Dolores on the dotted line.
There is a great photo in today's Le Monde magazine concerning Nabokov's Lolita and its reception in France. I really wish I could post it but I don't have a scanner here and I can't find a copy on teh interwebz. It's from 5 July 1960 and shows a group of actresses protesting in front of the Académie Française - not about the book's content but about a linguistic point. Their banner reads:
NON MONSIEUR NABOKOV
NYMPHETTE
EST FRANÇAIS DEPUIS RONSAR
What they were so annoyed about was the fact that Nabokov claimed to have coined the word ‘nymphet’ for his novel. Not so for the French equivalent, the Académie's supporters insisted. (The Monde journalist, not a big Lolita fan, calls ‘nymphette’ a diminutif répugnant, on what appear to be moral rather than linguistic grounds.) The ‘Ronsar’ this banner refers to is Pierre de Ronsard, a member of the 16th-century Pléiade group of writers. I bought a book of his verse today in an attempt to find this point of vocabulary. Eventually - and I can't tell you how many hours of research this has cost me - I found something in sonnet CXIV of his Amours. I'll just quote the relevant sestet:
Quand ma Nymphette en simple verdugade
Cueillant des fleurs, des raiz de son œillade
Essuya l'air grelleux & pluvieux,
Des ventz sortiz remprisonna les tropes,
Et ralenta les marteaux des Cyclopes,
Et de Jupin rasserena les yeulx.
Which is something like:
When my nymphet, in her underwear,
goes picking flowers, her flirtatious stare
clears the rain and hail from above -
she returns the loosed wind's moan to peace
and makes the Cyclops' hammers cease,
and calms the eyes of Jove.
(And my god. Did some of those words put up a fight.) Now to defend Nabokov, I'd point out that here the word is really used (albeit somewhat figuratively) in its general sense of ‘small or young nymph’, a sense in which it already existed in English. While the OED's entry (very up to date, i.e. revised within the last couple of weeks) does give Lolita as the earliest quotation for the sense of ‘sexually attractive young girl’, it also records several ‘small nymph’ citations going back to 1612. The earliest citation in French is from 1512, so arguably they could still win if it came to a stand-up fight about precedence.
Given Nabokov's predilection for dictionaries, I would say the odds are considerably against his not knowing all of the above. The more so when you consider the fact, which I have just discovered, that Ronsard is actually referenced in Lolita. Quoting Nabokov is always a delight, so:
I now refused to be diverted by the feeling of well-being that my walk had engendered - by the young summer breeze that enveloped the nape of my neck, the giving crunch of the damn gravel, the juicy tidbit I had sucked out at last from a hollowy tooth, and even the comfortable weight of my provisions which the general condition of my heart should not have allowed me to carry; but even that miserable pump of mine seemed to be working sweetly, and I felt adolori d'amoureuse langueur, to quote dear old Ronsard, as I reached the cottage where I had left my Dolores.
Is he the best prose stylist ever? He's in my top two (along with Browne). I thought it was rather brilliant of him to have found a Ronsard quote which puns on Lolita's name, but in the back of my Annotated Lolita I read: ‘The phrase ‘d'amoureuse langueur’ appears several times, with slight variations, in Ronsard's Amours. ‘Adolori’ (...) is, of course, HH.'s addition.’
I love that ‘of course’. Like we would obviously know that.
I have followed so many tangents here that I can't actually remember what I set out to prove. Probably because this started with me buying a paper this morning and ended twelve hours later with me translating Middle French poetry. Like all Saturdays should.
NON MONSIEUR NABOKOV
NYMPHETTE
EST FRANÇAIS DEPUIS RONSAR
What they were so annoyed about was the fact that Nabokov claimed to have coined the word ‘nymphet’ for his novel. Not so for the French equivalent, the Académie's supporters insisted. (The Monde journalist, not a big Lolita fan, calls ‘nymphette’ a diminutif répugnant, on what appear to be moral rather than linguistic grounds.) The ‘Ronsar’ this banner refers to is Pierre de Ronsard, a member of the 16th-century Pléiade group of writers. I bought a book of his verse today in an attempt to find this point of vocabulary. Eventually - and I can't tell you how many hours of research this has cost me - I found something in sonnet CXIV of his Amours. I'll just quote the relevant sestet:
Quand ma Nymphette en simple verdugade
Cueillant des fleurs, des raiz de son œillade
Essuya l'air grelleux & pluvieux,
Des ventz sortiz remprisonna les tropes,
Et ralenta les marteaux des Cyclopes,
Et de Jupin rasserena les yeulx.
Which is something like:
When my nymphet, in her underwear,
goes picking flowers, her flirtatious stare
clears the rain and hail from above -
she returns the loosed wind's moan to peace
and makes the Cyclops' hammers cease,
and calms the eyes of Jove.
(And my god. Did some of those words put up a fight.) Now to defend Nabokov, I'd point out that here the word is really used (albeit somewhat figuratively) in its general sense of ‘small or young nymph’, a sense in which it already existed in English. While the OED's entry (very up to date, i.e. revised within the last couple of weeks) does give Lolita as the earliest quotation for the sense of ‘sexually attractive young girl’, it also records several ‘small nymph’ citations going back to 1612. The earliest citation in French is from 1512, so arguably they could still win if it came to a stand-up fight about precedence.
Given Nabokov's predilection for dictionaries, I would say the odds are considerably against his not knowing all of the above. The more so when you consider the fact, which I have just discovered, that Ronsard is actually referenced in Lolita. Quoting Nabokov is always a delight, so:
I now refused to be diverted by the feeling of well-being that my walk had engendered - by the young summer breeze that enveloped the nape of my neck, the giving crunch of the damn gravel, the juicy tidbit I had sucked out at last from a hollowy tooth, and even the comfortable weight of my provisions which the general condition of my heart should not have allowed me to carry; but even that miserable pump of mine seemed to be working sweetly, and I felt adolori d'amoureuse langueur, to quote dear old Ronsard, as I reached the cottage where I had left my Dolores.
Is he the best prose stylist ever? He's in my top two (along with Browne). I thought it was rather brilliant of him to have found a Ronsard quote which puns on Lolita's name, but in the back of my Annotated Lolita I read: ‘The phrase ‘d'amoureuse langueur’ appears several times, with slight variations, in Ronsard's Amours. ‘Adolori’ (...) is, of course, HH.'s addition.’
I love that ‘of course’. Like we would obviously know that.
I have followed so many tangents here that I can't actually remember what I set out to prove. Probably because this started with me buying a paper this morning and ended twelve hours later with me translating Middle French poetry. Like all Saturdays should.