81 Interview of Vladimir Nabokov and Alain Robbe-Grillet with André Parinaud, Roger Nimier, and Paul Guimard for Arts (Paris) (1959)*1

How did the idea of writing Lolita come to you?

I don’t remember. I know that there was a certain problem I wanted to resolve, I wanted to find an economical and elegant solution, as in chess problems where there are certain rules that must be followed. It was a very difficult problem: I had to find the idea, the characters, the inspiration too, the little shiver. And as I explained at the end of my book, this little shiver came to me when I read somewhere, I think it was in Paris-soir in 1939, the story of a poor ape that had been given pencils, and this ape was in its cage and began to draw: and what it drew were the bars of its cage: the first thing the little prisoner drew. So it was the idea of a man imprisoned in his passion. That was perhaps the start. And I began to write this novella in Russian, and it didn’t work out. There were little French girls who weren’t French enough for me, because I didn’t know little French girls. So I forgot the thing, and the idea came back to me in America.

Several years later?

Yes, the gestation was rather long; it took me six or seven years, with gaps.

So you wanted to solve a kind of literary chess problem?

NABOKOV: Yes.

ROBBE-GRILLET: You already solved one in an old book. It was the story of the madman who threw himself out a window. There’s an astonishing chess game in this book.

NABOKOV: That was The Defense, La Course du fou. It’s a sort of pun, because the word course refers to the movements of the chess pieces, and fou…1

ROBBE-GRILLET: You play chess?

NABOKOV: Yes. I compose chess problems, which isn’t the same thing as playing.

Were you expecting Lolita to have this, let’s say, in a sense, scandalous success?

I wasn’t thinking of scandal. I thought it would be hard to publish the book. There would be a certain number of copies printed for my friends, for scholars, but that’s all; I had great difficulty in publishing it. It was published, finally, here in Paris, in 1955, by Olympia. And then several American [publishers] wanted to [publish] it2 and I had only to choose my publisher, which is always very pleasant.

Do you read the reviews your book has inspired, and which have surprised and interested you most?

ROBBE-GRILLET: Another way of putting the question: all the reviews talk about the book by telling the story at length; no one has talked about how it is written.

NABOKOV: When you read a review, you don’t read the part where they tell the story, you want to know what they think of it. And if that doesn’t happen, then you forget it all, because, after all, the story has already been told better. But there have been very good reviews, which have talked very well about the book’s romanticism. It’s like you, in Jealousy. That’s the finest love novel since Proust.

ROBBE-GRILLET: That hasn’t been said very much. What happened for me was the opposite of the way it’s been for you. In Lolita, in France, people have looked most of all at the story. In my case, they didn’t see that at all in Jealousy. They wrote only about the way it was written. But with Lolita they have noticed only the most obvious things—for example, that the character speaks at the same time using “he” or “I,” and often in the same sentence, which gives a very curious effect of division. It’s a fundamental theme all the same: cutting the character in two.

Could you work out a sort of geography of the reactions Lolita has provoked around the world?

That would be very interesting. In Japan, for instance, they brought out the book with a beautiful cover where you see the image of a young blonde woman with well-rounded breasts,^*2 eyes slightly aslant. A sort of Lolita Monroe. The Japanese have some very curious ideas.

It came out also in South and Southeast Asia, in Turkey. There, they thought there was no need to make such a fuss over things so normal, so natural. That’s another point of view.

In Sweden, the book got burned. I don’t read Swedish, but any Russian can combine a little German with a little Russian and manage to decipher the Swedish; my wife took on the task, since we were surprised the book was so short. It was quite a small book, flat as a flea. It turns out that what they did was leave in only the more or less spicy scenes and get rid of all the rest. So, like de Sade, don’t you think?

Each one of your books has the same concern: to solve a problem of literary chess.

NABOKOV: I think so. It’s more or less conscious, and I think it’s the same for Robbe-Grillet.

ROBBE-GRILLET: Always. And it’s even amusing, because, usually, they reproach me for it. They talk about the form and the content.

In Lolita, who’s the most likable person for you?

It’s Lolita. It’s with her that the good reader should become friends. American readers, generally, talk of her as an unbearable kid, but you pity her as you would pity any kid. There’s something touching in her.

Does your hero or Lolita feel real passion?

We know very little of Lolita’s passion, but it’s my hero who feels at first this sensual passion, this storm of sensations, and then at the end, so to speak, human and divine love. My hero renounces this passion, but although she’s no longer a nymphet, she is now the love of his life.

In the United States, are you completely on your own as a writer?

NABOKOV: Sometimes I feel echoes, little rather muted whiffs of Nabokov, but not much. Hard to say, but I’ve never set up a school.

ROBBE-GRILLET: Me, neither, you know!

When you write, do you write a great deal from your memory—which is said to be excellent?

NABOKOV: Yes, but only for certain things. My memory is very good for effects of light, for objects, for combinations of objects….For example, a train stops in a station. I look out the window and I see there, on the platform, a little pebble, a cherry pit, a silver paper; I see these things so well in this combination that I think I will recall them forever. But not only does one forget this, but one forgets how one was looking at them. But what can one do to remember all that? You have to link it to something else.

ROBBE-GRILLET: You know Kafka’s journal. The notes of a trip to Reichenberg where he notes only things of that kind? “I saw someone who had a glass in front of him and was leaning forward a little,” or “There was a stone beside the door.” He notes down only things of that kind. Very curious.

NABOKOV: It’s when one wants to recall, anchor points. I think there are this kind of people, and another kind, who like “great ideas.”

Which of your books do you like most?

There are three for me on the same level: Lolita; it’s the best book I’ve written, I think. There’s also a book called The Gift. And then there’s Invitation to a Beheading. That’s just appeared in English. I wrote it in Russian when I was thirty.

Do you write in a regular routine?

No.

You have no work regime?

No. I write in bed, I write on index cards.

Do you write in English and French?

In English. I’ve written only little things in French.