der Name Walzer, der in Nabokovs Annabella-Drama «Die Walzer-Erfindung» von 1938 wie bei Lichberg für ein geheimnisvolles Brüderpaar steht. Ein weiteres starkes Indiz liefert Maar die Tatsache, dass Lichbergs Lolita einem Fluch und dämonischen Wiederholungszwang unterliegt - düster-teuflische Zusammenhänge, die auch bei Nabokov findet, wer nur ein bisschen am Lack der Erotik und des American way of life kratzt. Lolita sei, so hat es der russische Autor einmal selbst formuliert, ein «unsterblicher Dämon, verkleidet als Kind». Da erstaunt es schon fast nicht mehr, dass die Wirkung des Liebeszaubers (25 Jahre) und das Finale einer traumartigen Mordszene in beiden Werken korrespondieren.
Lolita - ein doppeltes Lottchen? Bewiesen ist vorerst nichts, doch ist es die Komplexität von Maars Argumentation, die einen Zusammenhang plausibel macht. Die Menge der Fäden, die da zusammenlaufen, passt trefflich ins Bild von Nabokovs schriftstellerischem Eklektizismus, und es frappiert eigentlich nur die offene Namensgleichheit, die man dem russischen (Selbst-)Verbergungskünstler, der sein Genie nie unter den Scheffel stellte, kaum zugetraut hätte. Freilich muss auch gesagt sein: Falls Lichbergs kleine Lolita wirklich eine massgebliche Inspirationsquelle gewesen ist, wirft das auf Nabokovs grosse Lolita keinen Schatten. Figurenaneignungen oder Motivverwandlungen sind ein gängiges und legitimes künstlerisches Verfahren. Auf dass Neues entstehe, hat Literatur immer schon sich selbst verdaut. «Lolita» war bisher ein Solitär; dass sie eine kleine Schwester erhalten hat, tut ihrer Bedeutung keinen Abbruch und ist nicht der schlechteste Grund, das Buch wieder (oder endlich!) zu lesen. Es ist, Heinz von Lichberg sei's hiermit gedankt, von einer Magie, der man leicht für immer verfallen kann.
Andreas Breitenstein
Berliner Morgenpost
Lolita ist viel älter
Ein unbekannter Vorläufer zu Vladimir Nabokovs berühmtem Roman entdeckt
Von Uwe Wittstock
Es klingt wie eine philologische Sensation: Der Literaturwissenschaftler Michael Maar hat (auf Hinweis von Rainer Schelling) eine 1916 erschienene Erzählung des weitgehend unbekannten deutschen Schriftstellers und Journalisten Heinz von Lichberg mit dem Titel "Lolita" ausfindig gemacht. Die 18 Seiten lange Geschichte von Lichberg, der eigentlich Heinz von Eschwege hieß und 1951 starb, handelt von einem gebildeten Mann mittleren Alters, der sich in Spanien in eine Pension einmietet. Der Mann verliebt sich in die minderjährige Tochter des Hauses und - so deutet von Lichberg zurückhaltend an - schläft mit ihr. Das Mädchen ist Opfer eines geheimnisvollen Familienfluches und stirbt am Ende der Erzählung.
Von Lichbergs Erzählung weist damit überraschende Parallelen zu dem Jahrzehnte später veröffentlichten Roman "Lolita" (1955) von Vladimir Nabokov auf, der zu den wichtigsten Romanen des 20. Jahrhunderts gezählt werden darf. Maar arbeitet in der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen" zudem etliche andere Korrespondenzen zwischen den beiden Texten heraus und merkt schließlich an: "Leider gibt es kein logisches Gesetz, das uns verraten würde, ab wann eine bestimmte Anzahl von Koinzidenzen aufhört, Zufall zu sein. Mangels dieses Gesetzes ist die sich aufdrängende Frage auch nicht zu beantworten, freilich noch weniger abzuweisen: Kann Vladimir Nabokov, der Autor der einen unsterblichen ,Lolita", des stolzen schwarzen Schwans unter den Romanen der Moderne, das hässliche Entlein seines Vorgängers gekannt haben?"
Die Frage drängt sich umso mehr auf, da beide Autoren, sowohl Heinz von Lichberg als auch Nabokov, zwischen 1922 und 1937 in Berlin lebten und Nabokov sich selbst später "a fair knowledge of German" bescheinigte - er hätte also die Erzählung seines deutschen Kollegen durchaus im Original lesen können. Zudem ist der in beiden Fällen Titel gebende Name Lolita alles andere als geläufig - und erst nach dem Erscheinen des Romans zur weltweit benutzten Chiffre geworden.
Verblüffend ist gerade die unübersehbare Namensparallele, denn Nabokov setzte ansonst großen Ehrgeiz daran, plumpe Ähnlichkeiten zu oder gar Zitate aus zeitgenössischen Werken so weit wie möglich zu vermeiden. Zwar fiel Literaturhistorikern schon vor Jahren die Schilderung einer "Montblanc"-Reklame in Nabokovs Roman "Lushins Verteidigung" auf, die einer Passage in dem Roman "Bruder und Schwester" des deutschen Autors Leonhard Frank entsprach. Aber der Nabokov-Herausgeber Dieter E. Zimmer konnte die Reklametafel ausfindig machen und nachweisen, dass beide Schriftsteller dieselbe Werbedekoration in Berlin unabhängig von einander beschrieben hatten. Denn Nabokovs Wiedergabe der Tafel war genauer als die in Franks vorausgegangenem Roman.
Dem 1977 gestorbenen Nabokov wären, würden Schelling und Maar ihn auf ihre Entdeckung hinweisen, alle Entsprechungen zu von Lichbergs "Lolita"-Geschichte vermutlich höchst unangenehm. Nicht weil er ihretwegen in der Schuld seines literarischen Vorgängers gestanden hätte, sondern weil er erheblichen Wert auf die Originalität seiner Einfälle legte. Wenn Maars Aufsatz dennoch eine Schwäche hat, so eine, die verständlich ist. Er arbeitet in seinem Essay mit großer Sorgfalt alle Parallelen zwischen Vorgänger-Erzählung und Nachfolger-Roman heraus. Die enormen Differenzen zwischen beiden Texten deutet er dagegen fast nur mit den schönen Metaphern an, Nabokovs Buch sein ein "stolzer schwarzer Schwan", von Lichbergs Geschichte ein "hässliches Entlein".
Tatsächlich ist es ja unter Schriftstellern nichts Ungewöhnliches oder gar Unredliches, wenn sie sich durch Motive, Figuren, Handlungslinien, Namen, die bereits andere Autoren vor ihnen benutzten, zu neuen Werken anregen lassen. Im Gegenteil, die Literaturgeschichte wäre ohne eine solche künstlerische Nährstoffkette, die quer durch die Jahrhunderte reicht, kaum vorstellbar. Diese Ketten sind längst zu einem traditionsreichen Forschungsgebiet geworden: Die Verwandtschaften etwa zwischen dem Faust-Volksbuch von 1587 über Christopher Marlowes und Goethes Faustdramen bis hin zu Thomas Manns Roman "Doktor Faustus" sind beliebte Tummelplätze der Literaturwissenschaft.
So wird Michael Maars Frage, ob sich Nabokov durch von Lichberg zu seiner "Lolita" anregen ließ, wohl nie mit Gewissheit zu beantworten sein, und sie ist letztlich auch müßig. Denn es kommt nicht darauf an, woher ein Schriftsteller seine Inspirationen bezieht, sondern was er daraus macht. Die Lexika jedoch, in denen verzeichnet wird, welche Stoffe der Weltliteratur über die Jahrhunderte hinweg von einem Autor zum anderen weitergereicht wurden, werden künftig unter "Lolita" einen neuen Eintrag enthalten müssen.
22. März 2004
"LOLITA"-ENTDECKUNG
Reich-Ranicki zeigt sich verblüfft
Mit Überraschung hat Marcel Reich-Ranicki auf die
Nachricht reagiert, dass der Roman "Lolita" eine Vorlage hat. Literarisch könne
man die Arbeiten jedoch nicht miteinander vergleichen, sagte der
Literaturkritiker gegenüber dem SPIEGEL.
SPIEGEL:
Herr Reich-Ranicki, in der "FAZ" hat der Autor Michael Maar enthüllt, dass schon
1916 in Deutschland eine Erzählung namens "Lolita" publiziert wurde. Wussten Sie
das?
Reich-Ranicki: Das war mir nicht bekannt, das ist eine richtige
Entdeckung. Und Michael Maar hat Recht, wenn er sagt, dass die Erzählung des
Autors Heinz von Lichberg vom Handlungskern, der Erzählperspektive und der
Namenswahl übereinstimmt mit dem Roman von Nabokov.
SPIEGEL: Hat Nabokov etwa geklaut?
Reich-Ranicki: Nein, das wohl nicht. Es gibt Plagiate bei großen
Schriftstellern, keine Frage. Aber wenn Nabokov das so gehandhabt hätte, wäre es
ihm ein Leichtes gewesen, es zu kaschieren und etwa einen anderen Namen für
seine Heldin zu finden.
SPIEGEL: Glauben Sie nicht, dass er die deutsche Erzählung gekannt hat?
Reich-Ranicki: Ich halte es für unwahrscheinlich, dass er sie gelesen hat
- vielleicht hat er davon gehört. Es kann ihm jemand davon erzählt haben, und
Jahrzehnte später fiel ihm das wieder ein. Er lebte ja 1916 noch in St.
Petersburg, kam erst Jahre später nach Berlin. Er konnte zunächst kein Deutsch.
SPIEGEL: Muss man den Roman "Lolita" jetzt mit anderen Augen lesen?
Reich-Ranicki: Nein. Literarisch kann man diese beiden Arbeiten nicht
vergleichen. Der Autor von Lichberg war gar nicht unbegabt, seine Erzählung ist
ordentlich geschrieben - Nabokovs "Lolita" aber ist ein Jahrhundertroman, ein
geniales Werk. Meine Wertschätzung dieses Romans hat sich nicht um einen Deut
verändert.
SPIEGEL: Was ist so besonders an "Lolita"?
Reich-Ranicki: Es ist gar nicht leicht, in der Literatur die Leidenschaft
glaubwürdig darzustellen. Unendlich viele Autoren haben sich daran versucht -
hier wird das Verhältnis mit einem Mädchen, das noch ein Kind und doch schon
eine Frau ist, auf unerhört suggestive Weise gezeigt.
Entscheidend ist die
stilistische Könnerschaft.
Artikel erschienen am 20. März 2004
Es klingt wie eine philologische Sensation: Der Literaturwissenschaftler Michael Maar hat (auf Hinweis von Rainer Schelling) eine 1916 erschienene Erzählung des weitgehend unbekannten deutschen Schriftstellers und Journalisten Heinz von Lichberg mit dem Titel "Lolita" ausfindig gemacht. Die achtzehnseitige Geschichte von Lichbergs, der eigentlich Heinz von Eschwege hieß und 1951 starb, handelt von einem gebildeten Mann mittleren Alters, der sich in Spanien in eine Pension einmietet. Der Mann verliebt sich in die minderjährige Tochter des Hauses und - so deutet von Lichberg zurückhaltend an - schläft mit ihr. Das Mädchen ist Opfer eines geheimnisvollen Familienfluches und stirbt am Ende der Erzählung.
Von Lichbergs Erzählung weist damit überraschende Parallelen zu dem Jahrzehnte später veröffentlichten Roman "Lolita" (1955) von Vladimir Nabokov auf, der zu den wichtigsten Romanen des 20. Jahrhunderts gezählt werden darf. Maar arbeitet in der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen" zudem etliche andere Korrespondenzen zwischen den beiden Texten heraus und merkt schließlich an: "Leider gibt es kein logisches Gesetz, das uns verraten würde, ab wann eine bestimmte Anzahl von Koinzidenzen aufhört, Zufall zu sein. Mangels dieses Gesetzes ist die sich aufdrängende Frage auch nicht zu beantworten, freilich noch weniger abzuweisen: Kann Vladimir Nabokov, der Autor der einen unsterblichen ,Lolita", des stolzen schwarzen Schwans unter den Romanen der Moderne, das hässliche Entlein seines Vorgängers gekannt haben? Kann er von ihm - und sei es unbewusst, denn ein bewusstes Zitat hätte er vermutlich vermieden - angeregt worden sein?"
Die Frage drängt sich umso mehr auf, da beide Autoren, sowohl Heinz von Lichberg als auch Nabokov, zwischen 1922 und 1937 in Berlin lebten und Nabokov sich selbst später "a fair knowledge of German" bescheinigte - er hätte also die Erzählung seines deutschen Kollegen durchaus im Original lesen können. Zudem ist der in beiden Fällen Titel gebende Name Lolita alles andere als geläufig - und erst nach dem Erscheinen des Romans zur weltweit benutzten Chiffre geworden.
Verblüffend ist gerade die unübersehbare Namensparallele, denn Nabokov setzte ansonst großen Ehrgeiz daran, plumpe Ähnlichkeiten zu oder gar Zitate aus zeitgenössischen Werken so weit wie möglich zu vermeiden. Zwar fiel Literaturhistorikern schon vor Jahren die Schilderung einer "Montblanc"-Reklame in Nabokovs Roman "Lushins Verteidigung" auf, die einer zuvor veröffentlichten Passage in dem Roman "Bruder und Schwester" des deutschen Autors Leonhard Frank entsprach. Aber der Nabokov-Herausgeber Dieter E. Zimmer konnte die Reklametafel ausfindig machen und so schließlich nachweisen, dass beide Schriftsteller offenbar die selbe Werbedekoration in Berlin gesehen und unabhängig von einander beschrieben hatten: Denn Nabokovs spätere Wiedergabe der Tafel war genauer als die in Franks vorausgegangenem Roman.
Dem 1977 gestorbenen Nabokov wären, würden Schelling und Maar ihn auf ihre Entdeckung hinweisen, alle Entsprechungen zu von Lichbergs "Lolita"-Geschichte vermutlich höchst unangenehm. Nicht weil er ihretwegen in der Schuld seines literarischen Vorgängers gestanden hätte, sondern weil er erheblichen Wert auf die Originalität seiner Einfälle legte. So dürfte es sich bei diesen Entsprechungen, wenn Nabokov jene schmale Erzählung je in Händen hielt, nur um - wie Maar anklingen lässt - unbewusste Übernahmen handeln. Umso mehr muss man den beiden Entdeckern gratulieren, die eine mögliche Inspirationsquelle eines literarischen Meisterwerkes ausfindig gemacht haben, an die der Schöpfer dieses Meisterwerkes, wenn er sie denn kannte, schon jede bewusste Erinnerung wieder verloren hatte.
Wenn Maars Aufsatz dennoch eine Schwäche hat, so eine, die angesichts der so erstaunlichen philologischen Entdeckung sehr verständlich ist. Er arbeitet in seinem Essay mit großer Sorgfalt alle Parallelen zwischen Vorgänger-Erzählung und Nachfolger-Roman heraus. Die enormen Differenzen zwischen beiden Texten deutet er dagegen fast nur mit den schönen Metaphern an, Nabokovs Buch sein ein "stolzer schwarzer Schwan", von Lichbergs Geschichte ein "hässliches Entlein".
Tatsächlich ist es ja unter Schriftstellern nichts Ungewöhnliches oder gar Unredliches, wenn sie sich durch Motive, Figuren, Handlungslinien, Namen, die bereits andere Autoren vor ihnen benutzten, zu neuen Werken anregen lassen. Im Gegenteil, die Literaturgeschichte wäre ohne eine solche künstlerische Nährstoffkette, die quer durch die Jahrhunderte bis in die Antike zurückreicht, kaum vorstellbar. Diese Ketten sind längst zu einem traditionsreichen philologischen Forschungsgebiet geworden: Die Verwandtschaften etwa zwischen dem Faust-Volksbuch von 1587 über Christopher Marlowes und Goethes Faustdramen bis hin zu Thomas Manns Roman "Doktor Faustus" sind beliebte Tummelplätze der Literaturwissenschaft.
So wird Michael Maars Frage, ob sich Nabokov durch von Lichberg zu seiner "Lolita" anregen ließ, wohl nie mit Gewissheit zu beantworten sein, und sie ist letztlich auch müßig. Denn es kommt nicht darauf an, woher ein Schriftsteller seine Inspirationen bezieht, sondern was er daraus macht: Und der Rang von Nabokovs "Lolita" ist wohl unbestreitbar. Die Lexika jedoch, in denen verzeichnet wird, welche Stoffe der Weltliteratur über die Jahrhunderte hinweg von einem Autor zum anderen weitergereicht wurden, werden künftig unter "Lolita" einen neuen Eintrag enthalten müssen.
Text: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26.03.2004, Nr. 73 / Seite 46
Biografie
Der Mann, der "Lolita" erfand
Von Michael Maar
25. März 2004 Am 16. März 1951 meldeten die "Lübecker Nachrichten" in einem Nachruf, einem ihrer Mitarbeiter, "einer der bekanntesten Erscheinungen des deutschen Journalismus", sei die Feder endgültig aus der Hand genommen. Heinz von Eschwege-Lichberg hieß der Feuilletonist, und ein halbes Jahrhundert später ist von seiner Bekanntheit nichts übriggeblieben.
Heinz von Lichberg, 1890 in Marburg geboren, ist heute in keinem Literaturarchiv und in keinem Lexikon vertreten. Die einzige Autorenenzyklopädie, die ihn aufgenommen hat, gibt seine Daten falsch an und raubt ihm zwanzig Jahre seiner Lebenszeit. Was damit zusammenhängen mag, daß selbst der Name der früher bekannten Erscheinung in einem gewissen Zwielicht liegt.
Als Journalist und Autor nannte er sich Heinz von Lichberg, sein Geburtsname war Heinz von Eschwege. Das Pseudonym hatte seine Berechtigung: Heinz von Eschwege, aus hessischem Uradel stammend, wählte mit Lichberg einen Adelsnamen wohl aus der Zeit um 1100, der auf einen bei Eschwege gelegenen Berg namens Leuchtberg zurückgeht - Leuchtberg, weil er einst, Schauplatz martialischer Schlachten, vor Blut geleuchtet haben soll.
Ein Mädchen namens Lolita
Militärisch war auch Lichbergs Familienhintergrund. Sein Vater war Oberstleutnant der Infanterie. Heinz, der einzige Sohn, wurde ein Pferdenarr und diente im Ersten Weltkrieg als Kavallerist oder "Reiteroffizier", wie die Lübecker im Nachruf meldeten. Ebenso groß wie das Faible fürs Militärische war auch Lichbergs Liebe zur Literatur. Schon in jungen Jahren brachte er Gedichte in den Zeitschriften "Jugend" und "Simplicissimus" unter.
Im Jahr 1916 veröffentlichte er im Darmstädter Falken-Verlag eine Sammlung von fünfzehn Erzählungen unter dem Titel "Die verfluchte Gioconda". Eine dieser Erzählungen handelte von einem Intellektuellen mittleren Alters, der sich bei einer Auslandsreise in die Tochter seines Pensionärs, ein blutjunges Mädchen, verliebt, das am Ende stirbt - ein Mädchen namens Lolita, das der Geschichte auch den Titel gab (F.A.Z. vom 19. März). Es dauerte mehr als vierzig Jahre, bis ihr Name und ihre Geschichte die Weltöffentlichkeit erschüttern sollten. Fünfzehn dieser vierzig Jahre verbrachte Heinz von Lichberg in Berlin, wo auch Vladimir Nabokov lebte, der mit dem Roman "Lolita" seinen Weltruhm begründete.
Als Journalist in Berlin...
Lichberg hatte sich in Berlin nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg als Journalist einen Namen gemacht. Er schrieb Reportagen und Feuilletons für den Scherl-Verlag und den "Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger". Auch kleinere Bücher erschienen zwischendurch - ein Gedichtband "Vom Narrenspiegel der Seele" schon 1917, drei Jahre darauf "Die große Frau - Kleinigkeiten aus dem Leben einiger Menschen". Populär wurde Lichberg aber als Zeitungsplauderer und Reisekorrespondent. Für den Scherl-Verlag berichtete er 1929 über den Transatlantikflug mit dem Zeppelin. Das Dokument dieser Reise, die Sammlung "Zeppelin fährt um die Welt", ist noch heute im Antiquariatshandel erhältlich, mit Fotos des leicht melancholischen Beaus, dem ein Zeitgenosse später elegantes Auftreten bescheinigen wird.
...den Fackelmarsch der SA kommentiert
Anfang der dreißiger Jahre finden wir Lichberg politisiert. Auch wenn man ihn heute nicht mehr kennt - seine Stimme kann man noch im Ohr haben. Es war Heinz von Lichberg, der am 30.Januar 1933 Hitlers Ernennung zum Reichskanzler und den Fackelmarsch der SA zum Reichstag in einer landesweit ausgestrahlten Radiosendung kommentierte. Zusammen mit dem SA-Sturmführer Wulf Bley blickt er auf die "ungeheuren Menschenmassen", die dem Führer zujubelten. In der Reichskanzlei steht Adolf Hitler "mit todernstem Gesicht am Fenster, er ist eben aus seiner Arbeit herausgerissen, keine Spur von irgendwelcher Siegesstimmung oder dergleichen, eine ernste Arbeitsstimmung, die auf seinem Gesicht liegt. Er ist eben unterbrochen worden. Und doch leuchtet es in seinen Augen über dieses erwachende Deutschland, über diese Massen von Menschen aus allen Ständen, aus allen Schichten der Bevölkerung, die hier vorbeimarschieren, Arbeiter der Stirn und der Faust; alle Klassenunterschiede sind verwischt."
Die Verwischung der Klassenunterschiede könnte darauf hindeuten, daß Lichberg, der wie viele Adlige im Ersten Weltkrieg ein Gefühl der schichtenübergreifenden Verbrüderung kennengelernt haben mag, bei der NSDAP noch Hoffnungen auf die zweite Letter setzt. Im Mai 1933 wird Lichberg Parteimitglied. Bald darauf gehört er der Schriftleitung des "Völkischen Beobachters" an.
"Mausi und die Nußkremfüllung"
Schon im nächsten Jahr freilich zeigt sich, daß er politisch doch nicht ganz zuverlässig ist. Im Februar 1934 trifft bei der Schriftleitung ein scharfes Protestschreiben ein, das Lichbergs "sonderbare ,kulturpolitische' Tätigkeit" attackiert. Lichberg hatte als Theaterkritiker ein Nazi-Stück ausgerechnet im offiziellen Parteiorgan verrissen. Nun habe man für die Uraufführung eigens Hunderte von Karten innerhalb der Partei vertrieben, und dann stampfe es der "Völkische Beobachter" in den Boden! Überhaupt hätten die Kritiken des Herrn von Lichberg in der letzten Zeit außerordentlich häufig die schärfste Ablehnung der Parteigenossen erfahren.
Lichberg blieb im "Völkischen Beobachter", schrieb aber weiterhin leichte Feuilletons für den "Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger". Schon die Überschriften zeigen das Genre an: "Kater Julius auf Logierbesuch", "Bißchen Frühling, bißchen Liebe", "Mausi und die Nußkremfüllung". Mausi heißt die Gattin des Erzählers (Lichberg war seit 1921 verheiratet), und der dramatische Knoten des Stücks ist ihr eigenmächtiger Kauf eines Frühjahrshutes. Neue Frühjahrshüte sind auch ein Seitenthema des Artikels "Der Traum vom großen Los", in dem der Ehemann mit seiner diesmal Lily benannten Frau über die Frage streitet, was sie mit einer im Lotto gewonnenen Million anfangen würden - sie will in die Berge, er will in die Norddeutsche Tiefebene ... Dinge dieses Stils. Mit den Jahren wird Lichberg ihrer offenbar leid.
Sabotage, Provokation, Propaganda
Schon 1933 klagt er bei Hans Grimm, den er im Ersten Weltkrieg kennengelernt hatte, daß er ein Zeitungssklave beim Scherl-Verlag sei, mit dem er sich nun schon seit Jahren herumärgern müsse. 1935 versucht er noch einmal, sich als Autor zu etablieren. Er veröffentlicht den heiteren, zum Teil in New York spielenden Roman "Nantucket-Feuerschiff". Außer einer Festschrift zwei Jahre später wird jedoch kein Buch mehr von ihm zum Druck befördert. Ende 1937, im selben Jahr, in dem Nabokov Deutschland verläßt, verabschiedet sich Lichberg von seinem Publikum.
Das Militärische gewinnt wieder die Oberhand. Lichberg macht Karriere in der Wehrmacht, genauer: im Geheimdienst. 1943 ist er im Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Abwehrabteilung II. Vieles deutet darauf hin, daß der versierte und weitgereiste Journalist vom Kreis um Canaris rekrutiert wurde. Ein Indiz dafür ist, daß Lichbergs Mitgliedschaft in der NSDAP ab dem 23. Juni 1938 ruhte. Nur drei Wochen zuvor hatte Canaris die neue Abteilung II der Abwehr gegründet, zuständig für Sabotage, Provokation, Verbindung mit den Volksdeutschen und Propaganda, zunächst unter der Leitung Helmuth Groscurths.
"Propaganda gegen Nordafrikaner"
In Groscurths Diensttagebuch findet sich Ende 1939 die Bemerkung, er habe mit Hauptmann von Eschwege über "Propaganda gegen Nordafrikaner" gesprochen. 1941 ist Lichberg im Oberkommando der Heeresgruppe C (Nord), ein Jahr später im Abwehrkommando 204. Inzwischen ist er zum Oberstleutnant aufgestiegen. Später wird er im Ersatzbataillon 600 nach Leszno (Lissa/Wartheland) versetzt. Was er in der Ersatztruppe der Geheimen Feldpolizei in Polen tat oder zu sehen bekam, bleibt der Spekulation überlassen. Die Aktenlage ist dünn.
Im Februar 1944 wird Lichberg mit unbekanntem Auftrag nach Paris verschickt - in die Stadt also, aus der vier Jahre zuvor Vladimir Nabokov vor den anrückenden deutschen Truppen mit einem der letzten Passagierschiffe nach Amerika geflohen war, wo jene "Lolita" entstand, ohne die wir heute nicht an Lichberg erinnert würden.
Adelsast derer von Eschwege endet mit dem Verfasser der ersten "Lolita"
Lichberg gerät in britische Kriegsgefangenschaft, aus der er, recht früh für einen Mann seines Ranges, im April 1946 entlassen wird. Offenbar konnte man ihm nichts Belastendes nachweisen. Er läßt sich in Lübeck nieder, wohin es ihn schon immer gezogen hat, wenn man den Ehestreit über die Lottomillion autobiographisch lesen darf. Lichberg arbeitet für die Lokalpresse und stirbt nach kurzer Krankheit am 14. März 1951.
Seine Ehe blieb kinderlos; ein Adelsast derer von Eschwege endet mit dem Verfasser der ersten "Lolita". Seine Todesanzeige trägt nur zwei Namen: neben der Witwe Martha geb. Küster unterzeichnet Lita von Vitzthum geb. Stobwasser. Frau von Eschwege-Lichberg lebte noch 1960 in Neuwied am Rhein, dann verliert sich auch ihre Spur. Wenn es einen Nachlaß gibt, so hat er sich bislang gut getarnt.
Nicht, daß sich jemand auch nur nach ihm umgesehen hätte, wäre nicht 1955 ein
gewisses Buch erschienen. Es hat schon seinen Grund, daß Heinz von Lichberg in
Vergessenheit geraten ist. Nicht unbegabt, wenn auch schreiend unreif hantiert
er in seiner "Lolita" mit Leim, Holz, Papier und Schnur. Vladimir Nabokov
benutzt ähnliche Materialien. Aber nur bei ihm wird daraus ein Drachen, der in
zuvor unerreichte Höhen der Literatur aufsteigt.
|
Curse of the first Lolita
Heinz von Lichberg and the pre-history of a nymphet
Michael Maar
The TLS n.º 5270, 02 April 2004
Doesn't it ring a bell? The first-person narrator, a cultivated man of middle age, looks back on the story of an amour fou. It all starts when, travelling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a pre-teenager whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her tender age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator – marked by her forever – remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita. We know the girl and her story, and we certainly know the title. We also think we know the author, but there we are mistaken. His name was Heinz von Lichberg. Lichberg’s “Lolita” is an eighteen-page tale that appeared in 1916 – forty years before its famous homonym. It is the work of a twenty-five-year-old German author who has left virtually no trace in the literary archives. Even bibliographically, it is well camouflaged: “Lolita” is hidden in a volume that bears the title Die verfluchte Gioconda (The Accursed Gioconda). It is the ninth in a collection of fifteen tales or “grotesques”, as the subtitle describes them. As late as 1975, you could still buy it for fifty pfennig in a second-hand bookstore in Berlin. In the 1920s and 30s it must have been quite generally available. Today it is to be found only in a few university libraries. Who was this creator of the first Lolita? The author does not appear in any encyclopaedia of literature. The only work of biographical reference that mentions him, the Deutsche Bibliothek, does not even get his dates right. That seems forgivable, because Lichberg was a pen name and a pseudonym. The real name of the author was Heinz von Eschwege. Descended from an ancient Hessian family, von Eschwege was born on September 7, 1890, in Marburg, the son of a lieutenant-colonel in the infantry. (Heinz chose the pseudonym “Lichberg” as one of the ancient aristocratic names of his family, connected to a hill near the town of Eschwege in Hessen called the “Leuchtberg”. Family legend had it that it was so named because it once, as the scene of battles, glowed with blood.) At the age of seven he lost his mother. In the First World War he was a lieutenant in the Naval Artillery. During this period he published, besides Die verfluchte Gioconda and an anthology of German poetry, contributions to the journals Jugend and Simplicissimus. After the War – a volume of his own poems had meanwhile appeared – he worked in Berlin as a journalist for the newspapers of Scherl-Verlag, the nucleus of the later Hugenberg empire. His letters are headed Eschwege-Lichberg, and he still signed himself Eschwege, but he published under the name Heinz von Lichberg. He became popular in 1929, when he flew as a reporter for Scherl-Verlag on the transatlantic voyage of the Graf Zeppelin; his account of this journey, still obtainable in second-hand bookshops today, was successfully marketed to a proud nation under the title Zeppelin fährt um die Welt (Zeppelin Goes Round the World). On this trip Heinz von Lichberg saw New York – over a decade before Vladimir Nabokov did. It is known, though it is still a remarkable thought, that the later arrival came within an inch of committing a historic folly. In the afterword to the novel that made him world-famous and financially independent, Nabokov writes that he was often tempted to destroy the work in gestation:
"Once or twice I was on the point of burning the unfinished draft and had carried my Juanita Dark as far as the shadow of the leaning incinerator on the innocent lawn, when I was stopped by the thought that the ghost of the destroyed book would haunt my files for the rest of my life."
What would have happened if the dangerous bundle of papers had been burnt? Nabokov would have died a penurious “writer’s writer”. Google would not spit out 14 million entries under a single title. Lolita, Texas, would not have considered applying to change its name. The literature of the twentieth century would have lost one of its most grandiose works. And yet there would have been a printed “Lolita” in the world. On reading it today and comparing it with the novel, a slight feeling of unreality and déjà-vu comes over one – as if we had entered one of the labyrinthine stories of Borges. The core of the tale, which is of little artistic merit, depicts a journey to Spain. The anonymous first-person narrator sets off from southern Germany, after bidding farewell to a pair of elderly brothers who own a tavern he frequents, and passes through Paris to Madrid and then to Alicante. There he takes lodgings in a pension by the sea. He plans no more than a quiet holiday. But then something happens: after a brief delay, a first, fatal glance, that cannot but remind us of the later Lolita. In that book the first-person narrator Humbert Humbert makes a journey, with the intention of finding a quiet place to work with a lake nearby. In the little town of Ramsdale he calls on the landlady, Charlotte Haze, whom he finds as unattractive as her house. Inwardly resolved to leave, he accompanies Mrs Haze to what she calls the “piazza” of the establishment, and suddenly – “without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart” – he sees the immortal child, the rebirth of his first love by the sea:
"It was the same child – the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple back, the same chestnut head of hair."
So too one glance is enough for Lichberg’s narrator, just as the beauty of his young girl also is darkened by a mystery from the past:
"The friendly, talkative landlord showed me a room with a wonderful view of the sea, and there was nothing to prevent me enjoying a week of undisturbed beauty. Until on the second day I saw Lolita, Severo’s daughter. She was very young by our Northern standards, with shadows under her southern eyes and hair of an unusual reddish gold. Her body was boyishly slim and supple and her voice full and dark. "
Like Humbert, our narrator is immediately bewitched, and abandons any thought of departure. His Lolita, like Dolores Haze later, is subject to violent changes of mood. Does she want something from him or not? Is she hiding secrets in her child’s breast? As in the case of the agreeably surprised Humbert Humbert, it is eventually Lolita who seduces the narrator, not the other way round. The author does not say so bluntly, but his ellipses and circumlocutions leave the reader in little doubt of the faits bruts:
"There were days on which Lolita’s large eyes looked at me shyly with a mute question, and evenings on which I saw her suddenly break into convulsive weeping. Never in that time did I think of leaving. The South – and Lolita – held me captive. Golden, hot days and silver, melancholy nights. And then came an evening, dream-like as in a fairy-tale yet unforgettably real, when Lolita sat on my balcony, as so often, and softly sang to me. But suddenly she let the guitar slide to the floor and came with faltering steps towards me by the railing. And while her eyes sought the shimmering moonlight on the water, she slipped her trembling arms like a begging child around my neck, leant her head on my breast and began to sob without restraint. In her eyes there were tears, but her sweet mouth was laughing. The miracle occurred. “You are so strong”, she whispered. "
That is both as inexplicit and as unambiguous as befits the period. The days and nights devoted by a middle-aged lover to a lovely nymphet become sexually indecent only later, in Nabokov, who at first thought of publishing his manuscript anonymously, and later only just escaped the censor. The correspondence of core plot, narrative perspective and choice of name is nonetheless striking. But unfortunately, as Van Veen remarks in Ada, there is no logical law that would tell us when a given number of coincidences ceases to be accidental. In its absence, there is no way of answering, and still less of dismissing, the unavoidable question: can Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the imperishable Lolita, the proud black swan of modern fiction, have known of the ugly duckling that was its precursor? Could he – if only unconsciously, since a conscious quotation would presumably have been unthinkable – have been under its stimulus? He could easily, at any rate, have crossed its author’s path. Heinz von Lichberg lived for fifteen years in the south-west of Berlin, practically in the same neighbourhood as did Nabokov. As a child, Nabokov had often stayed in Berlin when his family was en route to France. A year after the family fled from Russia in 1919, his parents and siblings moved to the Grunewald district of the city, where Vladimir visited them during his holidays from Cambridge University. In March 1922, his father was assassinated in the Berlin Philharmonic Theatre by a Russian monarchist. That summer Vladimir moved from England to Berlin, and – he least of anyone would have expected this – stayed there till 1937. In those fifteen Berlin years he became engaged to a German girl, and separated from her; got to know Vera Slonim, and married her; became the father of a son, and also became Sirin – the outstanding Russian writer of the younger generation. There he wrote nine novels in Russian, and had almost finished the tenth and greatest, The Gift, when he began his conquest of Anglo-American literature with The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
None of which tells us whether Sirin-Nabokov might have read the German
“Lolita”. So far as his knowledge of matters German went, Nabokov always
remained reticent, if not in denial. He let it be understood that, cocooning
himself in the Russian exile community for fear of losing his mother tongue,
he spoke hardly any German, and read no German books. Nabokov indeed never
mastered German anything like as well as French. But he was perhaps not
lying when he asserted a “fair knowledge of German” in his application for a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. It is in any case scarcely imaginable that
such a polyglot genius could live in a country for so long without acquiring
at least a passive command of its language. Nor did his late – only too
understandable – antipathy towards Germans prevent his “fair knowledge” of
their language extending to their Now, a man who knew of Leonhard Frank could certainly have come across Heinz von Lichberg. Not as a novelist, but as a journalist on the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, Lichberg was permanently present during the fifteen years that Nabokov lived in the city. Yet assuming – let us say, by one of those coincidences in which life is richer than any novel should be – that the German’s collection of “grotesques” fell into the Russian’s hands: would Nabokov have been interested in the theme of Lolita so early on? Certainly. Twenty years before completing his own novel on the subject, he had already put a sketch of it into the mouth of a secondary character. “Ah, if only I had a tick or two”, sighs the hero’s landlord in The Gift, “what a novel I would whip off!”:
"Imagine this kind of thing: an old dog – but still in his prime, fiery, thirsting for happiness – gets to know a widow, and she has a daughter, still quite a little girl – you know what I mean – when nothing is formed yet but she has a way of walking that drives you out of your mind – A slip of a girl, very fair, pale with blue under the eyes – and of course she doesn’t even look at the old goat. What to do? Well, not long thinking, he ups and marries the widow. Okay. They settle down the three of them. Here you can go on indefinitely – the temptation, the eternal torment, the itch, the mad hopes."
And here Nabokov did go on, writing a short novel five years later: The Enchanter, in which the germ cell of Lolita had already developed into a full embryo. Ten years after that, he began the composition of the novel which, despite every temptation of the incinerator, he triumphantly completed in the spring of 1954. It is interesting, however, that Lolita, although she emerges so early as a figure and a theme, as a name appears very late. Nabokov told Lolita's first commentarist, Alfred Appel Jr, that he had originally intended to call his heroine Virginia and the novel Ginny. In the manuscript she bore the name Juanita Dark for a long time. It was only later that Nabokov discovered a thousand reasons why the name Lolita had become essential. This fact alone is a sign that Nabokov could not have been consciously thinking of Lichberg's nymphet, since had he wished to cover his tracks in that respect he would surely have decided that the name Lolita was far from desirable. About the depths of the unconscious from which an almost forgotten name might rise to the surface, however, this name changing does not tell us a thing. Lichberg's Lolita is a diminutive of Lola, of Spanish origin, Nabokov' s Dolores is also sometimes Lola or plain Lo. But there is also, as Appel noted, a German strain in Nabokov's Lola. The femme fatale of that name in Stemberg' s movie The Blue Angel was played by Marlene Dietrich, to whom Humbert at one point compares Lolita’s mother. On parting, he even calls her Marlene; another time Lotte, while her surname Haze is close to the German Hase (Bunny), as Nabokov confided - perhaps merely to flatter the magazine - to an interviewer from Playboy. That Humbert once calls his Lolita die Kleine belongs to the same astoundingly consistent background. Now in no way need any of this point to Lichberg' s early Lolita. Among the resemblances between the Kleine of 1916 and of 1954 which certainly exist, one at any rate refers back much more to Nabokov's own ur-Lolita. Lichberg focuses from the start on Lolita's slim, "boyish" body. Likewise Humbert' s first description of Lolita, when she brings back the image of his childhood passion by the sea, hymns her "puerile hips". Often Nabokov unobtrusively puts her into boys' clothes; on one occasion Humbert calls her "mon petit"; on another he extols her "beautiful boy knees". Humbert is citing not Heinz von Lichberg, but a young man named Erwin. For the pre-history of Lolita goes further back than The Gift. The first appearance of a still unformed young girl whose walk is capable of driving a man of mature years mad occurs in Nabokov's short story, "A Nursery Tale" (l926). In the company of an old poet -in whom Nabokov retrospectively discovered, to his own astonishment, a prefiguration of Humbert -a child-woman sways past Erwin, who is himself not without Humbertian inclinations, but particularly appreciates garçons manqués. The story plays with a classic male fantasy. The devil offers to fulfil the timid Erwin's secret erotic dreams. He has a day in which by mental command he can select an unlimited number of girls to be his playmates. The only condition is that the sum of those chosen must be an uneven number. Erwin spends the day in pleasurable recruitment, but spoils it at the last moment by choosing the same girl twice, so shrinking his elect thirteen to an even dozen. The twelfth and last of Erwin' s concubines, and the object of his fatal mistake, is a child of around fourteen, in a low- cut black cocktail dress:
There was something odd about the face, odd was the flitting glance of her much too shiny eyes, and if she were not just a little girl - the old man's granddaughter, no doubt -one might suspect that her lips were touched with rouge. She walked swinging her hips very, very slightly, her legs moved closer together, she was asking her companion something in a ringing voice -and although Erwin gave no command mentally, he knew that his swift secret wish had been fulfilled.
Here, no doubt, is the first of a chain of pre- Lolitas that will henceforward be unbroken. She is still nameless, but already quite the fatal nymphet as Nabokov would later term her. And from the outset. with her first entrance in his work, the figure reveals demonic-phantasmagoric traits, to which the young author unguardedly refers. Erwin is summoned by the devil at midnight to “Hoffmann Street” There is no missing Nabokov’s allusion: the German romantic E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fantastic tales imperceptibily interweave dream and demonic reality. Bryan Body calls “A Nursery Tale "deliberately Hoffmannesq ". From this literary signal-mast there runs a silken thread to the German "Lolita". In his very first sentence, Lichberg indicates the model in whose tradition he sees his tale: “Someone threw the name of E.T.A. Hoffmann into the conversation. Musical novellas”. In pleasant company, talks turns to the relation between art and reality, fantasy and experience, that introduces an inner narrative. Such is the conventional opening of Lichberg’s story (a device from which the young Nabokov himself did not always abstain). A professor, who has hitherto been silent, wishes to recount something that has burdened his mind for years, and of which he still does not know whether it is experience or fantasy. So begins the real narrative: a highly Hoffmannesque story, whose core encapsulates just the theme which germinated ni Nabokov’s fiction from the l920s onwards. Here is the substance of the tale. In the southern German town where he is studying, the narrator enters a tavern run by a pair of strange elderly brothers with matted reddish-grey beards. He sits: down at their table, is given Spanish wine to drink, and sees a black silk head-scarf on an easy chair nearby, of the sort Spanish girls wear on days of celebration. It occurs to him that something odd may be going on in this place, but he wastes no further thought on it. One night, passing by the tavern he hears angry, youthfully transformed voices in a violent quarrel and a terror-stricken cry from a woman's throat. But the next morning, everything seems so unchanged at the brothers ' establishment that he doubts his experience and is ashamed to ask them about it. Soon afterwards he sets off on a trip to Spain where he will meet Lolita, and the reader will learn the solution to the mystery. Before we come to this, let us follow the trail , of the nymphet and her early pupations one last time. Nabokov's Lolita has a predecessor in the novel itself: Humbert' s child-love by the sea, whom he can never forget. He calls her Annabel, after Edgar Allan Poe's poem on the dead child-bride Annabel Lee. Humbert's unfulfilled passion for Annabel leads him into the arms of Lolita) who seems to him a reincamation of this first nymphet. The very names of his two loves blend and merge into one another: " Annabel Haze, alias Dolores Lee, alias Loleeta”. Such fusion is a process found early in Nabokov's work. Lolita has another and largely unknown predecessor called Annabella. She is a character in his play The Waltz Invention. The plot of this drama, which dates from l938, is very close to the earlier “Nursery Tales”. Through a set of fantastic circumstances, Waltz, its inhibited, demented hero, finds himself in a position to fulfil his erotic dreams. Lord of the world, he lets a harem be assembled for him, but rejects every woman he is offered in favour of Annabella. Although five years older than Lolita -Nabokov took care to specify the difference in a post-war afterword: “little Annabella” is "a very young girl” but thoroughly eroticized by a series of ambiguities and risqué allusions. The love-sick Waltz is so smitten with her that he threatens to blow up the whole country if her father does not deliver her to him. Nabokov's play is tighly constructed, and delicately composed. It is all the more striking that he inserts into it a character who is a pure name, never appears on stage, has no function and is only mentioned once; an old grey-bearded relative of the hero, supposedly the genius in the background, to whose imaginary invention the play owes its title. He is a cousin of the same name. In Nabokov' s Annabella-drama there is thus an ominous male pair by the name of Waltz. In German, where it originates, the word for waltz is Walzer. The reader may well ask what the greybeard brothers in Lichberg’s 'Lolita" are called. Lichberg termed his stories "grotesques”. That does not quite fit his “Lolita", which is treated rather in the manner of the Gothic tale or indeed Hoffmann's ghost stories, Nabokov too was not above ghostly romances in Hoffmann’s style. Quite apart from the spectral dimension, that has been detected throughout his work, he had no qualms about adopting this sturdy genre. At the same age at which Lichberg invented his Spanish child-woman, Nabokov-Sirin wrote “La Veneziana", a tale that plays with tropes from this form. The title refers to an old painting with an unusual story to it. The picture represents a female beauty with a bewildering likeness to a living Englishwoman, but who in reality is or is supposed to be -a Venetian lady of several centuries ago. The resemblance is so compelling that the protagonist of the story, who is in love with the Englishwoman, sits in secret sessions before the portrait and finally - in the topos of the Chinese painter -disappears into it. Lichberg's “Lolita" does not go quite so far. Yet there too Nabokov could have found the motif, as if mirrored. The traveller in Spain sees a drawing in the pension, in which his beloved seems to be depicted. But the impression is misleading: “You think that's Lolita,” smiled Severo, ”but it's Lola, the grandmother of Lolita's great-grandmother, who was strangled by her love after a quarrel a hundred years ago!”. Here too lies the solution to the mystery: in the past. With it we come to the crux of Lichberg's plot, Lolita is not just any enchanting young girl: she is under a curse, and a demonic compulsion to repeat. The narrator learns of this haunted background once he finally decides -now in fear of Lolita's dangerous love - to leave:
We sat down and Severo told the story in his friendly way. He spoke of Lolita, who in her time had been the loveliest woman in the city. one so beautiful that men who loved her had to die. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, she was murdered by two of her lovers, whom she had tormented into madness. And since that time it was as if a curse had lain on the family. The women always had just one daughter and they always died insane a few weeks after the birth of their child. But all were lovely -as lovely as Lolita! "My wife died like that", he whispered gravely, «and my daughter will too!" I could scarcely find words to comfort him, as fear for my little Lolita overpowered all my other feelings. When I entered my room at night, I found a small red flower, unknown to me, on the pillow of my bed. Lolita's farewell gift, I thought to myself, and took it in my hand. Then I saw that it was really white, and red only with Lolita's blood.
That night the narrator is witness to a phantasmagoric scene of murder. He thinks he sees Lolita – no: her ancestor Lola “or was it indeed Lolita?” – driving two lovers to a white heat and finally being murdered by them. In the murderers he recognizes the twins Aloys and Anton Walzer. The next morning he discovers that Lolita has died during the night. With a broken heart he leaves Spain by the next boat. Years later, he returns to the town in southern Germany, enquires after the brothers Walzer, and learns that the morning after the night Lolita died, they too were found dead with a friendly smile on their faces, in their easy chairs by the stove. Curse, demonism, repetition, convulsion: these are the undercurrents in the later Lolita too. Nabokov’s child-woman is also a revenant, the reincarnation of an earlier, fatal gamine sans merci. Annabel, his first love, burns desire for nymphets forever into Humbert. She puts him under a spell that he can only escape by allowing her to rise again in Lolita. Kabokov’s novel is not about paedophilia, but demonism. Humbert is under an erotic-demonic compulsion. Already in his “Nursery Tale” it was the devil who supplied the earliest Lolita to the hero. That has not changed in the chef d’oeuvre. According to Humbert’s caustic complaint, it is the Devil himself who leads him on and makes a fool of him, who charms him with Lolita then whisks her away from under his nose. and who must eventually give him respite, if he wants to keep him a while longer as a plaything. But it is not only Humbert who is the object of demonic machinations. By his unmistakable definition Lolita is the “immortal daemon disguised as a female child”. Lichberg' s child too is half demon; half victim of a curse, and like her lover,under the compulsion of the past. In Lichberg there is even a precise time span for the working of the spell. When the narrator parts from Lolita, she bites him on the hand with all the strength of her little mouth. "These scars of love", confesses the casualty to his listeners, "remained indelible even twenty-five years later." We encounter the same interval wben Humbert, in a sbock of anagnorisis, sees Lolita for the first time -his re-embodied first love, from whose spell he has never escaped: “The twenty-five years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished". In his case, too, a quarter of a century could not extinguish the magic of the first love-curse. And the pattern -it is the pattern of all stories of love and death -Persists. What compulsively repeats itself over the years always ends by exploding in violence. Licherg's tale leads into the dream-like scene of a dramatic, grotesque murder. The cruel Lola invites her lovers to compete for her. She will love he who is strongest- the brothers' muscles swell; she will love he who is biggest -they grow till their bones crack; she will love the eldest -hair falls from their skulls; she will love he who has the longest and ugliest beard -long red hairs shoot out of the distorted faces of the Walzer brothers, who then, with cries of bestial fury and despair, fall on Lola and strangle her. “Speak your last - or you will go to hell with your thrice accursed beauty", she is warned beforehand, in words underscoring her demonic origins. The finale of Nabokov's novel is also a dream-like, phantasmagoric killing. Humbert and Clare Quilty , Lolita's two lovers, intermingle in this scene, becoming the twins they were from the start in Lichberg. Lolita's seducer Quilty is Humbert's dark shadow and second self. In their tussle they lose even their grammatical identities -"I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us". When Humbert finally succeeds in killing his alter ego -difficult enough, since the bullets he fires into Quilty’s body, instead of destroying him, seem to inject him with fresh energy - he has sealed his own fate. A few weeks later Humbert too, the tragic satyr, is a dead man. In Lichberg's tale is not the rival, but the woman, who is murdered. But Nabokov plays with this variant too - leitmotif of quotations from Carmen tempts his reader to the very end along this false track, suggesting that the betrayed lover may finally shoot his faithless beloved, and even at his farewell to her, Humbert flirts with the image of drawing his revolver and doing something stupid. As we know, the pregnant Mrs Schiller,. as she has now become. is spared this end. Indirectly, however, the curse still seems to radiate from Lichberg’s work. Lola is murdered shortly after the death of her daughter. Lolita dies in the weeks following childbirth, after having given birth to a dead girl. The last word belongs, of course, not to death but to art. Lolita and her history make Humbert into a writer. The novel ends with his hope of the only immortality that he and his muse can share: the refuge of art. Lichberg's lover takes the same path. He too is initiated by Lolita into art. When he has ended his story, the countess - who has listened to him with closed eyes-murmurs: "You are a poet". On January 30, l933, Hitler was named Reichskanzler. This was the day the Nazis seized power. That evening, a nationwide broadcast hailed the torchlit procession to the Reichskanzlei with an elated commentary. The two radio reporters looked out at the SA marching past, and "the vast masses of the people" cheering the Fuhrer. Then they turned their gaze towards the Reich Chancellery .There stood Adolf Hitler:
With a deadly stern face at the window, he has just been tom away from his work, there is no trace of triumph in his expression, or anything like it, just the serious look of labour. He has been interrupted. Yet there is a light in his eyes at this awakening of Germany, these masses of people from all walks of life, from all strata of the population, who are marching past beneath him, workers of head and hand, all class differences effaced.
One of the two reporters was Heinz von Lichberg. That he was linked, as a promoter and agitator, with Nabokov's second exile and so with that Lolita which could not have emerged without its American background, is one of those twists that could come almost straight out of a Nabokov novel. Soon afterwards Lichberg joined the editorial board of the Völkische Beobachter. But in the next year it became clear that politically he was not entirely reliable. He was attacked by comrades in the party, and as time went on seems to have become increasingly weary of journalism. To Hans Grimm, author of the notorious novel Volk ohne Raum (people without Land) and later President of the Writers' Association under the Third Reich, whom he had come to know during the First World War, Lichberg spoke of plans for retirement. In 1935 he published a novel entitled Nantucket-Lightship, set in New York. With this book Lichberg may have wanted to establish himself as an independent author, but apart from a Festschrift two years later, no further publications materialized. In 1937, the same year that Nabokov left Germany, Heinz von Lichberg bade farewell to his readers. On December l9, l937, an article by him appeared in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, whose Editor had asked contributors to fill out a wish list for Christmas. The sharpness of Lichberg's response was only thinly veiled. He respected the enquiry; of course, but it betrayed a lot of benignly childish optimism:
You see -we human beings all run around with dream-wishes locked up in the most secret chamber of our hearts, which no one will type out for you in double spacing. Or do you think that anyone will tell you that he is inwardly gnawed by longing for a particular little Lotte or Anna?
Even if we banish from our thoughts the name-games Nabokov will play with Lolita and Lotte, this secret, nagging longing for little Lotte gives the valediction almost symbolic force. The wish list ends with suggestions that read as if someone is burning his boats. The trail of Heinz von Lichberg disappears, as the author withdrew from the public sphere, into the Wehrmacht. By l943 he was in the High Command of the Abwehr, the military intelligence and espionage service. He finished the War as a prisoner of the British, having served in Poland, as a member of the Geheime Feld-polizei, and Paris. On March l4, l95l, he died, "Lieutenant-Colonel (rtd) and Writer", as recorded by the register of the German nobility , without issue, in Lübeck. His wife survived him into the 1960s. It is curious to think that, as the hurricane of Lolita swept the United States and then raced back towards Europe, it might have awakened in Lichberg's widow a faint recollection of the youthful work of her husband. Lolita -didn't that name ring a bell? There remains the unavoidable question: would it have rightly rung a bell? What exactly are we dealing with here? There are only three possibilities, at any rate until someone shows us a fourth. The first is that we are in the presence of one of those fortuitous coincidences which recur in the history of art and science. As we have known since Aristotle, it belongs to the laws of probability that the improbable occurs. It even occurs unexpectedly often. Littlewood's law, called after the Cambridge mathematician, states that on average everyone can expect a wonder a month. Why then should the chain of concordances between the two Lolitas, instead of being anchored in cause and effect, not simply dangle from the ether of pure contingency? Indeed that cannot be excluded. But it would be quite a wonder. The second possibility is that Nabokov knew of Lichberg’s tale and half-revealing. half-covering his tracks, lent himself to that art of quotation which Thomas Mann himself a master of it, called he “higher cribbing”. Plagiarism? Nonsense. After all, literature has always been a huge melting pot of motives, and always consisted, in part, of literature. But setting that aside, this second eventuality is as unlikely as the first. It does not fit Nabokov. Allusions to Poe, Proust or Pushkin. to Shakespeare, Chateaubriand or Joyce, which teem in his work, possess a valency that allusions to an unknown minor writer could never have. Nabokov had no need to crib nor would he have ennobled a von Lichberg by citing the name of his heroine. That leaves the third possibility as perhaps the most plausible. In some mysterious way Lichberg’s Die verfluchte Gioconda fell into his hands. Leafing through it, he could have come upon the story of the nymphet and so the theme that had already begun to dawdle in his mind. He forgot the tale completely, or thought he had forgotten it. Of this phenomenon too, cryptomnesia, the history of art offers enough examples. Much later. drawn to the surface by new bait, whole scraps of the story rose from the depths. The highest felicity in writing, Nabokov explained in a television interview of l966, occurred when he found himself asking: ..How did it come to me? How did it exist in my mind before I thought of it? Such is the grace of inspiration. Like the twofold biblical blessing it can come from above, but also float up out of the oubliettes of memory . The ugly duckling and the proud swan - if the image smacks too much of a fairy tale, it can be expressed more technically. Heinz von Lichberg. not ungifted but blatantly immature, busied himself in his Lolita with linen, wood, paper and string. Vladimir Nabokov used similar materials. But what he fashioned out of them was a kite that vanished into the clear blue air of literature.
The author is grateful to Herr Rainer Schelling for generously alerting him to the existence of Heinz von Lichberg's book. |
N Z Z Online
September 2005, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Neues zur «Ur-Lolita»
Michael Maar führt elegant den Indizienprozess
Ulrich M. Schmid
Michael Maar: Lolita und der deutsche Leutnant. Suhrkamp- Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. 100 S., Fr. 27.10.
The TLS n.º 5345, September 9, 2005
Commentary
What happened to Sally Horner?
A real-life source to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
ALEXANDER DOLININ
September 15, 2005
By STACY SCHIFF
AGELESS 'LOLITA'
That book by Nabokov is 50. But in our
teen-obsessed times, the tragicomic masterpiece has lost none of its relevance.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
N Z Z Online
8. Oktober 2005, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Nymphe mit Trauerschleppe
Ist Vladimir Nabokovs «Lolita» aktueller denn je?
Andrea Köhler
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