Lolita, ou « l'ombre d'une branche russe ». Étude de l'auto-traduction

Abstract

This article deals with the Russian translation of Lolita completed by Vladimir Nabokov in 1965, the one and only translation he made of the novels he had written in English. The study of how the structure, the language and the tropes work leads to the idea that not only did Nabokov try to introduce his specific artistic difference—a rather sirinian difference—into his Russian text, but that he also worked at inventing a future, hypothetical Russian reader. The challenge of self-translation would not only replace Nabokov as a writer into the broken thread of Russian literature, but also give Russian literature a work that would represent the beginning of a rebirth of modern Russian literature, beyond the soviet era.

Keywords

• confession
• modern Russian literature
• politics
• Russian emigration
• Russian Lolita
• Russian Renaissance