{"id":97111,"date":"2016-04-19T11:49:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T15:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=97111"},"modified":"2016-04-19T13:24:30","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T17:24:30","slug":"who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Wrote Lolita<\/i> First? An Interview with Michael Maar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Nabokov in 1969. Photo: Giuseppe Pino<\/p><\/div>\n

In this conversation\u2014first published last month in the German magazine\u00a0<\/em>Cicero<\/a>\u2014Daniel Kehlmann and the Nabokov scholar Michael Maar discuss one of Maar\u2019s most unlikely discoveries about<\/em>\u00a0Lolita.<\/em><\/p>\n

In your book The Two Lolitas<\/a><\/em>, you made an intriguing discovery\u2014it started to obsess me a bit. What\u2019s equally interesting, and kind of outrageous, is that most Nabokov scholars ignored your finding. Maybe they felt they ought to shield Nabokov from charges of plagiarism. So let\u2019s get this out of the way first\u2014is this about plagiarism?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course not. The word came up in the press when I published my first article about the discovery, but that\u2019s not what this is about at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let me sum it up. Heinz von Lichberg, a writer who\u2019s completely forgotten today, and rightly so, published a volume of bad short stories in 1916, The Cursed Gioconda<\/em>. In it there\u2019s a story called \u201cAtomit\u201d in which a man develops a doomsday machine that can destroy the world. Nabokov wrote a play in 1938, The Waltz Invention<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s about a man who develops a doomsday machine with the potential to destroy the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s more.<\/p>\n

Lichberg\u2019s \u201cAtomit\u201d\u00a0begins with a scene in which the inventor meets with the U.S. Secretary of Defense to pitch his project. Nabokov\u2019s The Waltz Invention<\/em> opens in the office of the Minister of Defense of a powerful, unnamed state, where the inventor proceeds to pitch his doomsday machine. Coincidence?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Possibly. But there\u2019s still more.<\/p>\n

Nabokov\u2019s inventor goes by the name of Waltz. He has a cousin whose name is Waltz, too. In another story from Lichberg\u2019s collection, we also <\/em>find two men who are close relatives\u2014in this case, brothers\u2014and their family name is Walzer, the German word for waltz<\/em>. The narrator of this story falls in love with a young girl, the daughter of his landlord. A narrator who falls in love with his landlady\u2019s daughter\u2014that\u2019s something we know very well from Nabokov\u2019s Lolita<\/em>. And what\u2019s the girl\u2019s name in Lichberg\u2019s story? Lolita. And what\u2019s the name of the story? It\u2019s \u201cLolita.\u201d Written by Heinz von Lichberg and published in 1916\u2014exactly a\u00a0hundred years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The name alone wouldn\u2019t prove anything, but if you look at all those other parallels\u2014doomsday machine, inventors, Ministers of Defense, two relatives called Waltz\u2014it\u2019s safe to assume that Nabokov knew Lichberg\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

It seems to me a rational assumption, but Nabokov scholars are in near-complete denial. One of the few scholars who bothered to react was Dieter E. Zimmer, the editor of Nabokov\u2019s Collected Works<\/em> in German. He claimed that it\u2019s all pure coincidence\u2014but he only mentions a young girl named Lolita. He doesn\u2019t mention the Waltz parallels. And Nabokov\u2019s biographer Brian Boyd, what did he have to say? Well, not a lot. Quite a while after you made your discovery, he published a book of essays about new developments in Nabokov studies, which neglects to mention Lichberg at all. And recently he explained, in a Nabokov forum online, that there\u2019s nothing unusual about two girls coincidentally having the name Lolita in the works of two different writers. Again, no mention of the doomsday machine, the Minister of Defense, the Waltz name. With all due respect, as a great admirer of Nabokov, I feel cheated.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have to assume that these scholars are strictly neutral, with no\u00a0personal interest at stake. But through some of the more heated reactions it became clear that there was one fact about Lichberg that people found hard to stomach\u2014he was an ardent Nazi. He enthusiastically praised Hitler on German radio, his voice trembling with emotion. This was when Hitler became chancellor\u2014you can listen to him on YouTube, if you really want to. Later Lichberg wrote articles for the Nazi paper V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter<\/em>.\u00a0It may be hard to accept that Nabokov, who fled from the Nazis with his Jewish wife and whose brother, Sergey, died in the Neuengamme concentration camp, was linked to that kind of a man.<\/p>\n

Nabokov incessantly teases his readers to decode his references\u2014which is why it\u2019s clear to me that this isn\u2019t about plagiarism. It\u2019s about a clear reference, about what Nabokov is trying to signal to us by alluding to the work of an unimportant German writer\u2014a writer we have every reason to assume he would have loathed for literary and personal reasons\u2014at the center of several of his works. And if this isn\u2019t a signal for his readers, who does he want to signal to? That\u2019s the question I find hard to ignore, and I find it exasperating that Nabokov scholars keep ignoring it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There has to be a missing link. It\u2019s not improbable, for example, that they knew each other in person. They lived in the same Berlin neighborhood for about fifteen years. Could Lichberg have been Nabokov\u2019s landlord? Could they have been in the same tennis club? They were both good tennis players. I tried to look into that, but the membership lists of the Dahlem tennis clubs were destroyed in the war. Even if they had<\/em> been in the same club, that wouldn\u2019t answer your question\u2014What was he trying to signal, and to whom? It doesn\u2019t stop with the book, either. In his Lolita <\/em>screenplay, which Kubrick didn\u2019t use, he has someone ask whether the girl is Spanish. And when Humbert Humbert exclaims, in the same screenplay, that Lolita is not supposed to be \u201cdancing a Waltz,\u201d or when he gives her \u201cthe smile of a Gioconda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lichberg\u2019s story is set in Spain, and the title of his book is The Cursed Gioconda<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. It does seem like a wink.<\/p>\n

But to whom? Lichberg died in 1951, and anyway, it\u2019s very hard to imagine the two of them as friends. Also, some Nabokov scholars have been quite steadfast in their claim that the great man didn\u2019t speak German, and if that\u2019s true, he couldn\u2019t have read Lichberg. But you just need to ask around a bit and you find out that\u2019s not true.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who did you ask?<\/p>\n

Gerhard Bronner, a famous Austrian comedian and nightclub owner who died in 2007, told me how, years ago, the Austrian writer Friedrich Torberg brought Nabokov and his cousin Nicolai to Gerhard\u2019s bar in the center of Vienna. Gerhard remembered Vladimir speaking very decent German, albeit with a heavy accent. But I really don\u2019t think we even need this kind of anecdotal evidence. In my opinion, the parallels between Nabokov\u2019s and Lichberg\u2019s works would be enough in themselves to conclude that he must have known those stories\u2014and that it\u2019s likely he had some knowledge of German.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not forget that by his own admission he read Thomas Mann and Freud in the original\u2014hating them fiercely, of course. And he did translate Heinrich Heine and Goethe into Russian. If you can do that, reading Lichberg shouldn\u2019t be too hard.<\/p>\n

The thing I just can\u2019t get over here is that Nabokov keeps asking his readers to decode his references. But the Lichberg reference is something he couldn\u2019t have assumed would ever get discovered, let alone decoded.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly puzzling. He liked private jokes, though.<\/p>\n

But of course he\u2019s famously unforgiving when it comes to his judgment of literary or moral quality\u2014and Lichberg was a bad writer and<\/em> a Nazi! So why in the world would Nabokov reference him like this? What could have been his intention?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anybody who offers me a good theory can have my first edition of The Cursed Cioconda<\/em>. Which is a rare book!\u00a0My personal guess would be that a good private eye could find out. Sorry, I\u2019m just a modest literary critic.<\/p>\n

Translated from the German by Daniel Kehlmann<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Postscript by Michael Maar<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only a few\u00a0weeks after this talk\u2014and one\u00a0day\u00a0before The<\/em>\u00a0Paris Review<\/em>\u00a0published it\u2014I was reading Nabokov\u2019s Letters to V\u00e9ra<\/a><\/em> and discovered what seems to be the missing link, if not\u00a0the\u00a0smoking gun.\u00a0The copiously annotated letters\u00a0show\u00a0that Nabokov and\u00a0V\u00e9ra were\u00a0lodgers at\u00a0a certain Frau von\u00a0Bardeleben, in Luitpoldstra\u00dfe, where they\u00a0remained from\u00a01929 to 1932\u2014a relatively long period\u00a0of time, given Nabokov\u2019s lodging habits.\u00a0Vladimir used to call\u00a0his landlady \u201cMrs. Walrus.\u201d She\u00a0was married to\u00a0Albrecht von\u00a0Bardeleben. The\u00a0Nabokovs\u00a0seemed to be quite familiar with the\u00a0von\u00a0Bardelebens. Even years later, in April 1937, Vladimir\u00a0responds in a letter to V\u00e9ra about some funny chat\u00a0she\u00a0must have reported:\u00a0\u201cHow amusing\u2014about\u00a0Bardelebeness.\u201d\u00a0Evidently they stayed in touch\u00a0with their ex-landlords somehow. Otherwise, why would they exchange news about\u00a0these people five years after they\u2019d moved out?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one genealogical detail the rich annotations in Letters to V\u00e9ra<\/em> do not reveal. Remember that Heinz von\u00a0Lichberg,\u00a0who wrote the first Lolita<\/em>,\u00a0was the\u00a0pen\u00a0name of Heinz von\u00a0Eschwege.\u00a0Well, it turns out the Nabokovs\u2019 landlords, the von\u00a0Bardelebens,\u00a0are related to the von\u00a0Eschweges\u2014Charlotte von\u00a0Bardeleben, born in 1766,\u00a0was\u00a0married\u00a0in 1787\u00a0to\u00a0Johann Friedrich Ludwig von\u00a0Eschwege. In other words:\u00a0for at least three years\u00a0Nabokov lived\u00a0under one roof with the family\u00a0of his\u00a0infamous predecessor.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take much to imagine the\u00a0rest. The von\u00a0Bardelebens\u00a0and the von\u00a0Eschweges\u00a0both belonged to the Hessian\u00a0high nobility, and nobility weaves a meticulous web: everyone seems to\u00a0knows one another and occasionally to meet.\u00a0Heinz von\u00a0Eschwege\u00a0might have been a regular or sporadic guest at the von\u00a0Bardenlebens; Mrs.\u00a0Walrus might have\u00a0clued in Nabokov to von Eschwege\u2019s books.\u00a0Or maybe it was the other way around, and Nabokov\u00a0became\u00a0a\u00a0lodger\u00a0at the von\u00a0Bardelebens\u00a0because he was already an acquaintance of\u00a0Heinz von\u00a0Eschwege. Research, as they say, is ongoing.<\/p>\n

Daniel Kehlmann is the author, most recently, of the novel <\/i>F.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this conversation\u2014first published last month in the German magazine\u00a0Cicero\u2014Daniel Kehlmann and the Nabokov scholar Michael Maar discuss one of Maar\u2019s most unlikely discoveries about\u00a0Lolita. In your book The Two Lolitas, you made an intriguing discovery\u2014it started to obsess me a bit. What\u2019s equally interesting, and kind of outrageous, is that most Nabokov scholars ignored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":965,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[22011,247,22010,22013,22015,687,966,22009,12919,19152,22016,22012,22008,22014,14079,967],"class_list":["post-97111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-die-verfluchte-gioconda","tag-germany","tag-heinz-von-lichberg","tag-influences","tag-landladies","tag-language","tag-lolita","tag-michael-maar","tag-mysteries","tag-plagiarism","tag-scholarship","tag-the-cursed-giaconda","tag-the-two-lolitas","tag-the-waltz-invention","tag-vera-nabokov","tag-vladimir-nabokov"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWho Wrote \u201dLolita\u201d First?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a 1916 story by Heinz von Lichberg, a man falls in love with his landlady\u2019s daughter\u2014and her name is Lolita.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who Wrote Lolita First? An Interview with Michael Maar by Daniel Kehlmann\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 19, 2016 \u2013 In this conversation\u2014first published last month in the German magazine\u00a0Cicero\u2014Daniel Kehlmann and the Nabokov scholar Michael Maar discuss one of Maar\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-04-19T15:49:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-04-19T17:24:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"678\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"527\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Daniel Kehlmann\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Kehlmann\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Daniel Kehlmann\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d6738bc8c8a8d20252f9b081c3255d46\"},\"headline\":\"Who Wrote Lolita First? An Interview with Michael Maar\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-04-19T15:49:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-04-19T17:24:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\"},\"wordCount\":1710,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Die verfluchte Gioconda\",\"Germany\",\"Heinz von Lichberg\",\"influences\",\"landladies\",\"language\",\"Lolita\",\"Michael Maar\",\"mysteries\",\"plagiarism\",\"scholarship\",\"The Cursed Giaconda\",\"The Two Lolitas\",\"The Waltz Invention\",\"Vera Nabokov\",\"Vladimir Nabokov\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\",\"name\":\"Who Wrote \u201dLolita\u201d First?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-04-19T15:49:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-04-19T17:24:30+00:00\",\"description\":\"In a 1916 story by Heinz von Lichberg, a man falls in love with his landlady\u2019s daughter\u2014and her name is Lolita.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Who Wrote Lolita First? An Interview with Michael Maar\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d6738bc8c8a8d20252f9b081c3255d46\",\"name\":\"Daniel Kehlmann\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/514aa6ee06a0b5ee39a81bdbd5fd9d0d0aae58b272bf0694aa3bcccf0ecd70d0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/514aa6ee06a0b5ee39a81bdbd5fd9d0d0aae58b272bf0694aa3bcccf0ecd70d0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Daniel Kehlmann\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dkehlmann\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Who Wrote \u201dLolita\u201d First?","description":"In a 1916 story by Heinz von Lichberg, a man falls in love with his landlady\u2019s daughter\u2014and her name is Lolita.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Who Wrote Lolita First? An Interview with Michael Maar by Daniel Kehlmann","og_description":"April 19, 2016 \u2013 In this conversation\u2014first published last month in the German magazine\u00a0Cicero\u2014Daniel Kehlmann and the Nabokov scholar Michael Maar discuss one of Maar\u2019s","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-04-19T15:49:15+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-04-19T17:24:30+00:00","og_image":[{"width":678,"height":527,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Daniel Kehlmann","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Daniel Kehlmann","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/"},"author":{"name":"Daniel Kehlmann","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d6738bc8c8a8d20252f9b081c3255d46"},"headline":"Who Wrote Lolita First? An Interview with Michael Maar","datePublished":"2016-04-19T15:49:15+00:00","dateModified":"2016-04-19T17:24:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/"},"wordCount":1710,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg","keywords":["Die verfluchte Gioconda","Germany","Heinz von Lichberg","influences","landladies","language","Lolita","Michael Maar","mysteries","plagiarism","scholarship","The Cursed Giaconda","The Two Lolitas","The Waltz Invention","Vera Nabokov","Vladimir Nabokov"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/","name":"Who Wrote \u201dLolita\u201d First?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg","datePublished":"2016-04-19T15:49:15+00:00","dateModified":"2016-04-19T17:24:30+00:00","description":"In a 1916 story by Heinz von Lichberg, a man falls in love with his landlady\u2019s daughter\u2014and her name is Lolita.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/vladimir_nabokov_1969b.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/who-wrote-lolita-first-an-interview-with-michael-maar\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Who Wrote Lolita First? An Interview with Michael Maar"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d6738bc8c8a8d20252f9b081c3255d46","name":"Daniel Kehlmann","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/514aa6ee06a0b5ee39a81bdbd5fd9d0d0aae58b272bf0694aa3bcccf0ecd70d0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/514aa6ee06a0b5ee39a81bdbd5fd9d0d0aae58b272bf0694aa3bcccf0ecd70d0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Daniel Kehlmann"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dkehlmann\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/965"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97111"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97141,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97111\/revisions\/97141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}