Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

My aunt Wittgenstein: Elizaveta Dmitrievna Sayn-Wittgenstein (née Nabokov, 1877–1942), widow of Prince Heinrich Gottfried Chlodwig (Genrikh Fyodorovich) Sayn-Wittgenstein (1879–1919).

  ‘Le Martyre de l’Obèse’ … Béraud: The Martyrdom of the Obese Man (1922) by Henri Béraud (1885–1958) won the 1922 Prix Goncourt and would be made into a 1933 film (same title in French, Fat Man’s Worries in English), directed by Pierre Chenal (1904–90).

  ‘… mon tailleur …’: Fr. ‘… my flabbergasted tailor swallowed some of his pins. Without realizing that my case exhausted his euphemisms. – Monsieur is rather strong, he said first of all. Then he changed: – Monsieur is strong. Monsieur is very strong … Monsieur is powerful. Powerful, he was satisfied with that. After that, he took some of my measurements in silence, realizing, suddenly, that, from one adjective to the next, he would soon reach the point of telling me: “Monsieur is formidable. Monsieur is phenomenal … Monsieur is repugnant.’’’

  ‘vulgarity’: Aykhenvald’s lecture was on poshlost’, a concept that VN famously explained to non-Russians in ‘The Art of Literature and Commonsense’ (LL), NG and SO, and enjoyed depicting in his fiction.

  Letter of 11 July 1926

  Enclosed is also a four-page carbon copy of a typed questionnaire.

  Nik Serov … : Nik. Serov: rovesnik (‘peer’); E. T. Ivanov-Sirin: in vino veritas; M. M. Sukotin: kommunist (‘communist’, and therefore a follower of the 1918 Bolshevik reform ‘simplifying’ Russian orthography, which most émigrés resisted).

  ‘divinity’s original trait’: A line from the ode ‘Bog’ (‘God’, 1784), by Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin (1743–1816): ‘Ya svyaz’ mirov povsyudu sushchikh, / Ya kraynya stepen’ veshchestva; / Ya sredotochie zhivushchikh, / Cherta nachal’na bozhestva’ (‘I am the ubiquitous connection of worlds, / I am the extreme stage of matter; / I am the concentration of the living, / Divinity’s original trait’) (ll. 81–4).

  Tyutchev’s ‘water-jet’: From Tyutchev’s ‘Fontan’ (‘Fountain’, 1836): ‘O smertnoy mysli vodomyot, / O vodomyot neistoshchimyi! / Kakoi zakon nepostizhimyi / Tebya stremit, tebya myatyot? / Kak zhadno k neby rvyoshsya ty! … / No dlan’ nezrimo-rokovaya / Tvoy luch upornyi, prelomlyaya, / Svergaet v bryzgakh s vysoty’ (‘Oh water-jet of mortal thought, / Oh inexhaustible water-jet! / What inscrutable law / Speeds you, agitates you? / How greedily you rush towards the sky! … / But an unseen fateful hand / Refracting your persistent ray, / Throws it, in a spray, down from above’).

  Derzhavin’s ‘god-worm’: Bogocherv’, a word VN fashioned from Derzhavin’s ode ‘God’: ‘Ya tsar’ – ya rab – ya cherv’ – ya Bog! / No, buduchi ya stol’ chudesen, / Otkole proisshol? – bezvesten; / A sam soboy ya byt’ ne mog’ (‘I am tsar – I am slave – I am worm – I am God! / But, being such a wonder, / Where am I from? – unknown; / But just from myself I could not be’).

  Raisa: Tatarinov.

  the last three lines of ‘Aeroplane’s’ second stanza: See letter 1 of 5 July 1926.

  took a hundred: Cigarettes.

  life … rainbow … colourful bow: An echo of ‘Abt Vogler’ (1864), by one of VN’s favourite poets, Robert Browning (1812–89), l. 72: ‘On earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.’

  A questionnaire: Enclosed typescript on two separate pages.

  ‘Do you like cheese’: From ‘Epigram No. 1’ (1854) by Koz’ma Prutkov, a fictitious author invented by the writers Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817–75) and the three brothers Aleksey Mikhaylovich (1821–1908), Vladimir Mikhaylovich (1830–84), and Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Zhemchuzhnikov (1826–96).

  Letter of 12 July 1926

  ‘subtler’ than Tolstoy: The writer Lev Tolstoy. A pun, based on the literal meaning of tolstiy (‘thick’, ‘fat’) and tonkiy, the Russian word for ‘subtle’ as well as ‘thin’.

  five vowels and three consonants: In original Russian: ‘out of five vowels and five consonants’: ‘я тебя люблю’ (ya tebya lyublyu).

  Letter of 13 July 1926

  Gutmann Saal: VN’s mistake. The trial would take place at the Schubert-Saal, Bülowstrasse 104.

  Mrs Shor: Possibly Nadezhda (Nadiva) Rafailovna Shor, wife of Evsey Davidovich Shor (1891–1974), philosopher, art historian, journalist.

  from jail: In Tolstoy’s story, Pozdnyshev was acquitted.

  Letter of 14 July 1926

  Gurevich: Aleksandr Gurevich, perhaps the son of Vissarion Yakovlevich Gurevich (1876–1940), member of the Socialist Revolutionary party, political commentator and, in emigration, professor of Russian law in Prague.

  Tenishev: The liberal private school VN attended in St Petersburg from 1911 to 1917; he writes about it in Ch. 9 of SM.

  the Prague Slonim: Mark Lvovich Slonim (1894–1976), political activist, literary critic, journalist and translator; in 1922–7 he lived in Prague, where he edited the ‘Literary Diary’ and ‘Literary Chronicle’ at the literary-political daily Volya Rossii.

  mais je ne t’en veux pas: Fr. ‘But I don’t hold it against you’.

  ‘Ausflug’: Ger. ‘outing’.

  article … Christ’s appearance: Rev. George H. Box, ‘The Appearance of Christ. Testimony of Josephus. Dr Eisler’s “Reconstruction”. ’ The clipping was enclosed.

  Letter of 15 July 1926

  Magic Words: See Appendix One: Riddles.

  Tolpa … : Crowd, counter, leapfrog, sheepskin, mountain, dandy, gout, turquoise, splinter, Cain, whippet, sovereign, frame, lighthouse, force, Minsk.

  You musht … DARLINK: The word puzzle and parts of the letter are written in distorted Russian, with a stage-German accent. Some words, including the signature ‘Darlink’, are written in a childlike handwriting, bigger than VN’s normal cursive (they are capitalized throughout the letter), perhaps with his left hand.

  acrostic: PineapplE, NebuchadnezzaR, GuestS, An ugly persoN, A bladE, VinegaR, which, if read vertically in Russian, spells the Latin phrase ANGULUS RIDES

  angulus rides: VN gives ‘angulus rides’ as the answer to his puzzle, although the Latin phrase he has in mind is presumably angulus ridet, from ‘Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet’, in the Odes, Book II, no. vi, line. 13, of Horace (65–8 BCE): ‘That nook of the earth smiles for me more than any other.’

  Letter of 16 July 1926

  story by Bunin: ‘Solnechnyi udar’ (‘Sunstroke’), Sovremennye zapiski, 28 (July 1926), pp. 5–13.

  Aldanov’s verbiology: ‘Zagovor’ (‘Conspiracy’), Sovremennye zapiski, 28 (July 1926), pp. 73–134. VN’s coinage mnogologiya manages to include mnogo (‘much’, ‘a lot’), monolog and elements equivalent to ‘verbose trilogy’.

  ballad by Khodasevich: ‘John Bottom’, Sovremennye zapiski, 28 (July 1926), pp. 189–96, by Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (1886–1939), leading Russian poet, literary critic and biographer, who would become VN’s literary ally and friend in the 1930s.

  Letter of 17 July 1926

  Sauer-jurken: Ger. saure Gurken (‘pickles’), in the Berlin dialect saure Jurken.

  Raisa: Tatarinov.

  faute de mieux: Fr. ‘for lack of better’, ‘since there’s no choice’.

  Landaus: Grigory Adolfovich Landau (1877–1941), philosopher, political commentator, contributor to Rul’, and his wife.

  Golubev: Possibly the artist Leonid Golubev-Bagryanorodny.

  Letter of 18 July 1926

  Magic Words: See Appendix One: Riddles.

  lono … : Bosom, Jews, Sinai, parody.

  outflight: VN uses the Russian vylet, a literal translation (‘outflight’) of the German word Ausflug, ‘outing’, ‘excursion’.

  Baratynsky’s verse: Compare VN’s quotation (‘Svoevol’noe nazvan’e / dal ya miloy v lasku ey / mimolyotnoe sozdan’e / detskoy nezhnosti moey’) and the original (‘Svoenravnoe prozvan’e / Dal ya miloy v lasku ey / Bezotchotnoe sozdan’e / Detskoy nezhnosti moey’), the opening lines of ‘Svoenravnoe prozvan’e’ (1832) by Evgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800–44),
which VN would translate into rhyme, about 1949, under the title ‘To His Wife’: ‘I have given her a nickname / just a fanciful caress, / the unconscious inspiration / of my childish tenderness’ (V&V, p. 225).

  an Apollo: See letter of 9 July 1926.

  replies … from Bunin … : To his sending complimentary copies of his first novel, Mashen’ka (Mary).

  Letter of 19 July 1926

  ‘tennis’ … ‘tenez’ … Henry IV: Real tennis was not played in England at the time of Henry IV; Henry VIII was a famous enthusiast for the game; but perhaps VN is thinking of this response from Shakespeare’s Henry V, also, as Prince Henry, the hero of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, to the French ambassador’s gift of tennis balls, a sneer at the King’s past reputation as a playboy: ‘We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; / His present and your pains we thank you for. / When we have matched our rackets to these balls, / We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set / Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard. / … tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his / Hath turn’d his balls to gunstones; and his soul / Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance / That shall fly from them’ (Henry V, Act I, Scene 2, ll. 259–84).

  ‘Maria’s Estates’: Marienbad.

  Ol[eum] Ricini: Castor oil.

  Letter of 22 December 1926

  Mama will write … : Written upside down at the top of the first page.

  Pyotr Mikhaylovich: Pyotr Mikhaylovich Skulyari, fiancé and then first husband of Elena Nabokov (by her second marriage, Sikorski).

  Shakhovskoy: Prince Sergey Sergeevich Shakhovskoy (1903–74), entomologist, first husband (until c. 1930) of Olga Petkevich (née Nabokov).

  ‘Terror’: The story ‘Uzhas’, published in Sovremennye zapiski, 30 (1927), pp. 214–20; trans. DN with VN, TD.

  my little long poem: ‘Universitetskaya poema’ (‘The University Poem’), written late 1926, published Sovremennye zapiski, 32 (December 1927), pp. 223–54; trans DN, SP.

  the play: The Man from the USSR (Chelovek iz SSSR), written in the fall of 1926. Act I was published in Rul’, 1 January 1927, pp. 2–3; trans. by DN in MUSSR. First published in full in Russian in TGM.

  Letter of 23 December 1926

  23 December 1926: VéN had later placed the date ‘1928’ on the letter, but its content clearly indicates 1926.

  P. M.: Pyotr Mikhaylovich (Skulyari).

  mentioned me … in ‘Krasnaya nov’’: The Soviet journal Krasnaya nov’ (Red New Soil) (1921–41), which had first written of ‘Sirin’ in 1924 (N. Smirnov, ‘Solntse myortvykh: Zametki ob emigrant. lit.’ (‘The Sun of the Dead: Notes on Émig. Lit.’), Krasnaya nov’, 3 (20), pp. 250–67, discussing Sirin on pp. 264–5). No later reference is known.

  also read ‘Terror’: ‘Uzhas’ (‘Terror’) would not be published until January 1927 (see previous letter). Had Bers received a typescript copy via VN’s mother?

  Katkov: Georgy Mikhaylovich Katkov (1903–85), then professor of philosophy and Indology at the University of Prague.

  Bobrovsky: Pyotr Semyonovich Bobrovsky (1880–1947), a Menshevik, member of the Crimean Regional Government in which VDN was Minister of Justice.

  Aykhenvaldo … Landau: Aykhenvald positively reviewed Grigory Landau’s book of aphorisms, Epigraphy (Epigraphs) (Berlin: Slovo, 1927). ‘Literaturnye zametki’, Rul’, 22 December 1926, pp. 2–3.

  ‘Put’’: Presumably the monthly journal Put’ (The Way), published in Paris from 1925 to 1940.

  Mr Dvurogin: A semi-transparent deformation of the name ‘Trigorin’ (tri (‘three’) to dva (‘two’), gorin to rogin), a character in Chekhov’s play Chayka (The Seagull, 1896). Trigorin is a popular writer, morally unscrupulous and aware of the limitations of his talent.

  1929

  Note of 18 April 1929

  Le Boulon: In VéN’s hand, on the margin: ‘Boulon?’

  Thais: The papilionid butterfly Thais rumina (now Zerynthia rumina), the Spanish Festoon. ‘Further on towards Las Ilas, in a ravine near a stream, a greasy-looking butterfly that floated low above the ground turned out to be a small, slightly faded female of Thais rumina var. medesicaste, but no more were to be found’, ‘Notes on the Lepidoptera of the Pyrénées Orientales and the Ariège’, Entomologist, 64 (November 1931), p. 255, reprinted in N’sBs, p. 130.

  Undated note (1929?)

  Date: There is nothing to indicate a date for this little note, except that VéN kept it in the 1928–30 sequence, unless the ‘K.’ refers to Kramář and therefore to 1924, rather than to 1930, when he was also in Prague.

  1930

  Letter of c. 9 May 1930

  Date: Dated ‘1926’ in VéN’s hand, incorrectly, since VN mentions the German translation of his novel King, Queen, Knave (König, Dame, Bube) as already published by Ullstein; this was in fact serialized in Ullstein’s Vossische Zeitung from 15 March to 1 April 1930 and presumably appeared in book form almost immediately thereafter. VN sent his first letter from his only 1930 trip to Prague on 11 May. It seems that he left this note for VéN to find on her return, just before he himself made a final round of visits and returned to complete packing his trunk, before heading for the train to Prague.

  his son: Sergey Iosifovich Hessen (1887–1950), philosopher and political commentator, lived in Prague from 1924 to 1935.

  Mrs Walrus: VN’s nickname for his landlady, Frau von Bardeleben.

  Postcard 1 of 12 May 1930

  Elenochka: His sister Elena, by then surnamed Skulyari.

  E. K.: Evgenia Konstantinovna Hofeld.

  Dear Véra: Added by EN, below VN’s message.

  Letter 2 of 12 May 1930

  ‘The Entomologist’: British entomological journal, which VN read avidly even as a child. As early as ten or so, he tried to publish there a description of what he thought a new species (SM, pp. 133–4); he eventually published there, the first of four times, ‘A Few Notes on Crimean Lepidoptera’, Entomologist, 53 (February 1920), pp. 29–33.

  Papilio: A genus in the Swallowtail family, Papilionidae; the Latin for ‘butterfly’, and the genus in which Linnaeus originally placed all butterflies.

  podalirius: The Scarce Swallowtail, Papilio (now Iphiclides) podalirius.

  Püngeler: Rudolf Püngeler (1857–1927), district court councillor in Aachen and lepidopterist, who identified about 300 new species, mostly moths.

  ‘Skit Poetov’: ‘The Poets’ Hermitage’ (1922–40), a Russian émigré literary group founded in Prague by literary critic Alfred Bem.

  a little old general: Presumably the General Dolgov of the 16 May 1930 letter.

  Jan[n]ings in ‘The Last Advent’: German-Austrian actor Emil Jannings (1884–1950) in his most famous role, as a hotel doorman in F. W. Murnau’s film, Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924).

  Shalyapin: Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin (1873–1938), famous opera bass.

  Petkevich: Boris Vladimirovich Petkevich (?–1965), engineer. VN’s sister Olga and her first husband, Sergey Shakhovskoy, had divorced by 1930, when she married Petkevich.

  Petya: Pyotr Mikhaylovich Skulyari.

  ‘The Eye’: Soglyadatay (The Eye), written December 1929–February 1930, published in Sovremennye zapiski, 44 (November 1930); trans. DN with VN (New York: Phaedra, 1965).

  Apropos of the soul: ‘Darling’ here is dushen’ka, a diminutive of dusha, ‘soul’.

  Mrs Bliss: Unidentified.

  Letter of 16 May 1930

  Rathaus: Daniil Maksimovich Rathaus (1868–1937), poet.

  Eisner: Aleksey Vladimirovich Eisner (1905–84), poet and literary critic.

  Gumilyov: Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886–1921), Russian Acmeist poet whom VN regarded highly in his youth.

  ‘So they compare you to me …’: In an article hostile to ‘Sirin’, the poet, translator and critic Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov (1894–1958) pointedly compared Sirin as a poet to Rathaus and other second-rate poets (review of Mashen’ka, Korol’, Dama, Valet, Zashchita Luzhina and Vozvrashchenie Chorba, in Chisla (Nu
mbers), 1(1930), pp. 233–6). See note on Nalyanch, letter of 20 May 1930.

  Baudelaire … ‘jeune elephant’: ‘Le serpent qui danse’ (‘The Dancing Snake’), in Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), by Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), ll. 21–4: ‘Sous le fardeau de ta paresse / Ta tête d’enfant / Se balance avec la mollesse / D’un jeune éléphant’ (‘Under the burden of your idleness / Your childlike head / Sways with the softness / Of a young elephant).’

  Fyodorov: Possibly Vasily Georgievich Fyodorov (1895–1959), short-story writer, member of ‘Skit Poetov’.

  ‘The Aurelian’: ‘Pilgram’, story written March 1930, published Sovremennye zapiski, 43 (July 1930), pp. 191–207; trans. VN with Peter Pertzoff, Atlantic Monthly, November 1941, pp. 618–25.

  Sherman: Savely Grigorievich Sherman, pen-name A. A. Saveliev (1894–1948), writer, critic, Rul’ contributor and friend.

  Raisa: Tatarinov.

  General Dolgov: Unidentified.

  ‘spleutni’: Spletni (‘gossip’), with a (French?) distortion.

  Flemlandia: Flamandiya, Elena’s back-formation from flamandsky, ‘Flemish’.

  Letter of 17 May 1930

  Gorlin: Mikhail Genrikhovich Gorlin (1909–44), poet, whom in 1927 VN taught English and prosody; founded a Young Poets’ Club (1928–33) in Berlin.

  ‘Petropolis’: Publishing house founded in St Petersburg in 1918; in 1922 a branch was opened in Berlin, which became independent in 1924. In 1931 Petropolis published the first anthology of the Poets’ Club, Novoselie: sbornik stikhov berlinskikh poetov (House-Warming: Collection of Poems by Berlin Poets).

  Ivan Alekseevich: Bunin.

  Pos. Nov.: Poslednie novosti (The Latest News, 1920–40), Russian daily published in Paris; Georgy Adamovich’s review of The Defence appeared there on 15 May 1930.

  lots of butts: VN writes i mnogo babok, where babok stands for babochek, ‘butterflies’.

  Nem.-Danchenko: Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko was not only a writer but also a board member of the Czech-Russian Union (the former Czech-Russian Committee, 1918–39).

  Massalsky: Prince Nikolay Massalsky, husband of VéN’s sister Elena Slonim.

  Kiesewetter: Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Kiesewetter (1866–1933), historian, political activist and commentator, professor of Russian history at the University of Prague.