Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Page 20
My moral defense of the book is the book itself. I do not feel under any obligation to do more. However, I went further and wrote the essay on LOLITA, a copy of which is now in your hands. On the ethical plane, it is of supreme indifference to me what opinion French, British or any other courts, magistrates, or philistine readers in general, may have of my book. However, I appreciate your difficulties.
Before I can reopen the question of litigation, I would have to have your answer to my letter of March 5. It might influence my decision considerably if you made it possible for me to sell the American rights and the British rights of LOLITA.
Of course, if I did reconsider the question, I would have to have from you a legal document exempting me from any financial responsibility whatever to lawyers and courts in France, even in case Olympia decided to go out of business or any other disaster occurred.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: IVAN OBOLENSKY
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
March 23, 1957
Dear Prince Obolensky,
Many thanks for your kind letter. I had planned to go to New York during spring vacation but a bad cold forces me to postpone my trip again. I shall definitely be in New York for a day or two in the middle of April.
I have given much thought to the plans you suggested for LOLITA and have consulted several friends whose opinion I value. I have also been in touch with my publisher in Paris. The unanimous opinion is that this is not the right moment to publish LOLITA in the United States. I am terribly sorry to disappoint you. Here are a few reasons against publication:
1. Everybody seems convinced that LOLITA would be banned if it were to be published now, without further preparation. Even if you are willing to assume the costs of a legal fight which may run into 50.000 or 60.000 dollars, you may eventually lose the case, and then LOLITA would be lost irretrievably.
2. Should the book get into trouble, the NY. Times would at once refuse to advertise it, and every important publication in the country would follow suit. Nor would the Post Office let you announce the book directly through the mails if the legal action were begun under a federal statute.
3. When you suggested that you would get in touch with a reprint house it became clear to me that you did not realize all the implications of this case. Could you visualize LOLITA as a little paperback being offered for sale on the newstands?
Let me repeat that I am terribly sorry that this will be a disappointment to you. But I have become convinced that the publication has to be put off at least until I see how the Anchor Review fares, how the Paris litigation is settled, and what decision the Supreme Court takes in some similar cases now before it.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JASON EPSTEIN
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
March 24, 1957
I take this opportunity to send you the envelope of a letter which has just been forwarded from Cambridge.
You seem to have at your office some patriotic Bostonian who refuses to let me leave Cambridge.
Dear Jason,
My main creature, an ex-king, is engaged throughout PALE FIRE in a certain quest. This quest, or research (which at one point, alas, involves some very sophisticated spiritualism), is completely divorced from any so-called faith or religion, gods, God, Heaven, Folklore, etc. At first I thought of entiding my novel THE HAPPY ATHEIST, but the book is much too poetical and romantic for that (its thrill and poetry I cannot reveal to you in a short and matter-of-fact summary). My creature's quest is centered in the problem of heretofore and hereafter, and it is I may say beautifully solved.
The story starts in Ultima Thule, an insular kingdom, where a palace intrigue and some assistance from Nova Zembla clear the way for a dull and savage revolution. My main creature the King of Thule, is dethroned. After some wonderful adventures he escapes to America. Certain political complications lead President Kennedy to answer evasively when questioned about the displaced personage.
He lives more or less incognito, with the lady he loves, somewhere on the border of Upstate New York and Montario: the border is a little blurry and unstable, but there is a bus to Goldenrod, another to Calendar Barn, and on Sundays the Hudson flows to Colorado. Despite these—on the whole quite innocent—little defocalizations, the locus and life-color are what a real-estate mind would call "realistic", and from the picture window of my creature's house one can see the bright mud of a private road and a leafless tree all at once abloom with a dozen waxwings.
The book is regularly interrupted, without any logical or stylistic transition, right in the middle of a sentence (to be blandly continued a few lines further) by glimpses of an agent, a Mr. Copinsay, from Thule, whose job is to find and destroy the ex-king. Mr. Copinsay, who is of Orkney descent, has some dreadful troubles of his own, and his long journey (through all the drains1 the book) is full of nightmare difficulties (he gets entangled in a West-Indian cruise at one point). However, he does reach Goldenrod in the final chapter—where a surprise awaits the reader and him.2
I am writing this in a hurry, have to correct exams. But I want to add that I am delighted with PNIN's progress.
Yours,
TO: PROF. MARK SCHORER1
CC, 1 p.
Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell, Ithaca, NY.
March 24, 1957
Dear Schorer,
I shall be glad to make my contribution to the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship Fund, although, between you and me, I dislike Lawrence as a writer and detest Taos, where, in 1954, I had the misfortune of establishing my headquarters when collecting butterflies in the N. Mexico mountains.
I would like you to know how much I appreciated your eyespot on Pnin's underwing.
Véra and I remember with pleasure our meetings with you and your wife in Cambridge.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: ROBERT HATCH1
CC, 1 p.
Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
March 29, 1957
Dear Mr. Hatch,
I would have gladly demolished this fraud if I had time but unfortunately I haven't. This NOT BY BREAD ALONE2 is something on the lines of a third-rate Upton Sinclair book and has no literary value whatsoever. I am not interested in the political or publicistic side of novels.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: KATHARINE A. WHITE
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
April 4, 1957
Dear Katharine,
I am delighted you want my little ballad. Yes, of course, couldn't is better rhythmically than could not.
Let me thank you very warmly for your frank and charming letter about LOLITA. But after all how many are the memorable literary characters whom we would like our 'teen-age daughters to meet? Would you like our Patricia to go on a date with Othello? Would we like our Mary to read the New Testament temple against temple with Raskolnikov? Would we like our sons to marry Emma Rouault, Becky Sharp or La belle dame sans merci?
You would do me a great pleasure and favor if my poem could appear before June 1. I think I told you already that about one quarter of LOLITA, and two essays on it (one by me, the other by Fred Dupee), will appear in a few weeks' time in the ANCHOR REVIEW. I liked very much the elegant PNIN ad in your recent issue. The dear man seems to be doing very well.
I was sorry that The New Yorker decided not to use my entomological correction.1 The blunder in that article must have grievously hurt the Comstock of California, eminent author of BUTTERFLIES OF CALIFORNIA,—a touchy old man whom I respect. The Cornell Comstock, with whom Helmann confused him, was a much inferior scientist, whose specialty, moreover, was not lepidoptera.
We enjoyed the glimpse you gave us of your Florida vacation. I hope you both came back in perfect condition.
Our picture window is a veil o
f vertical snow, and the junipers look like albino camels.
Yours,
TO: PROF. ROMAN JAKOBSON
CC, 1 p.
Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.
April 14, 1957
Dear Professor Jakobson,
After a careful examination of my conscience, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot collaborate with you in the proposed English-language edition of the SLOVO.1 Frankly, I am unable to stomach your little trips to totalitarian countries, even if these trips are prompted merely by scientific considerations.
I am asking the publisher to return to me my material. I must also ask you not to use my manuscript translation of the SLOVO in your Harvard classes.
Do not worry about the financial aspect of the matter, I am taking it up directly with the publisher.
Very truly yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JASON EPSTEIN
Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell, Ithaca, NY.
April 22, 1957
Dear Jason,
Véra and I are both delighted with LOLITA at Anchor.1 Despite your self-disparaging remarks, the cover is splendid and most enticing. Your arrangement and selection of the LOLITA excerpts is above all praise. I also find that the rest of the material in the review is excellent (except Auden's piece:2 incidentally, somebody ought to have told him that monde in French is masculine so that no French poet could ever have said "Le monde est ronde". It is the same nonsense as his famous slip in an earlier essay "acte gratuite" instead of "acte gratuit". Moreover, the slogan "highbrows and lowbrows, unite!", which he had spouted already, is all wrong since true highbrows are highbrows because they do not unite).
The piece about Sartre3 is simply marvelous. I chuckled all the way, especially as I was probably the first writer in America to debunk him (in an article on the English translation of the "Nausee" in the NY. Times Book Review, in 1950).
Many thanks to you and Doubleday!
Many thanks, too, for your helpful and constructive reply to my appeal. I am not sure I can afford to consult a lawyer (I am absolutely pennyless at this moment and owe my bank 800 dollars), but I am writing my Paris agent asking her to act along the lines you suggest.
By the way, she is offering me a contract with Mondadori4 for LOLITA—150.000 Fr. frs. advance, 8% up to 3000 copies, 10% to 5000, 12% after 5000—and with Rowohlt for the German rights—150.000 Fr. frs. advance, 8% up to 5.000 copies, 10% up to 10.000, 12% over 10.000. Does this seem reasonable to you?
She also complains she never received the two PNIN copies you sent her from me. Could you check?
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: MAURICE GIRODIAS
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
May 14, 1957
Dear Mr. Girodias,
You know as well as I do that publishing LOLITA in the US under your own imprint would mean asking for trouble. Nor can you fail to realize that a second-rate publisher would be no use since he would not be able to defend the book. Some ten years ago Doubleday spent more than $60000 on the defense of HECATE COUNTY by Edmund Wilson. Costs have gone up since then and are beyond the means of a second-rate publisher.
Since you know all this, and also know that we have here all sorts of Watch and Ward Societies, Catholic Legions of Decency, etc., and that, moreover, every post master in the country can start censorship trouble, I feel sure that you do not seriously contemplate the course of action you suggest in your letter. I wish to add that it also is in complete contradiction to what Madame Ergaz tells me that you promised her.
I agree that our interests are identical insofar as we both want the book to be published here, and to sell. While it remains true that no first-rate publisher will agree, as a matter of policy, to publish jointly with you, or with anyone else, yet there are other ways in which your claims could be satisfied, provided those claims are just and reasonable. The bigger the American publisher, the better your chances of reaching an agreement satisfactory to you.
I can only repeat that the course to follow is first of all to wait for Doubleday to make up their mind. If they decide that they want to publish LOLITA as a book, I shall put you in touch with them in due course. If they decide against publication, I shall put you in touch with the other important publisher who is willing to do the job the way it should be done. Whoever publishes LOLITA here will have to agree to defend it, at his own expense, and to carry this defense through the courts as far as the Supreme Court, if necessary.
I am sure you are getting a lot of offers right now from all kinds of mediocre firms. So am I. This is not what we need.
If you cooperate with me, and if publication in the US is eventually arranged on terms satisfactory to me, I shall likewise cooperate and shall agree to amend our contract so that you can without question license the American publisher.
Re translation.1 Capeline, which is not at all the kind of hat I meant, is the least error among the numerous blunders.
On p. 23: The acte de naissance is meaningless; on the same page the translator has not understood that the allusion is to Poe's "Annabel Lee". There is no couronne d'épines.
On p. 24: The description of the carte postale is wrong. It should be à vues d'un bleu verni. The vaux et monts is meaningless, it should be dans les chemins creux. Cornés should be bordés.
On p. 25: Aux barres is nonsense. It should be au petit jeu de paume.
And so on, at a rate of at least three on every page.
I was especially annoyed that on p. 30 the skit on Eliot did not come out at all.
Sincerely yours,
TO: JASON EPSTEIN
CC, 1 p.
Ithaca, N.Y.
June 10, 1957
Dear Jason,
The more I think about it the more convinced I feel that I should not be the one to transmit your offer to Olympia. His last letter on the subject was curt—to put it mildly. He will certainly say no, if I submit your offer to him, and he may even choose not to answer at all.
While giving the matter more thought I have also come to doubt there is any reason for Mr. G. to accept. What you offer, in effect, is an unlimited option as against an advance of $1500 to be divided between Olympia and me. I am very much interested in having Doubleday publish LOLITA. Moreover, I would be glad to know that Olympia is tied by your contract and cannot publish the book here in a way that would be undesirable to me. But even I would like to put on record that an advance of $1500 does not seem adequate. There would be no point in discussing the advance before having Mr. G.'s reaction to the whole plan, however.
I do not think that your writing to him could prejudice my rights, especially if you make your offer "subject to the author's approval". I also feel much less worried about Mr. G.'s possible blunders since you say yourself that he could hardly arrange for publication without asking me for a reduction of royalty.
I would very much prefer, of course, if you could buy the American rights from G.—whether outright or on the basis of some kind of royalty, even if this meant some reduction in my 10% rate in an agreement I could then sign with you. But if this cannot be done, by all means write to him, and then we shall see what he really expects from a deal.
I do hope you will agree to tackle Girodias yourself.
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: VAUN GILLMOR1
TLS, 1 p.
Letterhead: Cornell University.
June 26, 1957
Dear Miss Gillmor,
I am sending you in two folders* part of my work on EUGENE ONEGIN, namely: some introductory material, the translation of EO, Chapter One, an appendix on prosody, and the commentary to Ch. One. You have in your hands a second appendix related to Chapter One, L, on the subject of Pushkin's Abyssinian ancestor. All this represents one third of the whole work: the commentaries to the other chapters (Two to Eight) and additional fragments are much less bulky
than the commentary to Ch. One which contains much general information.
I must apologize for sending you to read the Commentary in a carbon copy: the main one is still being used to make an Index.
If after perusing this MS you find you are still interested in considering it for publication, and would like to have it examined by any additional readers, outside your institution, I hope you will be kind enough to get in touch with me before you make your choice. I am raising here a delicate point: Most of my material is new, i.e. based on my own individual research; as you may notice, I am extremely critical of many workers in the same field (e.g., the Yarmolinski-Deutsch translation); and I also take to task various commentators, in this country and abroad, who approach literature from a social-economical angle, etc.
It is essential for me to have my book published soon. If your interest endures after you get acquainted with the present material, I shall send you the next chapters and commentaries in the course of this summer. On the other hand, I would be extremely grateful if you could give me your reaction to the first part of the book at your earliest convenience.
With best regards,
Sincerely yours,