Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Page 14
Best wishes from both of us to both of you.
Sincerely,
TO: PASCAL COVICI
CC, 1 p.
101 Irving Place
Ithaca, N.Y.
February 3, 1954
Dear Pat,
Please return the little girl1 to the above address, using the Railway Express (not the regular mail).
I am sending you the first two chapters, 52 typewritten pages, of my Pnin novel. The first chapter appeared in the New Yorker (November 28, 1953). It will be a book of about 225–250 pages and—as I see it now—will consist of ten chapters of unequal length in all. In the next eight chapters, the insecurity of Pnin's job becomes evident while simultaneously it transpires that owing to some juggling, which Dr. Eric Wind blames upon his first wife, Eric's marriage to Liza is invalid, and in the midst of her intrigue with "George" she returns for a while to Pnin. Owing to a further impact of circumstances, Pnin finds himself solely responsible for the welfare of Liza's boy. There are some surprises and alarums. Then, at the end of the novel, I, V.N., arrive in person to Waindell College to lecture on Russian literature, while poor Pnin dies, with everything unsettled and uncompleted, including the book Pnin had been writing all his life. This is a very spare outline, and of course as little an expression of the book's beauty as Aphrodite's skeleton would be of hers; but I give it you just as a general notion of my general plans.
There is a good chance that the novel will be finished in June and I intend to send parts of it to the New Yorker as I go.
I would wish to reserve all foreign rights, as well as cinematographic, television etc. (all subsidiary) rights. The New Yorker writes me that Pnin is a great hit with their readers. I would nevertheless wish a substantial publicity budget included in the agreement. The main reason for my falling out with Harpers was the way they handled CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE. I would further wish the book to appear between fall and Christmas 1954.
I have no doubt that you have in mind a "good" contract and that this is going to be a long and fruitful connection.2
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JAMES LAUGHLIN
CC, 1 p.
101 Irving Place
Ithaca, N.Y.
February 3, 1954
Dear Laughlin,
Would you be interested in publishing a timebomb that I have just finished putting together? It is a novel of 459 typewritten pages.
If you would like to see it, the following precautions would have to be observed:
First of all, I would have to have your word that you alone would read it. Everything else could be settled later. You would further have to give me an address where the MS could reach you personally and directly. This is a very serious matter for me, as you will understand after reading the work.1
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: WALLACE BROCKWAY1
CC, 1 p.
101 Irving Place
Ithaca, N. Y.
March 18, 1954
Dear Mr. Brockway,
My wife and I very much enjoyed your visit to Ithaca. I shall be in New York and could have lunch with you on Saturday, April 3rd, if this is convenient to you.
Yesterday I sent you by Express the MS I told you about. I need hardly remind you that I am submitting it to S. & S. on a highly confidential basis.
Sincerely yours
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JAMES LAUGHLIN
CC, 1 p.
General Delivery
Taos, N.M.
July 4, 1954
Dear Mr. Laughlin,
Vladimir asks me to find out if you have returned from your Asian trip, and if you would care to read his manuscript now, in spite of the very rigid conditions he is forced to stipulate about this Ms.
If you think you can find time to read it yourself, he will have it sent to you. Should you feel that you want it for publication after having read it, you might naturally want to have the opinion of one of your readers. But Vladimir would like to be sure that you will not show it to anyone unless you are reasonably certain that you desire to publish the book. The sender named on the package will be a friend of ours living in New York.
I hope you have had an interesting and successful journey.
Sincerely
TO: WALLACE BROCKWAY
CC, 1 p.
General Delivery
Taos, New Mexico
July 15, 1954
Dear Mr. Brockway,
I have finished working on Part One of ANNA KARENIN1 and am having the thing typed. It will be in your hands before the end of the month.
There will be ninety six notes of varying length; and I have corrected the numerous blunders in Garnett's text. I have also finished the foreword for Part One and a brief expose of the main introduction.2
Thank you very much for your efforts on behalf of LOLITA.3 Would you mind taking care of the MS until you hear from me again, which will be soon? I want to have the thing published and am looking for an agent. Incidentally, would you happen to know of one who would undertake to place the book? I would be willing to let him have up to twenty five percent.
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: WALLACE BROCKWAY
CC, 1 p.
General Delivery
Taos, New Mexico
July 25, 1954
Dear Mr. Brockway,
I received your wire on Monday but the "reader's report" you mentioned has not arrived. So I have decided to mail you the stuff, partly because I have to turn my attention at once to some other work that has been waiting, and partly because I may move to another place soon and would appreciate receiving the 450 dollars before I leave.
I am sending you: 1. A list of points to be made in the Main Introduction; 2. A Foreword to Part One (22 pages) (from this Foreword some items may be transferred eventually to the Main Introduction), consisting of six sections (Characterization; Imagery; Calendar; Time Elements; Names; List of Characters in Part One)—the last of these sections (the list of characters) may be amalgamated later with a List covering all eight parts; 3. A collection of 104 notes, on 44 pages, (two of these notes may need some revision: the purchasing power of the dollar in 1872 should be checked, and I would dearly like to obtain a plan of the 1872 St. Petersburg-Moscow "sleeper"); 4. A list of absolutely necessary corrections of the Garnett translation. (The page and line are given for each correction, and in every given line the new version begins one word before and ends one word after the corrected text; there are dots before and after the corrected text unless the correction begins or ends the line).
You will find that the number of notes is twice as great as that of your queries, so I assume that you will find answers to some of the questions in the reader's report that I have not yet received.
Many thanks for forwarding the MS.
Sincerely yours,
TO: GERTRUDE ROSENSTEIN1
CC, 1 p.
General Delivery
Taos, New Mexico
July 25, 1954
Dear Miss Rosenstein,
Thanks for your kind letter. I wish you had asked me to translate for you the libretto of "Boris Godunov" or even any of the Rimski-Korsakov operas based on Pushkin's text. But, unless you know Russian, you can have no idea of what Chaykovski (and his brother) did to the Pushkin verse novel when preparing their vile libretto for "Eugene Onegin". Lines from the greatest poetical work ever written in Russian were picked out at random, mutilated at will and combined with the tritest concoctions of Peter and Modest Chaykovski. The resulting libretto is an absurdity and an abomination. It consists of vulgar and, in my view, criminal inanities. To my sincere regret, I cannot associate my name with it in any way whatsoever. The only thing I could have done would have been to compose an entirely new libretto to fit the music, basing it on the true "Eugene Onegin" as written by Pushkin. However, this would have been a very different kind of job from the one you have in mind
.
Sorry.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: KATHARINE A. WHITE
CC, 2 pp.
Taos, August n, 1954
Dear Katharine,
Five months have elapsed since you wrote me about the second Pnin chapter—do forgive me for this long silence!
I was immersed at the time in a most harrowing work—a Russian version and recomposition of Conclusive Evidence. I think I have told you more than once what agony it was, in the early 'forties, to switch from Russian to English. After going through that atrocious metamorphosis, I swore I would never go back from my wizened Hyde form to my ample Jekyll one—but there I was, after fifteen years of absence, wallowing again in the bitter luxury of my Russian verbal might. Hardly had I finished that book, when I had to put into shape for eventual publication a series of lectures on Kafka, Proust and Joyce. And finally, a New York publisher suggested I revise and annotate an English translation of Anna Karenin. The footnotes for the First Part alone took me two months to collect and compose, and there had to be a foreword and other commentaries. I have just finished this First Part, and it is with some relief that I turn to your old and new letters: thanks for being so kind to a taciturn contributor.
As you know I sold the Pnin rights (with, of course, the obvious New Yorker stipulation) to Viking—on the strength of the first two chapters. They paid me well; but I do not know when I shall be able to deliver to them the completed MS.
When I started this letter, I intended to answer—and refute—your criticism of Chapter 2 point by point; but I feel now that the five-month delay has dulled that urge. Let me say merely that the "unpleasant" quality of Chapter 2 is a special trait of my work in general; you just did not notice in Chapter 1 the same nastiness, the same "realism" and the same pathos. The disgusting Wind pair are there to stay, I am afraid—and I can assure you that my psychotherapists differ from those of other writers on the subject.
I shall send you sometime in September a chapter on Pnin's vacation with Russian friends in New Hampshire, his return to the university and his discovery that he is about to lose his job, and another chapter, dealing with the nasty experiences of the Wind child at St. Matthew's, a private New England episcopalian school.
Chance and certain lepic considerations have led us to an adobe house ten miles north of Taos, an ugly and dreary town with soi-disant "picturesque" Indian paupers placed at strategic points by the Chamber of Commerce to lure tourists from Oklahoma and Texas who deem the place "arty". There are, however, some admirable canyons where most interesting butterflies occur.
Some extremely unpleasant circumstances, which I shall explain to you later, make it imperative for us to leave Taos for New York (a grave sickness in the family). I shall telephone you at the New Yorker next week on the chance you may be there. There is a number of things that I would like to discuss with you.
Best love to you and Andy.
TO: PROF. REUBEN BROWER1
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N. Y.
September 10, 1954
Dear Mr. Brower,
My husband has asked me to give you a short description of his paper. He has had many unexpected matters to attend to and is afraid that you might not get a copy of the thing in time.
The main theme of his paper is that "the clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase". This is illustrated by observations gathered during his work on a translation of EUGENE ONEGIN. The paper is divided into seven parts:
Description of the novel and explanation of its dependence on certain western literary traditions.
Explanation of the peculiarities of Russian prosody.
A demonstration of how Pushkin's imagery and language are derived from XVIII-century French poetry, all of which must be taken into consideration when transferring them to English or back to French.
How a translator chooses his medium.
Defects of some existing translations.
The translator's workshop is shown, and some difficult passages are translated to the best of the translator's ability, after the necessity for rejecting some plausible solutions has been demonstrated.
Conclusions:
That it is impossible to translate ONEGIN in rhyme;
That it is impossible to describe in a series of notes the modulations and rhymes of the text as well as its associations and special features;
That it is possible to translate ONEGIN with reasonable accuracy by substituting for the original 14-line stanza, fourteen unrhymed lines of varying length, from iambic dimeter to iambic pentameter.
From this fact as applied to ONEGIN, some general conclusions are drawn.
I hope this will help you to some degree. My husband wants me to tell you that he is very much looking forward to meeting you.
Sincerely yours,
TO: ROGER W. STRAUS, JR.1
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
October 15, 1954
Dear Mr. Straus,
Some time ago you wrote me kindly expressing interest in my new novel. I could not do anything about it at the time for I had promised James Laughlin of New Directions to let him see it first, even though I did not expect him to want to publish it.
I have just heard from him as expected, and am asking him now to forward the MS to you.
For reasons you will easily understand after reading the book, I would wish to publish it under a penname. And for the same reasons, I would like to ask you to do me the favor of reading it yourself and not having it read by anyone else unless, after you have read it, you come to the conclusion that you wish to consider its publication.
I hope I may hear soon from you.
Yours truly,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JAMES LAUGHLIN
TLS, 1 p.
Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.
October 15, 1954
Dear Laughlin,
Thanks for your letter. I understand your point and shall in all probability take your advice regarding publication abroad.1 Any concrete suggestions you would care to make regarding such publication would be appreciated.
Before I ship her to France, I would like to show L. to Farrar, Straus & Young, 101 Fifth Avenue. A short while ago Mr. Straus wrote me and asked to read my latest. Would you please do me the favor of forwarding the MS to him (Mr. Roger W. Straus, Jr.) by Railway Express (or messenger, if you prefer), making sure that the package goes to him personally. I would be much obliged to you if you could do it without delay, since I have written him about it.
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JASON EPSTEIN1
CC, 1 p.
Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.
November 3, 1954
Dear Mr. Epstein,
Thank you for your letter. I am shipping you the MS by Railway Express. Please bear in mind that, if published, I would want this novel to appear under a penname. I would therefore appreciate (for the sake of preserving my incognito) if you reduced to a minimum the number of people who will read the MS for you, and, if you would withold, even from them, the true identity of the author. May I assume I have your word that you will respect this wish of mine?
EUGENE ONEGIN is still far from being completed. The translation itself will take up only about one third of the finished MS. The rest will consist of detailed notes and commentaries. The whole will come up to about six hundred pages. I would want to incorporate en regard a photostatic reproduction of the original edition (the Houghton Library at Harvard possesses a copy of it); one or two portraits of the author; Pushkin's discarded stanzas in footnotes at the bottom of the page. There will be an Introduction discussing various features of ONEGIN and, as already mentioned, about 250–300 pages of commentaries to be placed at the end of the volume. If you believe that such a publication might b
e of interest to you, please let me know, and I shall show you the work when it is ready.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: PHILIP RAHV
CC, 1 p.
700 Stewart Avenue
Ithaca, N.Y.
November 20, 1954
Dear Rahv,
I shall be happy to let you publish parts of the novel in the Partisan Review. But before sending you the eighty pages you suggest, I would like to make sure that, in case you decide to go ahead with it, you will agree to my using a penname.
For reasons of my own, I do not wish to publish it under my name, for the time being, at least. Will you agree to respect my incognito?1
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: PASCAL COVICI
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
January 23, 1955
Dear Pat,
I have a very wonderful young translator from Russian into English for you. Moreover, I would undertake to check his work free of charge. Would you be interested, I wonder, in publishing Lermontov's celebrated novel The Hero of Our Time? The three old English versions of it that I know are execrable. Or anything else?