Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977

by Vladimir Nabokov

There will also be notes on Russian customs, literary events, and other matters referring to Pushkin's time.

  The introduction will contain a brief Life of Pushkin and an evaluation of the novel's place in West European literature.

  In recent years a great number of fragments and new readings of various passages have been discovered, and all this will be incorporated in my translation.

  "Eugene Onegin" is as great a world classic as "Hamlet" or "Moby Dick", and the presentation of it will be as true to the original as scholarship and art can make it.

  I have had the project in mind for a considerable time. Every year, in class, I am reminded of the sore need that exists for it, since this novel, the backbone of any study of Russian literature, cannot be adequately taught, or appreciated by the students, in the absence of an acceptable translation. However the pressure of current work has prevented me from doing much more than jotting down rough drafts of a few passages. Although I have no publisher in view, I have no doubt that, once completed, such a work would win the indorsement of some University Press. I would work on my project in the United States and, if given the means to concentrate on it, could probably complete it within a year or so.2

  TO: PASCAL COVICI

  CC, 2 pp.

  Cambridge, Mass.

  May 16, 1952

  Dear Covici,

  I am sorry to be so late with my answer to your kind letter of April 16 ** blame for it the stress of that end-of-term business which, for me, is always like something of a sprint at the end of a long run.

  I have been working, however, at some of my projects, and here is a general "aperçu" of what I hope to accomplish in the near future:

  1). The "Slovo" (Russian epic of the late 12th century, of which I spoke to you) should be ready by fall. The book I would offer you then would contain 1. The basic Slavic text (about 25–30 pages), 2. My translation (about 40–50 p.), 3. My notes (about 40 p.), 4. Historic and linguistic commentaries by Prof. Jakobson of Harvard Univ. and Prof. Szeftel of Cornell Univ. (about 100 pages).

  The whole book will be under 200 pages.

  2). "Eugene Onegin", the Russian novel, early 19th century. This is, as I think I have been telling you during our most pleasant interview in Cambridge, the greatest work of fiction in Russian literature, and it has never been properly translated into any language, while even in Russian no edition exists as yet with complete notes and commentaries. This is exactly the kind of edition I have in mind. I could never hope to complete it if I had not been granted a Guggenheim fellowship for the coming year. The work itself will take about 100 pages (it will be in prose with the possible exception of a few samples rendered in verse). I expect that the commentaries and notes will take about three times as much space. And, of course, there would have to be a complete Russian text (this too has never been properly assembled and published in toto in Russian) au verso or in the end. The translation, I think, will be ready in about a year. The comments will take a few months more than that.

  3). My book of literary criticism I hope to polish off for print within the same time. You have its plan.1

  4). The reminiscences shall take a couple of years to write.

  5). And I am also working on my new novel, on and off, but I would rather not discuss any definite time limits (or even indefinite ones) for the present. I shall keep you informed as I progress along.

  In about a month we shall leave Cambridge for the summer, though I do not know yet our exact itinerary. My permanent address will remain "Prof. V. Nabokov, Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.".

  One more thing I would like to mention. The Chekhov Publishing House of the Ford Foundation has just published my novel "DAR" ("The Gift"). This book deals with the development of a writer of genius. It contains his early poetry, the material he assembles for his second book (which he does not write), his first great book which is the biography of a famous Russian critic of the sixties (this biography, for some reason, created something of a furore in the Russian émigré circles, though it was never published until the recent edition by the Ford Foundation), and a happy love story involving my young man and his half-Jewish fiancée. Would you be interested in publishing a translation?

  Sincerely yours,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: ROSALIND WILSON1

  CC, 1 p.

  Dubois, Wyo.

  July 24, 1952

  Dear Rosalind,

  Vladimir has asked me to answer your letter of July 1st for him, and, even before I do so, to apologize for the lateness of his reply.

  The question of mimicry is one that has passionately interested him all his life and one of his pet projects has always been the compilation of a work that would comprise all known examples of mimicry in the animal kingdom. This would make a voluminous work and the research alone would take two or three years. If this sort of thing corresponds to what Houghton Mifflin have in mind, Vladimir is your man. Should they, however, think of a much slighter work meant for the amusement of the lay reader in his more ambitious "scientific" moments, this, Vladimir says, would not be in his line.

  We shall be on the move before the end of this week, destination yet undecided. The best address to use would be Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., but a letter to General Delivery, Dubois, Wyo., will also follow.

  It was a great disappointment to us that we could not fit a visit to Wellfleet into our schedule this spring. We hope to catch up on this in the fall. If you go there in the course of the summer, please give our love to the whole family.

  Best regards from both of us.

  Sincerely,

  P.S. I don't think I made it sufficiently clear that the book on mimicry Vladimir would like to write would present, in the first place, his own views in this very complicated matter, based on the classified presentation of all the known examples.

  TO: HENRY ALLEN MOE

  March 1953

  CC, 1 p.

  Ithaca, N.Y.

  Dear Mr. Moe,

  I have devoted two months to research at the Widener Library for my "Eugene Onegin", and have found more fascinating material than I expected or hoped. As I see it now, the work will consist of an introduction of about sixty pages, the translation proper (some two hundred printed pages) and over three hundred pages of various notes and commentaries. It will be the most comprehensive work on "Eugene Onegin" in any language.

  I have completed so far about two thirds of my library research, a preliminary draft of some seventy per cent of the stanzas, and have organized my notes relating to the first two chapters. There are in all eight basic chapters and fragments of two more.

  Now I am going to the South-West and shall stay there till September working on the translation proper, which calls for intense concentration. I hope to have finished the translation by the beginning of the fall semester at Cornell, after which I shall still have a considerable amount of work to do, organizing and shaping commentaries for Chapters III-VIII and the fragmentary IX and X. Normally I manage to combine some creative work (fiction or poetry) with my academic duties, but this Pushkin thing has become an obsession with me, and I feel I must get it out of my system before starting anything else. I feel sure I could bring my project to an end sometime early in 1954, if I could devote to it all my time which is not occupied by academic duties. I would therefore like to apply for a prolongation of my Fellowship for six months.1 I would be very glad to show you a portion of my work in its more or less final form, such as the sets of commentaries belonging to the first two chapters.

  Sincerely yours,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: PROF. HARRY LEVIN1

  CC, 2 pp.

  Portal, Arizona

  May 2, 1953

  Dear Harry,

  We are in the south-east corner of Arizona, on the border of New and Old Mexico. The nearer mountains are maroon, spotted with the dark green of junipers and the lighter green of mesquites, and the far mountains are purple as in the Wellesl
ey song. From eight a.m. to noon, or later, I collect butterflies (only Wells, Conan Doyle and Conrad have portrayed lepidopterists—all of them spies, or murderers, or neurotics) and from two p.m. to dinner time I write (a novel). We spent two months in Cambridge—or rather Widener. I found even the book of dreams Tatiana used in "E.O.". My commentaries to the novel have grown to some 300 pages. I have read all the books Pushkin refers to in "E.O.". Even Burke. Even Gibbon. Of course, Richardson and Mme Cottin. And moreover, I have read all the stuff (Richardson, Shakespeare, Byron) in French, since this is what Pushkin had done.

  Did I thank you for your book? We shall talk of it at length when we meet again. It is brilliant and erudite.2

  I am re-reading "Tom Jones" and finding him horribly dull.

  We saw a good deal of the lovable James'es and Sweeneys in Cambridge. Bollingen has bought for a handsome sum my "Igor" and Roman's comments. Roman arranged the whole matter with wonderful charm. We also saw, of course, a lot of the Karpovichs. And the Kerby-Millers, and many other friends. We missed the Levins.

  I wonder if your account of your trip will make me Europe-sick, or at least France-sick. I know that every time I come to this dear West, I feel a pang of recognition, and no Switzerlands could lure me away from Painted Canyon or Silver Creek.

  Véra joins me in sending you both our warmest greetings and says she is about to write Lena.

  Yours,

  TO: BURMA-VITA CO.1

  TLS, 1 p.

  Goldwin Smith Hall

  Cornell University

  Ithaca, New York

  August 22, 1953

  Gentlemen:

  I am writing to offer you the following jingle for your entertaining collection:

  He passed two cars; then five; then seven;

  and then he beat them all to Heaven.

  If you think you can use it, please send cheque to address given above.2

  Yours truly,

  Verá Nabokov

  (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)

  TO: ELENA SIKORSKI

  ALS, 2 pp.

  29 September 1953

  957 East State St.

  Ithaca, N.Y.

  My dear Elenochka,

  yes, I repent, I ought to have written you a long time ago. I have been working for about a year now on four books simultaneously, and in the intervals try to forget that there exists such a thing as a pen.

  Poor Rostik. It is touching, but also very silly.1 I'm afraid that E.K.2 will end up being nanny to a third generation....

  You always write so vividly and so well about Zhikochka. Ours has run his third car into the ground and is getting ready to buy a used plane. During the summer he took part in a Harvard expedition to almost totally unexplored mountains in British Columbia, before which he worked building highways in Oregon and handling a gigantic truck. He is absolutely and somehow brilliantly fearless, popular with his comrades, endowed with a magnificent brain, but disinclined to study. We found him in his bivouac tent on the shore of a lake in the Tetons (western Wyoming), and from there he drove off to Colorado. He does up to 1000 miles (1600 km.) a day in his car—it's unbelievable!—sometimes driving twenty or thirty hours at a stretch. Véra and I spent the spring in Arizona, and the summer in Oregon, worrying constantly about him—I doubt if we'll ever get used to it. We saw him the other day at Harvard; he has grown a splendid blondish, shovel-shaped beard and looks like Alexander III.

  Véra and I have settled in Ithaca in the same house we had in 1948, and it's all very comfortable. I have about 300 students in all, and teach about eight hours a week—three lectures on European literature, three on Russian liter., and an hour and half devoted to Pushkin, for special students. I think I shall finish my enormous Eug. Oneg. sometime this winter. Now my novel is being typed. I am working on a series of stories for the New Yorker. I have more or less completed and sold an Engl, translation of Slovo o polku igor.3 Soon I must deliver to the Chekhov Publishing House in New York the Russian translation I did with Véra of my Conclusive Evidence4 I have stopped reading newspapers and magazines—there is simply no time for everything.

  I think, if everything goes well, we'll fly over to Europe some time—but first I must finish my travaux. I am fairly fat, just as before (190 pounds), I have false teeth and a bald pate, but I am capable of walking up to 18 miles a day in mountainous terrain and usually do ten, and I play tennis better than I did in my youth. The passion for butterflies has turned into a real mania this year, and there have been many interesting discoveries. In general everything is going wonderfully well, and I would so much like everything to be fine with you. Keep well. Véra is enclosing a poem.

  I embrace you, my dearest.

  Your V.5

  TO: KATHARINE A. WHITE

  CC, 1 p.

  Ithaca, September 29, 1953

  Dear Katharine,

  I would have returned the proofs sooner if—because of my long absence—I had not been more than ordinarily occupied with college work.

  Many thanks for your charming letter, the cheque, and the Pnin proofs. Apparently I did not make the conductor's gesture (note 7) clear enough, and obviously your suggestion about the forest ride (note 9) is a misprint. Otherwise, everything is O.K.

  The Pnin story is the first chapter of a little book (ten such chapters in all) that I hope to complete within a year or so. It is not the enormous, mysterious, heartbreaking novel that, after five years of monstrous misgivings and diabolical labors, I have more or less completed.1 CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE and PNIN have been brief sunny escapes from its intolerable spell. This great and coily thing has had no precedent in literature. In none of its parts will it be suitable for the New Yorker. According to our agreement, however, I shall show it to you (sometime in New York) under the rose of silence and the myrtle of secrecy.

  The rest of this winter will be devoted to bringing into shape my Guggenheim book on Pushkin and to translating into Russian (!) my CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE for the Ford Foundation.2 I am looking for a patron who would arrange things so that I could give up teaching—or for a university that would pay me, say, 12 thousand dollars for a few annual lectures based on my books.

  As you see, I do not quite know when you will get the next Pnin story, but you will. If by any chance you decided to publish the first instalment without waiting for the rest, I would welcome it.

  Véra and I would like to see you both very much.

  Best love.

  TO: MORRIS BISHOP

  MS, 1 p. Mrs. Morris Bishop.

  To Morris Bishop

  The old man who devised the Roomette

  Now in Hades is bedded, I'll bet:

  To make water, his bed

  He must prop on his head—

  —A ridiculous doom, or doomette.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Night train NYC—Ithaca

  2.XI.53

  There was a young lady who met

  A gentleman in a roomette.

  She said of the case:

  "We had both the same space,

  Et il fallait que je me soumette!"

  M. G. B.1

  TO: MORRIS BISHOP

  1953

  TS, 1 p. Cornell University.

  For Morris Bishop

  There wás a housebúilder named Ji[[[macute.gif]]]my Ricks,

  Who built hóuses for mákers of li[[[macute.gif]]]ericks,

  But becaúse of a stútter

  B's he tried not to útter,

  And when aśking for brícks would say "Gímme 'ricks."

  —Vladimir Naboko.

  TO: KATHARINE A. WHITE

  CC, 1 p.

  Ithaca, N.Y.

  December 23, 1953

  Dear Katharine,

  It was nice to hear about your grandbaby. I hope everything continues to go well with mother and child.

  I shall try to explain about the book. Its subject is such that V., as a college teacher, cannot very well publish it under his real name. Especially, since the book is written in the first
person, and the "general" reader has the unfortunate inclination to identify the invented "I" of the story with its author. (This is, perhaps, particularly true of the American "general" reader).

  Accordingly, V. has decided to publish the book under an assumed name (provided he can find a publisher) and wait for the reviews before divulging his identity. It is of the utmost importance to him that his incognito be respected. He would trust you, of course, and Andy, if you promise to keep the secret. Now, suppose you decide that there is nothing in LOLITA to interest the New Yorker, would the MS still have to be read by the other members of the editorial staff, or would it be possible for you to make a final decision without it? If the MS has to be read by anyone besides you, would it be possible for you to keep V.'s name secret? Could you be quite sure that there would be no leaks?

  V. is very anxious to hear from you about it and have your assurance of complete secrecy before he sends you the MS. Moreover, the nature of the plot being what it is, he hesitates about mailing it. Should he make up his mind to visit New York in January, he would prefer to bring the MS personally to your house. Would it be possible to keep it away from the office? V. has been asked by a Russian club to give a reading in January. If he accepts, it will pay for his trip, and then he will bring the MS to New York. If not, we shall find some other way to get it to you within a few weeks. He doubts, however, that any part of the book can be suitable for the New Yorker. But he would like you to read it.