Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  poetess Rathaus: Tatyana Danilovna Klimenko-Rathaus (1909–93), poet and actress.

  Vicki Baum: Vicki Baum (1888–1960), bestselling Austrian novelist, most famous for Menschen im Hotel (People in a Hotel, 1929, filmed as Grand Hotel, 1932, which won the Best Picture Academy Award). VN parodied the Grand Hotel formula in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and critiqued it in a still unpublished Cornell lecture (‘ghastly stuff’) (VNA).

  Zhenya Hessen: Evgeny Sergeevich Hessen (1910–45), poet, member of ‘Skit Poetov’, (‘The Poets’ Hermitage’), grandson of Iosif Hessen.

  Ivan Alekseevich’s little masterpieces: Bunin’s short stories ‘Kostyor’ (‘Bonfire’) and ‘Nadezhda’ (‘Hope’) (Poslednie novosti, 10 April 1932).

  catching and collecting lightning: May reflect experiments by Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), Serbian-American physicist and inventor, who had appeared on the cover of Time magazine in July 1931.

  Letter of 14 April 1932

  ‘Average man’: In 1932, Poslednie novosti published several chapters of the novel Sivtsev Vrazhek by Mikhail Andreevich Ilyin, pen-name Osorgin (1878–1942), in which he tells the story of the Russian intelligentsia’s survival after the Revolution. The excerpts were signed ‘Obyvatel’’ (‘An average man, a philistine’).

  Altschuler: Isaak Naumovich Altschuller, a doctor friend of VN’s mother.

  sidecar: Sidecars were often used as cheaper alternatives to taxicabs.

  my old poem: published, with mistakes, in Maria Malikova, ed., Stikhotvoreniya. VN called the poem ‘Crosses’ in a letter of 19 June 1923 to his mother. See letter of 6 April 1932.

  Hessen: Iosif Hessen.

  Ne précise pas … : Fr. ‘don’t specify the date of my arrival … it’s possible’.

  dash from shore to ball: ‘S korablya na bal’, one of the many proverbs originating in the comedy Gore ot uma (Woe from Wit, 1823, published 1833) by Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov (1795–1829).

  An India invisible … : VéN’s commentary: ‘This poem was published. And so on. It gets worse later.’ See n., p 544.

  Letter of 15 April 1932

  Date: VéN recorded the date as ‘17 April 1932’, but the first sentence suggests VN wrote the letter on 15 April.

  Standesamt: German Civil Registration Office. VN is writing on their wedding anniversary.

  his son, also a doctor: Grigory Isaakovich Altschuller, son of I. N. Altschuller.

  Mulman: Unidentified.

  peine perdue: Fr. ‘a wasted effort’.

  Gippius’s ‘Human Countenance’: Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius, pen-names Vl. Bestuzhev, Vl. Neledinsky (1876–1941), poet, prose-writer and critic, taught VN literature at Tenishev School in St Petersburg; Human Countenance (Lik chelovecheskiy), a narrative poem (Berlin: Epokha, 1922).

  Joyce: James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish novelist. Nabokov always admired Ulysses and even wrote to Joyce in 1933 offering to translate it into Russian (letter of 9 November 1933, James Joyce – Paul Léon Papers, National Library of Ireland).

  Dostoevsky: Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky (1821–81). Nabokov continued to think little of Dostoevsky, even when lecturing on him at Cornell and Harvard (LRL).

  Vacek: Unidentified.

  IrochkaVergun: Irina Dmitrievna Vergun, daughter of Dmitry Nikolaevich Vergun (1871–1951), literary scholar, political activist and professor at several universities in Prague.

  how slovenly they are: In VéN’s voice: ‘I don’t know about whom.’ In fact, VN is writing about his sister Olga and her husband Petkevich.

  Letter of 16 April 1932

  Volodya: Vladimir Kozhevnikov, a university student at the time, had been VN’s and VéN’s pupil in 1928 in Berlin.

  zhonka: Czech, ‘wife’, ‘Mrs’.

  my second poem: ‘Zimnyaya noch’, Russkaya mysl’ 3–4 (March–April) 1917, p. 72.

  The first one: ‘Lunnaya gryoza’.

  Russkoe bogatstvo: Russia’s Riches, journal, St Petersburg, 1876–1918.

  Mme Tyrkov: Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkov-Williams (1869–1962), writer, member of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic party and deputy of the First Duma. Mme Tyrkov’s novel Plunder (Dobycha) was published in Russkaya mysl’, 6–7 (June–July), 1917.

  38.2° C: 100.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Wednesday, for the sake of the rhyme: Priédu v srédu rhymes in Russian.

  Letter of 18 April 1932

  my translation of Alice in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832–98), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865); Anya v strane chudes, trans. Vladimir Sirin, with illustrations by S. Zalshupin (Berlin: Gamayun, 1923).

  Olga … flew into a wild rage: Sergey Shakhovskoy had been the first husband of Olga Petkevich (née Nabokov).

  Pletnyov: See letter of 11 April 1932.

  Seryozha: VN’s brother Sergey.

  ‘I hear a sudden cry’: The opening lines of ‘The Snare’ (1914), by James Stephens (1882–1950), Irish novelist and poet.

  Poslednie novosti with Camera: ‘Kamera obskura (Glava iz romana)’ (‘Camera Obscura (Chapter of a Novel)’), Poslednie novosti, 17 April 1932; Ch. 3 of the novel.

  Camera has to be sent today: Presumably the proofs for Sovremennye zapiski.

  Mulmanovich: Earlier mentioned as Mulman. Unidentified.

  mislay: In Russian, valyat’.

  Union: The Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in Berlin.

  Pushkin’s ‘Faust’: Pushkin, ‘Stsena iz Fausta’ (‘A Scene from Faustus’, 1825).

  Letter of 19 April 1932

  that Dresden affair: On 7 May, VN did read his work in the cellar of a Russian church in Dresden (VNRY, p. 379).

  Letter of 13 October 1932

  Kolbsheim: In early October 1932, VN’s cousin Nicolas Nabokov, his wife Nathalie (Natalia Alekseevna, née Shakhovskoy, 1903–88), and their son Ivan (1932– ) were invited to vacation at a friend’s house in Kolbsheim, near Strasbourg. They invited VN and VéN, who spent two weeks with them. After his wife’s departure for Berlin, VN stayed behind for a few days to go to Paris for a reading and to establish contacts.

  Lisbet: Thompson.

  Fond: Fondaminsky.

  Dita: Unidentified.

  Letter of 15 October 1932

  Ullstein … ‘The Doorbell’: ‘Zvonok’, Rul’, 22 May 1927, pp. 2–4; and in VC. The German translation, if it was published, has not been located.

  Kreul: Or Krell? Unidentified: possibly an editor at Ullstein.

  doctor Jacob: Unidentified.

  Nika: Nicolas Nabokov.

  Hertz: Paul Hertz (1900–?), owner, with his wife Suzanne, of the Librairie de la Mésange, Strasbourg. The bookstore was famous for the owners’ knowledge of both its books and its customers; a familiar haunt of local faculty and students, it often staged lectures and art exhibitions (Raymond Aubrac, Où la mémoire s’attarde (Paris: Jacob, 1996), p. 46).

  Grasset and Fayard: The French publishers Éditions Grasset, founded in 1907, and Librairie Arthème Fayard.

  Nouvelles littéraires: André Levinson, ‘V. Sirine et son joueur d’échecs’ (‘V. Sirin and His Chess Player’), Nouvelles littéraires, Paris, 15 February 1930, p. 6. VN would meet Levinson on 6 November 1932.

  also the one from Mesures: Although VN would publish in Mesures in 1937, it did not yet exist as a journal. He apparently had in mind a critical article by Gleb Struve, ‘Les “Romans-escamotage” ’ (‘Novels of Conjuring’), Le Mois, Paris, April–May 1931, pp. 141–52. (Trying to make out the text here, VéN reads: ‘Mesures or something, don’t know.’)

  Seryozha: VN’s brother Sergey.

  Malevsky-Malevich: Princess Zinaida Alekseevna Shakhovskoy (1906–2001), writer and literary critic, married to Svyatoslav Svyatoslavovich Malevsky-Malevich (1905–73). Mme Shakhovskoy would be a friend and staunch supporter of VN in the 1930s but became hostile to him and especially VéN in later years. See Appendix Two, p. 540.

  ‘Société Protectrice de
s Animaux’: Fr. ‘Society for the Protection of Animals’.

  Io: Inachis (Vanessa) io, the Peacock Butterfly.

  Letter of 17 October 1932

  Mme Maurice Grunelius: The Grunelius family lived in Kolbsheim for generations. The Nabokovs stayed on the property of Alexandre and Antoinette Grunelius.

  Denis Roche: Denis Roche (1868–1951), French writer and translator from Russian into French of The Defence, The Eye and ‘Spring in Fialta’.

  Mongoose: A mongoose is the title character of Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘Rikki-tikki-tavi’ in The Jungle Book (1894).

  ‘Das habe ich nicht gesehen’: Ger. ‘I see nothing’, in the idiomatic English sense that the servant prefers to ignore how VN saved the mice she had caught.

  ‘Ne parlez pas devant les genS’: Fr. ‘Don’t talk in front of the servantS’ (with the last letter pronounced by the Russians, as it would not be by the French).

  Bibliothèque Rose: A series of children’s books in French published by Hachette since 1856. VN mentions some volumes in the series, such as Les Malheurs de Sophie, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre Vingts Jours, Le Petit Chose, Les Misérables, Le Comte de Monte Cristo, in Speak, Memory (SM, p. 105).

  Aleksandra Fyodorovna’s letters to the Tsar: Tsarina Aleksandra Fyodorovna (1872–1918), wife of last Russian Emperor Nicholas II (1868–1918). VDN translated their letters from the original English into Russian: Pis’ma Aleksandry Fyodorovny k imperatoru Nikolayu II (Berlin: Slovo, 1922).

  about Blok in Poslednie novosti, about his letters: A first volume of Blok’s letters to his family, Pis’ma k rodnym, had been published in 1927; the second volume had just appeared, ed. M. A. Beketova and Vasily Desnitsky (Moscow, Leningrad: Academia, 1932).

  Nicholas’s army: Tsar Nicholas I, born 1796, ruled 1825–55.

  Letter of 22 October 1932

  Zenzinov: Vladimir Mikhaylovich Zenzinov (1880–1953), a leading Socialist Revolutionary and a friend of VDN’s while in Russia. After emigrating, he lived first in Prague, then Paris, where he served on the editorial board of Sovremennye zapiski, and finally, from 1939, in the US.

  his wife: Fondaminsky’s wife, Amalia Osipovna Fondaminsky (née Gavronsky, 1882–1935).

  Kerensky: Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky (1881–1970), socialist politician, Prime Minister of the Second Provisional Government (1917), in emigration from 1918.

  Rudnev: Vadim Victorovich Rudnev (1879–1940), formerly a prominent Socialist Revolutionary leader and friend of VDN, now an editor of Sovremennye zapiski.

  Demidov: Igor Platonovich Demidov (1873–1946), politician, journalist, deputy of the Fourth Duma, deputy editor of Poslednie novosti.

  très en gros: Fr. ‘writ very large’.

  Zina: Zinaida Gippius, who had warned VDN in 1916, as VN recalls, ‘to tell me, please, that I would never, never be a writer’ (SM, p. 238).

  Supervielle: Jules Supervielle (1884–1960), French poet, novelist, short-story writer and dramatist.

  Cocteau: Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), French poet, novelist and playwright.

  Letter of 24 October 1932

  very early now: In Véra’s voice: ‘I can’t make it out.’

  a […]: Word unclear.

  his phone lets in draughts: i.e. his phone is tapped.

  Ladinsky: Antonin Petrovich Ladinsky (1896–1961), poet.

  Polyakov: Aleksandr Abramovich Polyakov (1879–1971), journalist, secretary and later deputy editor of Poslednie novosti.

  Volkov: Nikolay Konstantinovich Volkov (1875–1950), formerly member of the Constitutional Democratic party, deputy of the Fourth Duma and, in Paris, managing director of Poslednie novosti.

  Berberova: Nina Nikolaevna Berberova (1901–93), writer and journalist.

  break-up with Khodasevich: The civil union of Khodasevich and Berberova lasted ten years. They separated in 1932.

  epigram on Ivánov: VN allegedly recorded his epigram on Georgy Ivanov in Khodasevich’s album and then posted it to Gleb Struve and Fondaminsky in the spring of 1931 (VNRY, p. 370; Malikova, pp. 512, 616n). The epigram, transliterated, appeared in Andrew Field’s Nabokov: His Life in Art (Boston: Little and Brown, 1967, p. 379): ‘ “– Takogo net moshennika vtorogo / Vo vsey sem’e zhurnal’nykh shulerov!” ’ / “Kogo ty tak?” “Ivanova, Petrova, / Ne vsyo l’ ravno …” “Postoy, a kto zh Petrov?” ’ with VN’s free translation: ‘ “No greater crook exists among the sharpers / Of the whole magazine fraternity!” / “Whom are you cursing so?” – “Oh, Johnson, Smithson, / What do I care …” – “But Smithson – who is he?’’’

  the ‘Perekryostok’ group: ‘Crossroads’, a literary group founded in Paris by poets closer to Khodasevich than to the circle of Georgy Adamovich and the ‘Paris Note’ school of poetry he epitomized. The poets Vladimir Smolensky, Dovid Knut, Yury Mandelstam and Georgy Raevsky belonged to ‘Perekryostok.’ In 1930, the group published a collection of their poetry: Perekryostok: Sb[ornik] stikhov (Paris: Ya. Povolotsky, 1930).

  Don Aminado’s: Aminodav Peysakhovich Shpolyansky, pen-name Don Aminado (1888–1957), satirical poet.

  Rausch: Baron Nikolay Nikolaevich Rausch von Traubenberg (1880–1943), a relative of VN’s (VN’s paternal aunt Nina Dmitrievna Nabokov had married his uncle, Baron Evgeny Aleksandrovich Rausch von Traubenberg in 1880). Before the Revolution, he had served at the Russian court.

  Mme Adamov: Possibly Nadezhda Konstantinovna Adamov (1880–1955), doctor of medicine, wife of Mikhail Konstantinovich Adamov (1858–1933), a lawyer, a relative of the Tatarinovs (see letter of 28 or 29 October 1932).

  Frumkin: Yakov Grigorievich Frumkin (1880–1971), lawyer, had been a friend of VDN. In 1940, as chair of a Jewish rescue organization in New York, he would help the Nabokovs obtain passage on a refugee ship from St Nazaire to New York.

  S. G.: Perhaps Sergey Hessen (‘Gessen’ would be a strict transliteration of the Russian name) or Sofia Grigorievna Hessen, second wife of Georgy Hessen. VN referred to her as S.G. in his correspondence with the Hessens (see V. Yu. Gessen, ed. Pis’ma V. V. Nabokova k Gessenam’, Zvezda, 4, 1999, 42–45).

  Zyoka: Nickname of VN’s close friend, Georgy Iosifovich Hessen (1902–71), translator and movie reviewer, after arrival in US a simultaneous interpreter; son of Iosif Hessen.

  Lizaveta: Lisbet Thompson.

  Limousin: Presumably the Limousin troubadour Bertran de Born (c. 1140–c. 1215) and others like Bernart de Ventadorn (1130s–1190s). VN had studied medieval French literature at Cambridge.

  Paulhan: Jean Paulhan (1884–1968), French novelist, literary critic and publisher.

  Nouvelle Revue Française: Leading French literary magazine, founded as a monthly in 1909.

  Luzhin: Zashchita Luzhina (The Defence), serialized in Sovremennye zapiski and Poslednie novosti in 1930; published in book form in Berlin by Slovo, 1930.

  Boulevard Lannes: Supervielle lived at number 47.

  Amalia Osipovna: Fondaminsky, wife of Ilya Fondaminsky. After her death from tuberculosis, VN would contribute a memoir in Pamyati Amalii Osipovny Fondaminskoy (In Memory of Amalia Osipovna Fondaminsky, Paris: privately printed, 1937).

  Stepun: Fyodor Avgustovich Stepun (1884–1965), philosopher, novelist and editor, with Ilya Fondaminsky and Georgy Fedotov, of the Paris-based literary-religious journal Novyi grad (New City) (1931–9).

  Pereslegin: Nikolay Pereslegin (1927), a philosophical and autobiographical novel by Stepun.

  Acharya: Nabokov’s friend Magda Maksimilyanovna Nakhman-Acharya (1889–1951), artist, painter, married M. P. T. Acharya (1887–1951), one of the founders of the Communist Party of India.

  Terapiano: Yury Konstantinovich Terapiano (1892–1980), poet, memoirist and translator.

  Smolensky: Vladimir Alekseevich Smolensky (1901–61), poet.

  Antiopa, Io, Apollo: Nymphalis (Vanessa) antiopa, the Camberwell Beauty; Inachis (Vanessa) io, the Peacock Butterfly; Parnassius Apollo, the Apollo.

  Rutenberg: Pyotr Moiseevich Rutenberg (1878–1942), engineer, p
olitician and businessman.

  Gapon: Georgy Apollonovich Gapon (1870–1906), a Russian Orthodox priest, organizer of a workers’ strike and a peaceful demonstration to the Winter Palace that was met by gunfire from government troops on ‘Bloody Sunday’, 9 January 1905. In April 1906 Gapon was executed by activists of the Socialist Revolutionary Party on the grounds of his being a government agent, traitor and provocateur.

  Gruzenberg: Oskar Osipovich Gruzenberg (1866–1940), lawyer, contributor to Sovremennye zapiski.

  Milyukov: Pavel Nikolaevich Milyukov (1859–1943), liberal politician, leader of the Constitutional Democratic party, historian and journalist. In the emigration, he wrote books on Russian history and edited Poslednie novosti. In 1922, at a public lecture Milyukov was giving in Berlin, VDN tried to wrest the gun from a monarchist who had shot at Milyukov and was himself shot by his accomplice.

  Tsvibakh: Yakov Moiseevich Tsvibakh, pen-name Andrey Sedykh (1902–94), writer, journalist and secretary to Ivan Bunin.

  Odoevtseva: Iraida Gustavovna Heineke, pen-name Irina Vladimirovna Odoevtseva (1895–1990), poet, novelist and memoirist; the wife of Georgy Ivanov.

  ‘My uncle has …’: A reference to the first line of Ch. 1 of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. VN translated the first stanza: ‘My uncle has most honest principles: / when he was taken gravely ill, / he forced one to respect him and nothing better could invent. / To others his example is a lesson; / but, good God, what a bore to sit by a sick person day and night, not stirring / a step away! / What base perfidiousness / to entertain one half-alive, / adjust for him his pillows, / sadly serve him his medicine, / sigh – and think inwardly / when will the devil take you?’ (EO [1964], I, p. 95).

  Merezhkovsky couple: Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his wife Zinaida Gippius.

  Felsen: Nikolay Berngardovich Freidenstein, pen-name Yuri Felsen (1884 or 1885–no later than 1943), writer and literary critic.

  Antoinette: Mrs Grunelius.

  ‘Oh M’sieur …’: Fr. ‘Oh, Monsieur, it’s a long way from here, right on the other side, towards the fortifications.’

  salle de vue: Fr. ‘viewing room’.