Stegner, Wallace
letter to, [>]
Steinberg, Saul
letters to, [>], [>]
Stephens, Jacqueline
letter to, [>]
Sternheimer, Stephen, [>]
"The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov" (Wilson), [>]
Straus, Roger W., Jr. (Farrar, Straus fit Young)
letter to, [>]
Stravinsky, Igor, [>]
Strong Opinions, [>], [>]–[>]
Struve, Gleb, [>]
letters to, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]
Struve, Nikita, [>]
Stuart Little (White), [>]
The Sunday Telegraph
letter to, [>]
Supervielle, Jules, [>]
Tagore, Rabindranath, [>]
Talmey, Allene (Vogue)
letter to, [>]–[>]
Tatarinov, Vladimir E., [>]
Tate, Allen (Henry Holt & Co.)
letters to, [>]–[>], [>]
Taylor, Frank E. (McGraw-Hill)
letters to, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
Tchaikovsky, Modest, [>]
Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich, [>]
Teternikov, Fyodor, [>]–[>]
Thaller, Victor C. (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
letter to, [>]
Thiebaut (Revue Paris), [>]
Three Russian Poets, [>], [>], [>]
Tilden, Bill, [>]
Time
letters to, [>], [>]–[>]
Time, Inc., [>]
"Time and Ebb," [>]
The Times (London), [>]
Times Literary Supplement
letter to, [>]
To Eat a Peach (Willingham), [>]–[>]
Tolstoy, Aleksey, [>], [>]
Tolstoy Foundation, [>]
Tom Jones ( Fielding), [>]
"To My Sister Elena," [>]
Torres, Elsie
letter to, [>]
Toscani, Oliviero, [>]
"The Tragedy of Mr. Morn," [>]
Translations
cost of, [>]
VN critical of, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>]
VN on, [>], [>], [>], [>]
Translators, [>]
requirements for, [>], [>], [>]
VN critical of, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]
Transparent Things, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]
"The Trapped Bear" (Pritchett), [>]–[>]
Traubenberg, Yuriy E. Rausch von (cousin), [>]
Trilling, Lionel, [>]
TriQuarterly, [>]–[>]
Tsvetaeva, Marina, [>]
Tynan, Kenneth
letter to, [>]
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, [>], [>]
Tyutchcv, Feodor, [>]
Ultima Thule, [>]
Ulysses (Joyce), [>], [>]
Uncle Vanya (Chekhov), [>]
"Understanding Nabokov—A Red Autumn Leaf Is a Red Autumn Leaf, Not a Deflowered Nymphet" (Levy), [>]–[>]
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, [>], [>], [>]
United States Supreme Court decisions, [>]
Updike, John, [>]
letter to, [>]
"Upright Among Staring Fish" (Joyce Carol Oates), [>]
Upstate (Wilson), [>], [>]
Ural, [>]
Ustinov, Peter, [>]
"The Vane Sisters," [>], [>]–[>]
"Vecher" ("Evening"), [>], [>]
Victor Gollancz. See Hodges, Sheila
Vidal, Gore, [>] [>]
View of Venice (Snowdon), [>]–[>]
Viking Press, [>]–[>], [>], [>]
See also Best, Marshall; Covici, Pascal; Kemeny, Peter; Noyes, Charles; Sifton, Elizabeth
Vilenkin, [>]
Vladimir Nabokov: His Life in Part (Field), [>]
"Vladimir Nabokov Talks About his Travels" (Morini), [>]
VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (Field), [>]
Vogue, [>]–[>]
"The Void of Jean-Paul Sartre" (Lüthy), [>]
Vossische Zeitung, [>]
Volochov, [>]–[>]
Wahlström & Widstrand, [>]
Wain, John
letter to, [>]–[>]
Walter, Michael (Collins)
letters to, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
Walters, Raymond, Jr.
letter to, [>]
The Waltz Invention, [>]
Ward, Aileen, [>]
Ward, Hilda, [>]
Warren, Harry, [>]
Weeks, Edward (Atlantic Monthly), [>], [>], [>]
letter to, [>]
Weidenfeld, George (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
letters to, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]
letter from, [>]–[>]
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, [>]
See also MacLennan, Bud; Montague, Rosa
Wellesley College, [>]
Wells, H. G., [>]
Wescott, Glenway
letter to, [>]–[>]
West, Rebecca, [>], [>]
"Where Am I Now When I Need Me" (Axelrod), [>]
White, Edmund, [>]
letter to, [>]–[>]
White, Katharine A. (New Yorker)
letters to, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]
on VN's writing, [>]
White, Tony, [>]
Whitman, Alden. See caption on facsimile, [>]
William Heinemann, Ltd., [>]
Williams, Robert C.
letter to, [>]–[>]
Willingham, Calder
letter to, [>]–[>]
Wilson, Edmund
praises VN work, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]
attacks Eugene Onegin translation, [>], [>]
dispute with VN, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]
VN critical of his criticism, [>], [>], [>], [>]
VN critical of his Russian, [>], [>], [>], [>]
Wilson, Rosalind
letters to, [>]–[>]
Winer, Barton (Bollingen Foundation), [>]–[>], [>], [>]
letters to, [>]–[>]
corrected by VN, [>]–[>]
Wolf Willow (Stegner), [>]
Wolkonsky, Ekaterina, [>]
Wood, Jennings
letter to, [>]–[>]
"Woodrow Wilson" (Freud and Bullitt), [>]
Woodruff, Douglas, [>]
Wool, Robert (New York Times Magazine)
letter to, [>]
Words and Their Masters (Shenker), [>]
Xerces Society, [>]
Yanovski, Yuriy, [>]
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, [>]
Zabolotsky, Nikolay Alekseevich, [>]
Zenzinov, V. M., [>], [>], [>]
Zermatt, Switzerland, [>]
Zhukov, Georgi, [>]
Znosko-Borovsky, E., [>]–[>]
Zolotoy telyonok (Petrov), [>]
Zvezda, [>]
About the Author
VLADIMIR NABOKOV (1899–1977), Russian-born poet, novelist, literary critic, translator, and essayist was awarded the National Medal for Literature for his life's work in 1973. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. He is the author of many works including Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and Speak, Memory.
Footnotes
1. VN's mother.
[back]
***
2. VN subsequently penciled brackets around the salutation to indicate that it was to be deleted before the letter was shown to Andrew Field (see facsimile). The deletion was made out of gentlemanly reserve, respect for his late mother, and perhaps a soupçon of distrust. In response to VN's insistence that numerous gross blunders be expunged from the manuscript of Field's Vladi
mir Nabokpv: His Life in Part (1977), Field implied that there were certain skeletons in the Nabokov closet and that he might be compelled by VN's recalcitrance to write another, more critical book. He even mentioned, perhaps in jest, the hypothetical tide "He Called His Mum Lolita." When VN was safely dead, Field proceeded to use his unfounded conjectures about VN's relationship with his mother as one of the main themes of his VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (1986). On the strength of an inaccurate letter count, the transformation of a Slavic diminutive VN would never have used into a Spanish one no Russian would have used, plus what he thought was the trace of a "T," Field concluded that the excised "Radost"' ("dearest" or "beloved") was none other than "'Lolita,' surely." Then, assuming that the conjecture had been established as fact in the naive reader's mind, he proceeded to construct thereon a precarious house of marked cards for his psychocritical folly. DN.
[back]
***
3. For many years VN would give or send his poems to his mother, who meticulously transcribed them into albums that are now part of the Nabokov Archive in Montreux.
[back]
***
4. "Evening."
[back]
***
5. "The Crosses."
[back]
***
* Solomon Samoylovich Krïm—VN's footnote (8. in original text). Former chairman of the Crimean provisional government, absentee steward of Le Domaine de Beaulieu, estate in the south of France where VN worked as a farmhand in the summer of 1923.
[back]
***
6. Final words omitted, for the same reason as "Radost"' had been. They are not "Farewell, Lolita." DN.
[back]
***
7. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. Written during the same period as the opening letter; translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. VN's brother, who was attending the German university in Prague. Some of his poems were published in Russian émigré periodicals.
[back]
***
2. In Russian prosody, the term geksametr denotes a fundamentally dactylic hexameter. DN.
[back]
***
3. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. The Rudder, émigré daily edited by Yosif V. Hessen and VN's father Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
[back]
***
2. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. New York literary agent who was attempting to place translation rights to VN's work. She was the most energetic of the platoon of agents who homed in on Nabokov after wind of Kamera obskura (Laughter in the Dark) reached them from Europe. During the first two years of correspondence an amusing—and uncorrected—misunderstanding caused Nabokov to address de Jannelli as "Mr." Then the salutation changes to "Mrs." for Nabokov learned that his agent was female. Only in 1940, upon his arrival in New York, did he see her. She had an inkling of Nabokov's literary worth, but insisted that he attend to business details, and not squander his time writing more material when there were "deals" to be worked on. She shared the opinion of several publishers that what he did write should be relevant, as some would say today, to contemporary social and political issues, with characters and sufferings the reader could "identify with." Most of her efforts resulted in rejection slips, although, in 1938, she did succeed in getting Laughter published by Bobbs-Merrill. (In 1940 Houghton Mifflin rejected Sie Kommt—Kommt Sief [Mary], explaining that "It isn't consistently good enough to warrant translation.") De Jannelli gave little Dmitri Nabokov his first camera, a Kodak Baby Brownie. DN.
[back]
***
2. Published as Glory (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971).
[back]
***
1. London publisher.
[back]
***
2. Camera Obscura, trans. W. Roy (London: John Long, 1936). Long was one of the Hutchinson imprints. Later translated by VN as Laughter in the Dark (Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938).
[back]
***
3. Otto Klement, literary agent.
[back]
***
4. The Defense was published in New York by Putnam in 1964.
[back]
***
1. London: John Long, 1937; trans. VN.
[back]
***
1. Robert M. McBride & Co., New York publisher.
[back]
***
1. When my husband was absent from home he wrote me every day. I have selected four letters from those I received from him in 1937 during our longest "separation." Véra Nabokov.
[back]
***
2. VN's mother was living in Prague.
[back]
***
3. A town in the south of France where the widow of the poet Sasha Chyorny, a friend of the family, lived.
[back]
***
4. English in original.
[back]
***
5. English in original.
[back]
***
6. Last six words in English.
[back]
***
7. John Long.
[back]
***
8. Tide in English in original.
[back]
***
9. English in original.
[back]
***
10. Pun on name of agent Altagracia de Jannelli.
[back]
***
11. Various ladies by that name who flirted with or had designs on VN.
[back]
***
12. Rul' staff writer Vladimir E. Tatarinov and his wife.
[back]
***
13. English in original.
[back]
***
14. V£ra Nabokov's cousin Ilya Feigin.
[back]
***
15. Russian novelist Mark Aldanov; Vasily Alekseyevich Maklakov, last representative of the Russian Provisional Government in Paris; Aleksandr Kerensky, prime minister of the Russian Provisional Government; Bernatsky, unidentified.
[back]
***
16. Ilya Fondaminsky and V. M. Zenzinov. Fondaminsky was a political writer and activist, the main force behind the émigré literary journal Sovremennye Zapiski, and a close friend, with whom VN was staying. Zenzinov, in Russia a prominent Socialist Revolutionary and in the emigration an editor and critic, was also a close friend of VN.
[back]
***
17. Translated from Russian by ON.
[back]
***
1. Active literary lady and translator; companion first of Maxim Gorky, then H. G. Wells.
[back]
***
2. Into French. Published in English as "Spring in Fialta."
[back]
***
3. Into English.
[back]
***
4. Gleb Struve, authority on Russian imigri and Soviet literature and a close friend.
[back]
***
5. Of London.
[back]
***
6. Autobiographical sketches, never published in that form.
[back]
***
7. The historical novelist and poet.
[back]
***
8. Daughter of Grand Duke Paul.
[back]
***
9. At one time director of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.
[back]
***
10. English in original.
[back]
***
11. A college friend.
[back]
***
12. The Luzhin Defense, later published in
English as The Defense.
[back]
***
13. A literary patroness.
[back]
***
14. Wife of the last head of the Russian diplomatic mission in London before England recognized the Soviet regime.
[back]
***
15. An excerpt from Dar [The Gift], Paris, Poslednie Novosti (28 March 1937).
[back]
***
16. George Hessen, a close friend.
[back]
***
17. A jocular appellation for himself.
[back]
***
18. Three publishers.
[back]
***
19. In English.
[back]
***
20. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. Since their marriage. English in original.
[back]
***
2. Title in English in original, but most likely refers to a French translation of the short story "Obida," later published in English as "A Bad Day."
[back]
***
3. Henri Michaux, French writer and critic of Belgian origin.
[back]
***
4. Jean Paulhan, influential French publisher and editor.
[back]
***
5. Charles-Albert Cingria and Jules Supervielle, French authors.
[back]
***
6. Probably something to do with a recitation by three-year-old DN of part of Pushkin's poem "For the Shores of Your Far Country."
[back]
***
7. Fondaminsky.
[back]
***
8. Sentence in English in original.
[back]
***
9. "Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable," essay written by VN in French and originally published in Nouvelle Revue Française, Paris, March 1937. Reprinted in Magazine Littéraire, Paris, September 1986, in issue dedicated to VN. Also reprinted as "Pushkin, or the Real and the Plausible," trans. DN in New York Review of Booty (31 March 1988).
[back]
***
10. Saveliy Kyandzhuntsev, St. Petersburg schoolmate and close friend of VN's.
[back]
***
11. The reference is to Yosif V. Hessen, friend and political associate of VN's father, and father of VN's close friend George Hessen.
[back]
***
12. English in original.
[back]
***
13. Wife of German ex-military man who had rented rooms in his apartment at Luitpoldstrasse 27, Berlin, to the Nabokovs.
[back]
***
14. One half of the writing team of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, authors of the famous comic work Zolotoy telyonok [The Golden Calf] and other books.
Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977 Page 52