Zagadki dvuch "Lolit" i dvuch jazykov Nabokova

Abstract

Nabokov’s bilingualism remains an intriguing aspect of his oeuvre. We address it in Lolita and in general. The Russian Lolita differs from the original not only in its language but even more so in the design of its mysteries, which we call quasi detective narrative. The anglophone reader for the most part of the novel has to guess what was the crime committed by Humbert: sex with an underage girl or murder? The Russian reader is told from the outset that it is murder, which sets a different puzzle: who did he kill? Not only in this respect but also in a number of others, big and small, the Russian version is clearer than EnglishNabokov is known for his word-play. He plays far more with English words than Russian, his English is far more unusual, so unusual that it can in some ways be compared with that of Joyce. His Russian, however, is also far from usual - but that is due not so much to word-play as to the insufficient knowledge of some everyday Russian terminology, e.g. names of cloth items. This does not make Nabokov’s Russian inferior but it does make it a little strange and funny.