The Enchanter

The Enchanter

First edition
Author	Vladimir Nabokov
Original title	Волшебник (Volshebnik)
Translator	Dmitri Nabokov
Language	Russian
Publisher	G. P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	1986
Published in English	1986

The Enchanter is a novella written by Vladimir Nabokov in Paris in 1939. As Волшебник (Volshebnik) it was his last work of fiction written in Russian. Nabokov never published it during his lifetime. After his death, his son Dmitri translated the novella into English in 1986 and it was published the following year. Its original Russian version became available in 1991. The story deals with the hebephilia of the protagonist and thus is linked to and presages the Lolita theme.

Nabokov showed it to just a few people, and then lost the manuscript in the process of coming to America and believed that he had destroyed it. However, he recovered it later in Ithaca in 1959, at a time he had already published Lolita. He reread The Enchanter, and termed it “precise and lucid”, but left it alone suggesting that eventually "the Nabokovs" could translate it. Dmitri Nabokov judged it to be an important and mature work of his father and translated and published it posthumously. The published work also contains two author’s notes (comments by Vladimir about The Enchanter), and a postscript essay by Dmitri titled On a Book Entitled the Enchanter.

The story is essentially timeless and placeless. The protagonist is a middle-aged Arthur who lusts after a certain type of adolescent girls. Infatuated with a specific girl, Maria. He marries her mother to gain access to her. The mother, already sick, soon passes away, and Maria now is in his care. He takes her on a tour. On their first night, Arthur exposes himself to her and she terrifiedly rejects him. Shocked at his own monstrosity, he runs out on the street and is killed by a car.

Nabokov himself called The Enchanter his "pre-Lolita". However, one has to be careful in linking the two works. In common is the theme of hebephilia and the basic strategy - to gain access to the girl, the male marries the mother. However, Lolita diverges significantly from its predecessor. Its main characters are named. Charlotte and Dolores have distinct character developments and views, rather than serving as passive pawns in the hebephile’s strategy. Dolores is a person in her own right and even acts seductively. The resolution differs considerably. Humbert Humbert is upstaged by a rival and murders him, whereas the protagonist of The Enchanter commits suicide. There is no external rival in The Enchanter. Lolita retains echoes of The Enchanter, such as a death in the street (the mother in this case), and a hotel named the “Enchanted Hunters”. Lolita originated in English. Nabokov referred to Lolita as his love affair with the English language. This comment is ironic in itself, because the conclusion of Lolita is an argument by the imprisoned hebephile and murderer that his corrupt history is a love affair. The language of Lolita achieves a level of irony and humor considerably more developed than that of the more prosaic The Enchanter.