The sexual failure of Superman (played here by Kirk Alyn) is the subject of a newly unearthed poem by Vladimir NabokovBefore he created Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov had another muse: Superman. An unpublished poem in which the writer imagined the superhero’s frustration at being unable to consummate his relationship with Lois Lane has been unearthed, 80 years after it was assumed lost. The 46-line poem, which includes reference to Superman’s “tremendous thighs”, was rejected by The New Yorker magazine in 1942, in part for its risqué imagery. SponsoredNabokov scholars were aware of the work’s existence from references in his correspondence but no manuscript was thought to have survived. Vladimir NabokovThe poem is published for the first time in the latest issue of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) after being discovered in the archives of Nabokov’s friend Edmund Wilson at Yale University.

Source: The Times March 04, 2021 00:00 UTC