Two clauses from a document in my possession entitled «Memorandum of Agreement» («made this sixth day of June nineteen hundred and fifty five between Mr. Vladimir Nabokov, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., and Olympia Press, ft, nie de Nesle, Paris») might do very well as a motto for the present occasion. Here they are in strophic form for the reader's convenience:
8
In the event of the Publishers
Going bankrupt
Or failing to make accountings and payments As herein specified,
Then in either event the present agreement Becomes automatically null and void
And the rights herein granted Revert to the Author.
9
The Publishers shall render statement
Of the number of copies sold On the 30th June and 31st December
Of each year Within one month from these dates
Respectively
And shall make payment to the Author At the time of such rendering of account.
The eighth stave, with its opening lines foretelling so plainly what was to happen to Mr. Girodias on December 14, 1964, and that beautiful, eloquent, almost sapphically modulated last verse («Revert to the Author»), is of great importance for the understanding of what Mr. Girodias calls «our enigmatic conflict». It will be also noted that while devoting a lot of space to the many «disappointments» that my attitude toward him caused him, he never mentions in the course of his article the perfectly obvious reason for a writer's resenting his association with a publisher — namely, the fact of Mr. Girodias' failing repeatedly, with a kind of maniacal persistence, to live up to clause 9 of our agreement. By stressing effects and concealing causes he gives a comic slant to his account of our relations, making it seem that during ten years I kept extravagantly fuming at a puzzled benefactor.
Lolita was finished at the beginning of 1954, in Ithaca, New York. My first attempts to have it published in the U. S. proved disheartening and irritating. On August 6 of that year, from Taos, New Mexico, 1 wrote to Madame Ergaz, of the Bureau Litteraire Clairouin. Paris, about my troubles. She had arranged the publication in French of some of my Russian and English books; I now asked her to find somebody in Europe who would publish Lolita in the original English. She replied that she thought she could arrange it. A month later, however, upon my return to Ithaca (where I taught Russian Literature at Cornell) I wrote to her saying I had changed my mind. New hopes had arisen for publication in America. They petered out, and next spring I got in touch with Madame Ergaz again, writing her (Feb. 16) that Sylvia Beach «might perhaps be interested if she still publishes». This was not followed up. By April 17 Madame Ergaz had received my typescript. On April 26, 1955, a fatidic date, she said she had found a possible publisher. On May 13 she named that person. It was thus that Maurice Girodias entered my files.
Mr. Girodias in his article overemphasizes the obscurity I languished in before 1955 as well as his part in helping me to emerge from it. On the other hand, I shall be strictly truthful when I say that before Madame Ergaz mentioned his name, I was totally ignorant of his existence, or that of his enterprise. He was recommended to me as the founder of The Olympia Press, which «had recently published, among other things, Htstotre d'U» (a novel 1 had heard praised by competent judges) and as the former director of the «Editions du Chene» which had «produced books admirable from the artistic point of view». He wanted Lolita not only because it was well written but because (as Mme. Ergaz informed me on May 13, 1955) «he thought that it might lead to a change in social attitudes toward the kind of love described in it». It was a pious although obviously ridiculous thought, but high-minded platitudes are often mouthed by enthusiastic businessmen and nobody bothers to disenchant them.
I had not been in Europe since 1940, was not interested in pornographic books, and thus knew nothing about the obscene novelettes which Mr. Girodias was hiring hacks to confect with his assistance, as he relates elsewhere. I have pondered the painful question whether I would have agreed so cheerfully to his publishing Lolita had I been aware in May, 1955, of what formed the supple backbone of his production. Alas, I probably would, though less cheer
I shall now proceed to point out a number of slippery passages and a few guileful inexactitudes in Mr. Girodias' article. For some reason which presumably I am too naive to grasp, he starts by citing an old curriculum vitae of mine which, he says, was sent to him by my agent together with the typescript of Lolita in April, 1955. Such a procedure would have been absurd. My files show that only much later, namely on February 8, 1957, he asked me to send him «all the biographical and bibliographical material» available for his brochure «L'affaire Lolita» (which he published when fighting the ban of the book in France); on February 12,1 sent him photographs, a list of published works, and a brief curriculum vitae. With the sneer of a hoodlum following an innocent passerby, Mr. Girodias now makes fun of such facts in it as my father's having been «an eminent statesman» or the «considerable fame» I had acquired in emigre circles. All this he had published himself (with many embellishments and additions gleaned elsewhere) in his brochure of 1957!
On the other hand, he now tones down substantially his proud recollections of having «edited» Lolita. On April 22, 1960, I had been obliged to write to the editor of The New YorkTimes Book Review (where Mr. Girodias had been comically flattered by a person unknown to me) thus: «Mr. Popkin in his recent article on Monsieur Girodias, the first publisher of my Lolita, says that I 'did some rewriting at Girodias' request.' I wish to correct this absurd misstatement. The only alterations Girodias very diffidently suggested concerned a few trivial French phrases in the English text, such as 'bon' 'c'est moi' 'mats comment' etc., which he thought might just as well be translated into English, and this I agreed to do».
I began to curse my association with Olympia Press not in 1957, when our agreement was, according to Mr. Girodias, «weighing heavily» on my «dreams of impending fortune» in America, but as early as 1955; that is, the very first year of my dealings with Mr. Girodias. From the very start I was confronted with the peculiar aura surrounding his business transactions with me, an aura of negligence, evasiveness, procrastination, and falsity. I complained of these peculiarities in most of my letters to my agent who faithfully transmitted my complaints to him but these he never explains in his account of our tenyearlong (195565) association.
«I hardly received the proofs back» [he received them in July, 1955], writes Mr. Girodias, «when Nabokov sent me a cable [August 29, i.e., after a month of Girodian silence] saying: «When is Lolita appearing. Worried. Please answer my letters' — an entreaty which has been repeated so often in so many cables sent by so many authors to so many [i.e., wise, calm, benevolent] publishers ..». The would-be wit and delightful flippancy of this remark should not fool anybody. Mr. Girodias alludes here to coy emotions typical of a young author hardly ever published before. Actually, at fiftysix years of age, I had had, since 1925, dealings — recurrent dealings — with at least a score of publishers and had never been exposed to anything like the tissue of haggling maneuvers and abstruse prevarications in which Mr. Girodias involves his victims (perhaps not deliberately — it just seems to be part of his bizarre nature). In reality, two specific questions were worrying me, and to them I was getting no answer. The main one of the two was the question of the copyright: the book had to be registered in Washington, in the author's name, and for this purpose I had to know the exact date of publication so as to insert it in the application forms. On October 8, 1955, I received, at last, a copy of the published book, but only on November 28, after some more «entreaties», did I learn that Lolita had been published on September 15, 1955. The second matter was a financial one — and proved to be the leitmotif of what Mr. Girodias terms the «sad, ungraceful history of Lolita». My benefactor had agreed to pay me an advance of 400,000 «anciens» francs (about a thousand dollars), one half on signature of the agreement (dated June 6, 1955), and the other half on publication. He had paid his first half only one month late. My wire did not help to elucidate the date when Mr. Girodias would have to pay the second half. It was easier for him to leave the matter open. I continued reminding him about that second check. I told him (October 5) that UI write for my pleasure, but publish for money». He paid only on December 27, under strong pressure from my agent, and more than three months after the second payment was due.