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(Re)writing Considered as an Act of Murder: How to Rewrite Nabokov's Despair in a Post-Nouveau Roman Context
- Nabokov Studies
- International Vladimir Nabokov Society and Davidson College
- Volume 2, 1995
- pp. 251-276
- 10.1353/nab.2011.0111
- Article
- Additional Information
Nabokov Studies, 2 (1995), 251-76. MICHEL SIRVENT (Denton, TX, U.S.A.) (RE)WRlTING CONSIDERED AS AN ACT OF MURDER: HOW TO REWRITE NABOKOV'S DESPAIR IN A POST-NOUVEAU ROMAN CONTEXT ' "Each work mirrors another," he suggested in his preamble : an impressive number of pictures, if not all, achieve their full significance only in relation to anterior works which are therein, either simply reproduced, whether completely or partially or, in a more allusive way, cryptically inscribed.2 Jean Lahougue produces new fictions by "re-writing" specific texts: his Comptine des Height3 draws on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians4 and La Doublure de Magrite5 explicitly refers to Georges Simenon's La Premi ère enquête de Maigret.6 More recently, Lahougue used the French version of Nabokov's Despair (La Méprise)7 as pre-text to "La ressemblance ," the title story of a collection that includes three other of his stories based upon authors as diverse as the philosopher Descartes, the entomologist Jean Henri Fabre, and a lesser known contemporary novelist, 1. ¡Editor's note: this article should be read in conjunction with jean Lahougue's "La ressemblance," which may be found in this issue as translated by Jeff Edmunds. All quotations are from this translation.] An early version of this essay was presented at the Eighth International Colloquium in Twentieth Century French Studies, March 21-23, 1991, at the University of Texas, Austin. 2. Georges Perec, Un Cabinet d'amateur (Paris: Balland, 1979), p. 25. 3. jean Lahougue, Comptine des Height (Paris: Gallimard, 1980). 4. Also entitled And Then There Were None (New York: Pocket Books, 1939). 5. Jean Lahougue, La Doublure de Magrite (Paris: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 1987). 6. Georges Simenon, ta Première enquête de Maigret (Paris: Les Presses de la Cité, 1948). 7. The French translation by M. Stora (Paris: Gallimard, 1939; rpr. "Folio," 1973) is not from the second English version (1966), but from the first English version (1937) from the Russian (1936). All page citations in the present article are to Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (New York: Vintage, 1965; rpt. 1989). 252 Nabokov Studies André Hardellet8 In 1988, at a Cerisy Colloquium,9 Lahougue explained in an essay entitled "Relecture et réécriture de La Méprise" how he came to re-write Despair.™ He recalls that, ten years earlier, an anonymous article compared his Non-Lieu dans un paysageu with another novel by Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian KnighV2. Lahougue's previous novel was thus characterized as a "remake." This relationship is transposed in the denouement of "La ressemblance." As we shall see, the ending requires a close analysis in order to determine who the "real" subject of the discourse is: Shortly after the death of the other, I published my Non-lieu, based on an old idea of which, of course, he had already made use. Which earned me, in J'informe (a short-lived daily created by Joseph Fontanet, since murdered without my having had anything to do with it) on the 14th of November 1977, this anonymous and dangerously relevant critique: Non-lieu dans un paysage, by Jean Lahougue (Gallimard). The narrator, reader at a publishing house, receives from a certain Jean Morelle, alias Desiderio, a mysterious manuscript. Following the supposed death of Morelle, the author attempts —very arduously—to develop a plot which is half detective story, half fantasy, at the end of which he confesses that Desiderio is none other than the narrator himself. One thinks of Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian Knight-of which this novel is nothing other than the belated remake, slowed by interminable digressions. No matter whether Lahougue's latest fictions qualify as parodies, pastiches , or remakes, they fall under Gérard Genette's category of "hypertexts"—as transformations of a single pre-text (parody), or imitations of a given style or set of procedures (pastiche)—as opposed to the broader and sometimes vague concept of "intertextuality," which, when clearly defined, corresponds instead to micro-textual and less conspicu8 . jean Lahougue, La Ressemblance et autres abus de langage (Paris: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 1989). 9. Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle, France, August 1988. Directed by Claudette Oriol...