Posted on 02/28/2013 3:55:14 PM PST by Borges
Vandals spray-painted the word “pedophile” on the wall of a museum dedicated to famous writer Vladimir Nabokov in St. Petersburg, Fontanka.ru city news website reported on Tuesday. The wall was spray-painted by the same group of self-styled “St. Petersburg Cossacks” who broke the museum’s window on January 9 and have been sending ominous letters to the museum, accusing the writer of propagating pedophilia and threatening “God’s wrath,” Fontanka.ru said. The Nabokov Museum is located in the mansion on Bolshaya Morskaya street where the celebrated writer and poet was born in 1899 and lived until November 1917. Nabokov is best known for “Lolita” (1995), a story with pedophilic connotations, but was never accused of child abuse himself. A one-man show based on “Lolita” was canceled in St. Petersburg by its author in October 2012, after he received threatening letters from the anonymous “Cossacks.” However, the performance took place in December and January, and its organizer was beaten by three unidentified attackers.
Book came out in about 1958. The movie, with James Mason, Peter Sellers and Shelley Winters came out in 1961.
The book is a brilliant satire - of pc avant le lettre - and about obsession. Nabokov was that great rarity, an intellectual and superb artist who was also a conservative. He led a heroic life in opposition to the Left, and deserves sainthood.
“Wow. who would desecrate the shrine to pedophilia?”
This is Russia. They have looked at the West and seen our values (which are quickly moving towards embracing pediophilia), and they DO NOT like it.
We’re not talking America or Europe where little kids (particularly boys) are now virtually considered “playthings”.
Nabokov’s values were certainly far from these thugs but not for the reasons you think.
Lolita was written in English, in the American idiom. It is, of course, a tragedy with intellectual profundity and contains a subtle wink or a humorous reference on every page. The pedophile Humbert Humbert never grasped that he was being manipulated by the ‘nymphette” Lolita (Dolores Haze) and her other secret pedophile paramour, Claire Quilty. It is sick and beautiful and devious and romantic and ironic to the extreme. These Cossacks obviously cannot appreciate great literature.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul.”
Bill Clinton is in mourning.
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