"Lolita, despises on a fantasy", on Arte: the story of a disastrous misinterpretation

Avec ses lunettes, sa sucette et son rouge à lèvres rouge (affiche du film de Stanley Kubrick), Lolita a longtemps (encore ?) été perçue comme le fruit défendu qui ne demanderait qu’à être croqué. Or, Lolita est une petite fille – elle a 12 ans –, ce qui ne l’empêche pas de dire : « Regarde ce que tu m’as fait. Je devrais appeler la police et leur dire que tu m’as violée », comme l’écrit Vladimir Nabokov dans son livre Lolita, publié en 1955 en France, et trois ans plus tard aux Etats-Unis.

But then how has an abused child have become an erotic icon in the collective imagination?How did we get to such a disastrous misinterpretation?Arte's documentary, Lolita, despises on a fantasy, proposes to take stock of the question.

First by returning to the genesis of the book.Vladimir Nabokov knew that the book would be a time bomb: in fact, she exploded in the mid -1950s.By attacking the taboo of pedophilia, the American writer of Russian origin shocks.Judged immoral and perverse, the manuscript is refused by all the great American publishers, and it is ultimately in France that the book will be published, thanks to Maurice Girodias, founder of The Olympia Press, where these books known to beread that with one hand - what Nabokov then ignores.

"A poor child that we debauchery"

The Ministry of the Interior makes it prohibit - censorship will last a year.But, as often, the sulphurous atmosphere that surrounds the work - and displeases Nabokov, who wanted a literary triumph and not a scandal - attracts many readers: the book is very worldwide success.

In 1962, Stanley Kubrick carries Lolita on the screen, putting aside the pedophile side of the story, which contributes to fueling the misunderstanding and making Lolita an antonomase, a figure of style which consists in using a clean name as namecommon.Invited, in 1975, on the set of the program "Apostrophes", Vladimir Nabokov corrects a Bernard Pivot Égrillard: Lolita is not a perverse young girl, but "a poor child that we debauchery".

But it is undoubtedly in Japan where the image of Lolita was the most perverted, as evidenced by the use of young girls in manga, in which juvenile pornography is authorized.

A total misinterpretation for Vanessa Springora.For the author of consent (Grasset, 2020), Lolita is a condemnation of pedophilia: "I felt taken into account thanks to this book.I identified myself a lot from her, ”said the one who, at 13, met a thirty-six-year-old man her elder-Gabriel Matzneff.When the question is asked, at the end of the documentary, on the possibility or not to publish a work such as Lolita at the time of #MeToo, Vanessa Springora is categorical: to deprive itself of such a masterpiece would be "aberrant ".