While several cases of incest have erupted in recent weeks in France, the publication of the complete works of Vladimir Nabokov in Pleiade is singled out, as the writer remains associated with his sulphurous novel "Lolita".

A text often considered as an apology for pedophilia, which Nabokov has always defended.

Thursday, the very prestigious collection of the Pleiade publishes a third volume dedicated to the works of Vladimir Nabokov.

An output that resonates strangely at the moment, with the proliferation of cases of pedocriminality, insofar as the writer of Russian origin is often summed up in his most famous opus,

Lolita

, and the hyper sexualization of young girls.

It is however to make him a bad trial, consequence of an approximate reading of a text which unleashes passions for more than 65 years.

Because

Lolita

, Nabokov's masterpiece, is the story of a misunderstanding.

At the time of its publication, in 1955, it was already causing a stir.

The novel is accused of being poisonous, pornographic, full of insanity.

It was also banned in France until 1958. And for good reason: it is the confession of Humbert Humbert, a forty-something who falls in love with his daughter-in-law, Dolorès Haze, 12 and a half years old, that he nicknames Lolita.

He becomes her guardian and abuses her while wandering through America in the 1940s. 

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Confusion between author and narrator

But

Lolita

is not, as has been too often said, an apology for pedophilia, it is the confessions of a pedophile.

Nabokov disapproved of his character's behavior.

He also explained himself that the subject was so distant from him that he had had to deploy all his literary resources to make the story plausible.

Despite this, the reader has often tended to associate the author and narrator of this first person account.

And the misunderstanding resurfaces from time to time.

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Moreover, we tend to forget that

Lolita

is far from being Nabokov's only novel.

He wrote about twenty of them.

In the third volume of the pleiad, we can notably read

Ada ou l'ardeur

, a love story that Nabokov said he wanted to be remembered for this novel.