Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Page 47
Other daily tasks such as the completion of a new book of stories for McGraw-Hill with a deadline in January, 75, and a business correspondence that keeps growing fantastically prevent me from devoting more than three or four morning hours (from about 6:oo A.M. till breakfast and bath) to my struggle with Chahine. There are errors of sense on every page; sometimes the search for a correct rendering takes longer than the twenty minutes which on the average I need for the revision of one typewritten page; and sometimes an entire paragraph has to be written in or rewritten; and of course there are those snatches of poetry in the composing of which Chahine is spectacularly helpless. With great luck I can manage about three typed pages per hour (around ten such pages per day corresponding to around eight pages of the McGraw edition). At best I shall need fifty days to revise the remaining pages (corresponding to a stretch of around 400 McGraw pages), which means that they cannot be ready till the last week of January 1975. Incidentally, a Playboy interview in mid-January is quite unthinkable (I have just refused to give one to the Associated Press); it would take me a week to prepare since I deal only in written answers. However I would be glad to get the French Playboy questions by the end of January and see J. P. Rey-Draillard in the beginning of February.1
What you call the manuscrit définitif will only exist when the entire monster is neatly retyped. My French may not be always impeccable; yet I know exactly what nuance I want in my French and would not care to have my corrections recorrected unless I am consulted in every case, and this also takes time.
As soon as feasible I will send you a goodish batch of chapters with red crosses in the margin here and there to mark samples of especially disastrous bits. I now enclose à titre d'information an ADA ad received from Rowohlt.
The Italian translation of the poor girl was bâclée, bungled, botched, in less than two months. The German one took years to ripen, with publisher and translators coming here for numerous sessions. But it is to the French ADA that I am giving the blood of my brain, and I will not be spurred on by anything short of a private illusion of perfection.
Cordially yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
P.S. Saturday, Dec. 7th.
I have delayed the posting of this letter for a week in the hope of sending it to you with a traveller. I am now told that the mails work again. During this week I have reached the revision of your latest batch (XXXIV-XLIII) and have finished to-day XXXV (printed p. 221 of the McGraw text).
It occurs to me that transferring the mozaic of my corrections onto the duplicate will be a tedious loss of time so I prefer photocopying the corrected batch and returning it to you in due time.
TO: GROUP COMMITTEE OF WRITERS1
TELEGRAM
AM APPALLED TO LEARN THAT YET ANOTHER WRITER IS MARTYRED JUST FOR BEING A WRITER MARAM-ZINS2 IMMEDIATE RELEASE INDISPENSABLE TO PREVENT AN ATROCIOUS NEW CRIME
NABOKOV
Exp. Vladimir Nabokov, Palace Hotel, 1820 Montreux le 30 décembre 1974.
TO: CARL AND ELLENDEA PROFFER
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
January 2, 1975
Dear friends,
VN indeed never signs collective letters. Nor does he believe that the most emphatic or the most pathetic appeal to a man-eating tiger or shark can move its heart. However, your appeal to him did move his heart. Enclosed is a copy of the wire he sent on Monday December 30th to the address you recommended. You may publish it, disclose it or use it in any other way that you think might help Maramzin's cause. Happy New Year to you, and may it bring success to your humanitarian activities.
TO: ALEX GRALL1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
January 15, 1975
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your kind letter of January 10th. I would be delighted to continue with ADA the acquaintance we began with LOLITA. Of the dates you propose February 4th would suit me best.
Mr. Blandenier's help in deflating the translator's banalities is admirable, but I alone can step in when Chahine despairs. I am now toiling over ADA six hours a day, three before breakfast and three before dinner. It is a rather chaotic task, for I do not have the gift of gab in any language. In consulting my notes I see that my best time so far has been six pages (of the McGraw-Hill hardcover text) corrected in six hours of wrestling with Chahine. I am now on p. 412 (McG.-Hill) of my glorious hell, which means I still have 176 pages to revise before I reach the end of the book: another month's work. I don't want to Chahinate,2 but today is January 15th and I strongly doubt that I shall finish before February 15th.
What takes up the most time is revamping a whole paragraph Chahine has botched or restoring one he has simply omitted, as well as redoing his French translations of poetry or fragments of poetry (those in Chapter 8, Part Two, for instance, just took up an entire day).
With best regards,
Vladimir Nabokov3
TO: ROBERT L. KROON1
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux,
February 11, 1975
Dear Mr. Kroon,
My husband asks me to thank you for the copy of "People". It is doubtlessly a deserving magazine but, as I believe you yourself remarked, hardly the kind whose readership would be particularly interested in an interview by Nabokov. VN finds Mr. Salter's questions interesting. It would take him a considerable time to answer them to his satisfaction. He does not believe that this would be justified in the present case, especially as he is so very hard-pressed for time. He suggests that you send him Mr. Salter's article as written for publication.2 If VN finds the factual side of it o.k., he will agree to a photographic session in the near future. On the other hand, the plan of answering the questions would be dropped, at least for the time being.
Sincerely yours,
(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
P.S. On the occasion of the arrest in Leningrad of the writer Maramzin my husband sent the following cable to the "Group Committee of Writers, Leningrad Division of the Union of Writers of the USSR, Voin street, Leningrad": "Am appalled to learn that yet another writer is martyred just for being a writer Maramzins immediate release indispensable to prevent an atrocious new crime. Nabokov." Palace Hotel, 1820 Montreux, December 30, 1974. Of course, that cable was not acknowledged by the addressee and thus never became public which rather defeats the purpose of trying to exercise some moral pressure in behalf of Maramzin. Do you think you could make it public with the help of TIME or in any other way?
TO: FREDERIC W. HILLS
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
February 21, 1975
Dear Fred,
Many thanks for your February 14th note. I am looking forward to receiving the golden TYRANTS before destruction.1
I also enjoyed the marvelous Duchess of Windsor and the Porcelain Pug.
I wonder if you will resolutely resurrect the publicity for LATH in the jumbo ads you are certainly planning to devote to the TYRANTS. I have a feeling that LATH has somehow been let down much too soon. I cannot believe that my publisher has run out of enthusiasm and élan after the first splendid spurt.
I hope to have the next collection of stories ready for you before summer.
Cordially yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JOAN DALY1
ALS (XEROX), 2 pp.
April 3, 1975
Montreux Palace
Montreux
Dear Miss Daly,
I have now finished revising Andrew Field's final typescript (further referred to as F3) of his work: Nabokov: his Life in Part. Enclosed, please find:
A list of my Corrections and Notes with the faults he has not corrected and my amendments encircled in red pencil.
The 104 pages of F3 [list of TS page numbers]—all referred to and commented on in my list
, with the unacceptable passages, marked in red pencil, struck out or otherwise altered by me.
Among the many reasons I object to those passages the main ones are: they harp on grotesque rumors or—in numerous instances—are offensive to people whom I do not wish to hurt, or distort facts and garble episodes of which I alone can judge. There are also those unbearable coy and vulgar renderings of my Russian exchanges with my wife, and the morbid interest in financial trivialities, and various vicious little insinuations, and the constant attempts to direct his stings and nips at the veracity of my memoir Speak, Memory. On the other hand, I have generously overlooked many of his minor transgressions and wearily okayed some insufficiently corrected passages.
Since AF is a most [smooth] customer, I must see the evidence of his having deleted what I absolutely demand he deletes—in other words I must see the corrected page proof of the work.
I apologize for sending you this letter in xeroxed script but my secretary, Mme Callier, is seriously ill and my wife and I are overwhelmed with work.
Cordially yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: FREDERIC W. HILLS
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
April 8, 1975
Dear Fred,
Thank you for your letter of March 31. I shall airmail express to you tomorrow the phantasm of an acceptance speech.1 If it does not reach you by April 14 please cable me and instruct how to reach you personally by telex. Dan Lacy or you would be kind to substitute for me if fancy becomes fact.
Here is another matter I would like to submit to you. I think you have read Edmund White's marvelous first novel FORGETTING ELENA.2 He has now written another one, A WOMAN. I have not yet seen it but Karlinsky of Berkeley, a fine judge of literature, has a very high opinion of it. White has some difficulty finding a publisher because the book is too good. Would you agree to consider it for McG-H if he sends you a typescript? Would you read it personally?
Yes, I shall be at Montreux throughout April.
Cordially yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: VÉRA NABOKOV1
HOLOGRAPH
Montreux, Switzerland
Here we are at last, my darling
15-iv.1925-15-iv.19752
TO: ROBERT WOOL1
TL (XEROX), 2 pp.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
April 18, 1975
Dear Mr. Wool,
To my great regret I shall not be able to write on Lepidoptera (at least this year) as you kindly suggest in your letter of March 27. I would be delighted however if, in reference to the recent note on Endangered Butterflies, you could print the following:
To the Editor:
By a nice coincidence the so-called "Karner Blue" illustrating Bayard Webster's note on insects needing protection (N.Y. Times, March 21) is a butterfly I classified myself. It is known as Lycaeides melissa samuelis Nabokov or more properly Lycaeides samuelis Nabokov (I considered it at first to be a race of the western melissa Edwards, but have concluded recently that it is a distinct species). My original description will be found in Psyche, Vol. I, 1943, followed by a more elaborate paper in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard College, Vol. 101, 1949. It is a very local butterfly attached to extensive growths of lupine, in isolated colonies, from Michigan (probably its original habitat) to at least Albany, N.Y. Readers of my fiction may have found it settled on damp sand in a vacational scene of my novel PNIN.
Yours sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov2
TO: PROF. GLEB STRUVE
TLS, 1 p. Hoover Institution.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
April 21, 1975
Dear Gleb Petrovich,
A moment of unusual respite allows me to write you a few words. Zdrastvuyte [Hello].
I am about to publish yet another collection of stories, Details of a Sunset, the last raisins and petit-beurre toes from the bottom of the barrel. The volume includes The Return of Chorb and The Passenger—in my and Dmitri's translation. I had not looked up your versions for many years and now find them not accurate enough and too far removed from my present style in English. Please, don't be cross! Time does not move, but artistic interpretation does.
I have spent a laborious winter correcting the French traduction intégrale, with all its interior decorations, of ACM, now completed and to be published on May 30. Last year, Rowohlt and a team of his translators visited us here several times for weekly sessions devoted to their translation of ADA—which is going strong in West Germany. I am now contemplating turning ADA into Russian—not sovjargon and not soljournalese—but romantic and precise Russian, and if I cannot find a docile assistant I will do the job all by myself, like Pushkin's Missail.1
I was both perplexed and amused by the nonsense somebody called Poirier wrote about the "prototype" of my Oxman2 (not having read The Island of Dr. Moreau,3 and not realizing that I never met the poet Oxsoup or Otsup in my life). Your joining the fray by introducing an innocent old Pushkinist amused me still more.
Cordially yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: ROBERT DIRIG1
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
April 23, 1975
Dear Mr. Dirig,
The story of Lycaeides samuelis Nabokov, which I separated in 1943 (Psyche, Vol. I) from the W. American race of another species, now known (after a nomenclatorial readjustment) as Lycaeides idas scudderi Edwards, is told in detail in my paper on the genus in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard College, Vol. o, 949. The name I gave it alludes to Scudder's Christian name. When thirty years ago I attempted to classify samuelis, I regarded it as a subspecies of melissa Edw. on the basis of the length of its falx but now I know better. There are additional structural differences, there are larval differences (which I hope you will find and publish) and there is the crucial fact of samuelis and melissa not interbreeding at their meeting point which must surely exist already given the inexorable progression of melissa from Illinois eastward during the last decades.
This is why I am delighted by your project of writing about it and the celebrated Pine Barrens which I remember as a sandy and flowery little paradise the last time I visited them when commuting between Cornell and Harvard.
Yours sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: PROF. ALFRED APPEL, JR.
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
April 23, 1975
Dear Alfred,
I see I have not thanked you for the clipping about the protection of leps. In a sense I am the Endangered Species illustrating the article, for it is no other than Lycaeides samuelis Nabokov named by me in 1943! But what must tickle some of my best readers an iridescent pink is that it is precisely the butterfly which settles on damp sand at the feet of Pnin and Chateau!
I have had a terrible winter correcting French ADA whose debut in Paris is scheduled for May 23. I have also finished with Dmitri's help, another collection of short stories: the title is Details of a Sunset.1
Best regards from Vera and me to Nina and you,
Yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: GLENN COLLINS1
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
June 11, 1975
Dear Mr. Collins,
You caught me at a fortunate moment. I was fuming and free. I welcome your idea, with the following reservations:
I will supply a thousand words at one dollar (not fifty cents—a proletarian rate) per word.
The asking and the answering will take me a fortnight to formulate.
I waive the guarantee because I can easily find another patron after the thing is
composed (my copyright).
It is understood, however, that what you get is not subject to any deletions or alteration of sense and is to be taken intact, or not at all.
I must be informed of the deadest dead-line and shown the final proof with ample time to check it.
My soul is mine. What you are going to get is an elegant and accurate shadowgraph on the brightest of walls.
If the complexity of the matter suits you, please let me know at once. I am leaving for Davos on the 18th but the Montreux-Palace will forward anything.
Best regards.
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: GLENN COLLINS
TL (XEROX), 1 p.
Montreux-Palace Hotel
1820 Montreux, Switzerland
August 20, 1975
Dear Mr. Collins,
I had been looking forward eagerly to that delightful essay. For more than a month I hunted butterflies around Davos. Then I took a bad tumble down a steep slippery slope and was laid up for several days. Other worries cropped up in the meantime. When I returned to Montreux in the beginning of August a landslide of correspondence had to be disposed of. And my butterfly net remains hanging on the branch of a fir at 1900 metres like Ovid's lyre.