Dmitri Nabokov sobre Lo’s Diary de Pia Pera
Nabokov, Dmitri. “Foreword”. En Lo’s Diary. Pia Pera. Trans. Ann Goldstein. NY: Foxrock, 1999. vii-x.
Lolita is not in the public domain, and won’t be until well into the next millenium when copyright expires–notwihtstanding which [ix] the Washington Post advanced the view that I should lighten up: Lolita, their editors urged, should be fair game in the fields of copyright because it has “come inescapably into common consciousness”.
I thought then, and think now, that this is silly. Is Lolita to pay this price because it is too good, too famous? Are writers to strive for mediocrity lest their works similarly enter the “common consciousness”? Are icons of popular culture–Star Wars perhaps–to be made subject to plundering by free riders because they have entered the common consciousness? The Post urged me to “rethink” my stance, asking whether books like Madam Pera’s “can truly do the original anything but homage?” By ignoring the fact that homage to Lolita can be and has been paid with bona fide licenses, the question seems na