Vera

by Stacy Schiff

29 On her Bulgarian: VéN to Natalya Tolstoy, December 18, 1985, VNA. The Rul translations appeared between June 6 and September 16, 1923.

  30 “Is there a place”: Iosef Hessen, unpublished memoir, chapter 16, page11, Hoover.

  31 “Song”: “Pesnia,” composed July 19, 1923 in Toulon.

  32 “witches’ sabbath”: Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 311.

  33 two Russian soccer teams: Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 86. For the most comprehensive portrait of Russian Berlin, see Robert C. Williams, Culture in Exile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972). I have drawn as well on John Glad, ed., Conversations in Exile: Russian Writers Abroad (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993); Simon Karlinsky, Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World and Her Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Fritz Mierau, ed., Russen in Berlin, 1918–33 (Leipzig, Reclam-Verlag, 1991); Nicolas Nabokov, Bagazh (New York: Atheneum, 1975); Marc Vishniak, “Sovremennye Zapiski”: Vospominaniya redaktora. (Bloomington: Indiana University, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1957).

  34 horseback riding: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  35 “All of us sleepless”: Nina Berberova, Italics Are Mine, 165.

  36 “clinging couples”: Khodasevich, cited in Ilya Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 1921–1941, 22.

  37 surprised with the precipitate: Interview with HS, February 26, 1995.

  38 “Divining, you notice”: STIKHI, 115–16, dated September 25, 1923. In the original the poem is signed “Nabokoff,” not “Sirin.”

  39 “amazingly” and “inept endearment”: VN to VéN, November 8, 1923, VNA.

  40 “With her for a reader”: Filippa Rolf, “January,” 70, PC.

  41 “You came into my”: VN to VéN, November 8, 1923, VNA.

  42 “Have you ever”: VN to VéN, December 3, 1923, VNA.

  43 “entered his life”: RLSK, 79–80.

  44 “They became lovers”: RLSK ms., LOC.

  45 “Despite the complexity”: GIFT, 185.

  46 “They’re all Picassos”: James Lord, Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir (New York: Fromm International, 1994), 123.

  47 “What was it about”: GIFT, 177.

  48 “You and I are”: VN to VéN, July 15, 1924, VNA.

  49 autobiographical results: GIFT, 364. VN was not quite so easily swayed as his hero. After a portion of the book appeared he wrote Mark Aldanov unapologetically (February 3, 1938, Bakhm) defending himself against charges of having appropriated characteristics of various recognizable individuals: “Smile, Mark Alexandrovich! You say that The Gift can count on a very long life. If so, then it is all the more polite on my part to have taken along on this journey for free the images of certain of my contemporaries who would otherwise remain at home forever.” VN applauded this practice in the Master, noting: “There is something very pleasing in Pushkin’s device of having his best friends entertain his favorite characters” (EO, iii, 120).

  50 the amorous conversations: HS to VN, August 28, 1956, PC.

  51 “as if gliding” and “airborne”: “You,” dated November 25, 1923, and untitled, November 1923, VNA.

  52 “Is ‘mask’ ” and “delight in the semitranslucent”: LO, 53.

  53 “a little obscurity”: VN to Katharine White, undated note, “Gardens and Parks,” LOC.

  54 “My sweet, today”: VN to VéN, July 4, 1926, VNA.

  55 “the little silk mask”: Cited in Alden Whitman’s obituary of VN, The New York Times, July 5, 1977.

  56 “You are my mask”: VN to VéN, January 8, 1924, VNA.

  57 VéN’s birthdate: Old style, December 23, 1901. She shared a birthday with Ada’s Demon and Daniel Veen, Aqua and Marina. Marina and Demon begin their affair on January 5 as well. See Boyd in The Nabokovian 31 (Fall 1993), 13.

  58 The late marriage: The average ages among Jewish businessmen and intellectuals marrying in 1899 was twenty-nine for men, twenty-three for women.

  59 Slonim background: Much of the information on Evsei Slonim comes from the archives of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, synagogue archives, and the lists of barristers of the St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber, Central State Historical Archive of the City of St. Petersburg; the Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg (RGIA); and from the Russian National Library (RNB). I am hugely indebted to Prince Michaël Massalsky as well, for sharing materials from his family archive. For a sense of the Feigin family, I am grateful to Abraham and Josef Bromberg, interviews of May 20, 1997. Home addresses are from All St. Petersburg, 1894–1913, All Petrograd, 1917, or from RGIA. Birth certificate, RGIA, Fond 14, opis 3, delo 24224, document 2.

  60 For a sense of the Furstadtskaya neighborhood, see Mikhail Beizer, The Jews of Saint Petersburg (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1989). Furstadtskaya is today Petra Lavrova Street, and the address of the American Consulate in Petersburg.

  62 “the little boy”: GIFT, 213.

  63 the precocious newspaper reading: Brian Boyd very generously shared the text of his talks with VéN. VéN to Boyd, February 25, 1982. Boyd interview with VéN, August 29, 1982, Boyd archive. See also Boyd, 1990, 213.

  64 “completely disregarding: Berberova, Italics Are Mine, 14.

  65 educational statistics: I. A. Kurganoff, Women in the USSR (London [Ontario]: S.B.O.N.R. Publishing, 1971).

  66 On the texture of life in prerevolutionary Petersburg: E. M. Almedingen, My St. Petersburg (New York: Norton, 1970); James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe (New York: Knopf, 1966); William Barnes Steveni, Petrograd Past and Present (London: Grant Richards, 1915); Zinaida Shakhovskoy, La vie quotidienne à Saint-Petersbourg a l’époque romantique (Paris: Hachette, 1967). And generally on Petersburg: Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), and Solomon Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1995).

  67 VéN and her German: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA. On the girls’ linguistic education, interviews with Massalsky, February 17, 1996, and June 16, 1997.

  68 telepathy: DN to author, May 16, 1997.

  69 VéN’s Obolensky record: VNA.

  70 special permission: VéN to Alexis Goldenweiser, June 8, 1957, Bakhm.

  71 “When you are married”: Field, 1977, 179.

  72 Dickens, Byron: Interviews with Massalsky, September 21, 1996, and June 16, 1997.

  73 walkways at Terioki: Filippa Rolf, “January,” 57, PC. For a similar childhood see Osip Mandelstam, The Noise of Time.

  74 relative later reminded: Anna Feigin to VéN, October 6, 1962, Berg.

  75 Evsei Lazarevich raised: Interviews with Massalsky, February 17, 1996, and November 14, 1997.

  76 splendid stage set: For a sense of the city, see James H. Bater, St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change (London: Edward Arnold, 1976); Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982); Volkov, St. Petersburg.

  77 scratch-scratch: Boyd interview with VéN, February 25, 1982, Boyd archive.

  78 “One cannon shot”: VéN to Boyd, June 6, 1987, VNA. See also DEFENSE, 21.

  79 the words “Russian” and “Jew”: The summary is Benjamin Ira Nathans’s, from his doctoral dissertation, “Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Russia, 1840–1900,” UCLA, Berkeley, 1995, 290. “Beyond the Pale” proved a singularly valuable source of information on the Jews of Petersburg. Equally indispensable was Robert Melvin Seltzer’s “Simon Dubnow: A Critical Biography of His Early Years,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1970. The following histories of Jewish life and its restrictions in prerevolutionary times have proved especially helpful, Dubnow perhaps most of all: Salo W. Baron, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets (New York: Macmillan, 1976); Mikhail Beizer, Jews of St. Petersburg; S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vols. II and III (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1918); Leo Errera, The Russian Jews: Extermination or Emancipation (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1975, repr. of 1894 edition); Harold Frederic, The New Exodus (New York: Arno Press, 1970, repr. of 1892 edition); Jacob Frumkin et al., eds., Russian Jewry (1860–1917) (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1966); Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965); Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Jews and Other Minor Nationalities under the Soviets (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928).

  80 “I would rather be”: Cited in Errera, The Russian Jews, 108.

  81 greatest historian: The historian was Simon Dubnow; the president Zalman Shazar.

  82 Simon Poliakov: Greenberg, Jews in Russia, 173.

  83 Gamshey Leizerovich: Russian State Historical Archives [TSGIA]. His name appears as such in all official correspondence until 1905.

  84 admitted to the bar: Greenberg, Jews in Russia II, 38.

  85 kitchen tile company: Russian National Library [RNB]; Merchant Directories. RGIA.

  86 Véra Nabokov remembered, to “skilled peasants”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  87 Leo Peltenburg: I owe much of the information on the Peltenburg family to Alphonse Roebroek, interview of December 6, 1996.

  88 On the Jewish timber trade: Frumkin et al., Russian Jewry, 131–37.

  89 “system wherein a second”: VN to Katharine White, March 17, 1951, SL, 117.

  90 The Rodzianko work: Oleg Rodzianko kindly assisted in the untangling of the Rodzianko history, interview of June 7, 1998. RGIA files.

  91 Slonim’s political leanings: VéN to Boyd, December 13, 1981, VéN corrections to Field 1986, 94, VNA.

  92 longest-running legal concern: State Historical Archives (RGIA), Collection 23, Collection 1330. The case is highly unusual for its longevity.

  93 “specific gravity”: Field, 1977, 89.

  94 Speaking for Martin: GLORY, 54, SM, 25.

  95 “An average Russian”: VéN diary, VNA.

  96 “Both of our sets”: Interview with Evan Harrar, August 26, 1996.

  97 turn the key: Lena Massalsky to VéN, December 19, 1967.

  98 “Judging by your letter”: Anna Feigin to VéN, 1964.

  99 “They were raised,” the sense of noblesse oblige, and the seating arrangements: Interview with Prince Michaël Massalsky, April 6, 1997.

  100 “One is always”: SM, 116.

  101 “A few years”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973. Slonim was able to buy the land with two guards officers as partners.

  102 “calm, but uninteresting”: Leonid Feygin, Moya Zhizn’ (Moscow: Materik, 1993).

  103 slandered in a newspaper: Boyd interview with VéN December 2, 1986, Boyd archive.

  104 “As a little bit”: O. Mandelstam, 77.

  105 “traced his descent”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  106 the Jewish tutor: O. Mandelstam, 78.

  107 throwing down a glove: Interview with Vivian Crespi, June 20, 1997. Filippa Rolf to Estrid Tenggren, January 15, 1961, PC. Rolf, “January,” 45, PC.

  108 “My father often”: O. Mandelstam, 86.

  109 “since for me no”: VéN to Lena Massalsky, December 4, 1959.

  110 “In your article”: VéN to New York Post, August 22, 1958.

  111 “Yes, Russian and Jewish”: Roberto Cantini, “Nabokov tra i cigni di Montreux,” in Epoca, July 10, 1973.

  112 “I loathe people”: VéN diary, VNA.

  113 supplementary coaching: Nicolas Berdyaev, The Russian Idea (London: G. Bles, 1947), 27. “intellectual arrogance”: Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 20.

  114 breadlines: For a sense of the Revolution and day-to-day life, see especially Iosef Hessen, unpublished memoir, Hoover; and Miriam Kochan, The Last Days of Imperial Russia (New York: Macmillan, 1976). For the history of the Revolution, I have drawn almost exclusively on the work of Richard Pipes: Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution, and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.

  115 member of the intelligentsia: Interview with DN, May 23, 1997.

  116 “the spirit of self-sacrifice”: VN to Edmund Wilson, February 23, 1948, NWL 194–96. “syphilis”: Pipes, Russian Revolution, 60.

  117 could not object strenuously: Her marginal reaction to the assertion in Williams, Culture in Exile, is “nonsense.” Also VéN to Boyd, December 13, 1981, VNA.

  118 A wrong step: Hessen, unpublished memoirs, chap. 16, p. 32, Hoover.

  119 “I remember vividly”: VéN to Anastasia Rodzianko, May 9, 1984, VNA. The original is in French.

  120 all the cars: Karlinsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, 81.

  121 “not so much decided”: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA. Sonia’s recollections, Anna Feigin to VéN, December 7, 1964. Lena’s recollections, interview with Massalsky, June 16, 1997.

  122 The train ride to Odessa, through the arrival in the Crimea: I have based this account on Boyd’s notes of his conversation with VéN, June 13, 1982, and December 13, 1981. Also on P. J.

  124 Capelotti, ed., Our Man in the Crimea (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991). the rail ties: Interview with DN, May 23, 1997; interview with Massalsky, June 16, 1997.

  125 She could sing: Interviews with DN, November 1, 1996, May 23, 1997.

  126 “No one knew”: Ilya Ehrenburg, People and Life, 1891–1921 (New York: Knopf, 1962), 313. Or as

  127 VN described Yalta in GLORY, 2: “the town kept trying on now one regime, now another, and could not make up its finicky mind.”

  128 “sailing as if by chance” and rest of Martin’s departure: GLORY, 24–28. By some reports the family left Yalta in March 1920. VéN remembered the Red Army pushing past the isthmus’s fortifications and reported that the family stayed as long as Wrangel held the peninsula, which would place the departure in or slightly before November 1920. Lena Slonim put the departure in 1918, presumably borrowing the date on which the family had left Petersburg.

  129 filthy vessel: See VN’s description, to Cécile Miauton, n.d.

  130 Véra on Vienna: To HS, December 1, 1967. The bulk of this account is again via Boyd’s interview notes, especially those of June 13, 1982. Also, see Slonimsky, below.

  132 sight of white bread: Nicolas Slonimsky, oral history of March 15, 1977, University of California at Los Angeles, Dept. of Special Collections, No. 300/169.

  133 “made much money” to the charity balls: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973. Also, Boyd interview with VéN, June 5, 1982, Boyd archive.

  134 “everybody was going”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  135 She talked, and argued: Boyd interview with VéN, December 20, 1981, Boyd archive.

  136 “deprived of its high” through “Scala”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  137 “welter of vodka”: Friedrich, Before the Deluge, 21.

  138 discouraged in her plans: Boyd interview with VéN, November 11, 1982, Boyd archive. The architectural engineering degree: Filippa Rolf, “January,” 22, PC.

  139 import-export firm: Goldenweiser archives, Bakhm.

  140 teaching herself to type: VN to Kirill Nabokov, n.d.

  141 On Orbis: VéN to Goldenweiser, March 6, 1967, Bakhm.

  142 the Dostoyevsky translation: Field, 1977, 178.

  143 strolled by their governesses: Interview with Alfred Appel, October 20, 1995.

  144 “They could have met”: Penelope Gilliatt, “Nabokov,” Vogue, March 1967.

  145 “directed the searchlight”: ADA, 153.

  146 What would have to “as we are now”: Field, 1977, 34.

  147 Fate was ill-inclined: VN to VéN, November 1923, and August 24, 1924, VNA.

  148 whole catalogue: Fate finds a way from the earliest stories (“Doorbell,” 192) to the later novels (ADA, 152).

  149 Nabokov at work in the background: W. W. Rowe, Nabokov’s Spectral Dimension, 120ff.

  150 Fate’s devious ways: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA.

  151 “If you look carefully”: Interview with Matthew J. Bruccoli, April 18, 1995.

  152 “Oh, I have a thousand”: GIFT, 193–94.

  153 “the upper han
d”: RLSK, 7

  154 He was bored: VN to VéN, December 30, 1923, VNA.

  155 dreaming prophetically: VN to VéN, January 12, 1924, VNA.

  156 “Something has happened”: VN to VéN, January 24, 1924.

  2 THE ROMANTIC AGE

  1 “Don’t you think”: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA.

  2 “I’ve had many more”: VN to Field, October 2, 1970, VNA.

  3 regretted, though: SM, 240. “How many there had been already of these silk rags, and how he had tried to hang them across the gaping black gap!” laments the hero of one of VN’s first stories, five months after VN had met VéN. “Wingstroke,” STORIES, 28.

  4 “hardly an ordinary”: VN to VéN, November 8, 1923, VNA.

  5 negative side of things: Boyd, 1990, 215.

  6 “tiny sharp arrows”: VN to VéN, December 3, 1923, VNA.

  7 “At first I” to “sharp corners”: VN to VéN, undated, 1924, VNA.

  8 “I feel pain”: Poem beginning, “Your face between palms,” VNA. The “sharp corners” were again ostrye ugly, as in VN’s letter.

  9 “You see,” he averred: VN to VéN, August 24, 1924, VNA.

  10 value for posterity: Interview with DN, November 12, 1997.

  11 Boyd feels: Boyd to author, June 21, 1997.

  12 “Austen is a kitten”: Interview with Joanna Russ, May 6, 1996.

  13 the usual preconceptions: To which he readily confessed, VN to Wilson, May 5, 1950, NWL, 240–41.

  14 “family disease”: HS to VN, April 19, 1938, VNA. Selections from the Sikorski correspondence have been published, in Russian, as Vladimir Nabokov: Perepiska s sestroi (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985).

  15 a symptom of provincial literature: VN to Aldanov, May 6, 1942, Bakhm.

  16 “stellar” communication through “many other ways”: VN to VéN, January 8, 1924, VNA.

  17 synesthesia: See especially A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (New York: Basic Books, 1968), and Gladys A. Reichard, Roman Jakobson, and Elizabeth Werth’s “Language and Synesthesia” in Word 5, no. 2 (August 1949).

  18 pink flannel: VN to HS, November 26, 1945, PC. Also, BBC interview with VN, November 22, 1962. Nabokov lent some features of his palette to Fyodor, GIFT, 74.

  19 “She spoils everything”: Gerald Clarke, September 17, 1974, interview notes for Esquire profile.