Museum dedicated to ‘Lolita’ creator Nabokov vandalized

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Published time: January 12, 2013 11:07
Edited time: January 13, 2013 10:30

Police in St. Petersburg are looking for perpetrators who broke several windows in the Russian museum dedicated to the celebrated author Vladimir Nabokov. The vandals are accusing the creator of Lolita of promoting pedophilia.

­The perpetrators reportedly left a bottle containing a quote from the Old Testament about lust.

It's believed that the vandals committed their act at night. In the note they left, they also warned about the next acts of aggression planned against the Nabokov museum, as well as the State Hermitage Museum, Novaya Gazeta reported.

Although the exact text of the notes has not been disclosed, it reportedly came down to the following: "How can you remain unafraid of God's wrath promoting Nabokov's pedophilia?"

The Nabokov Museum is located in the historical mansion built in the 19th century on the street where the celebrated writer and poet was born in 1899. Although Nabokov lived there only until November 1917, he said that it had remained for him "the only house in the world" throughout his life. The house has been described in every detail in Nabokov's autobiography Other Shores.

According to its personnel, over the last few months the Nabokov Museum on Bolshaya Morskaya Street has been attacked by emails containing threats in which unidentified angry critics keep expressing their outrage over Nabokov's works. They have been reportedly slamming the Russian-American novelist for his best-known creation, Lolita, describing it as amoral and accusing the author of promoting pedophilia.

image from http://nabokovmuseum.org

"In the last six months we have received a number of strange messages coming to our email address, containing a great deal of orthographical mistakes. As far as we know, our colleagues from the Hermitage Museum receive similar letters from unknown angry residents," director of Nabokov House told Novaya Gazeta.

Last October, Russian theater director Leonid Mozgovoy had to cancel the premiere of Lolita, based on Nabokov's novel, scheduled to take place at the St. Petersburg Contemporary Art Museum ‘Erarta’.

Several days before the first night a letter signed by ‘The Cossacks of St. Petersburg’ was released on the internet, addressed to the theater's bosses.

image from http://nabokovmuseum.org

the statement said.

The director said he canceled the performance in fear for the consequences and to

The premiere of Lolita is scheduled finally to take place in February.