Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Maklakov’s: As chair of the Russian Émigré Committee, Maklakov could help VN obtain a French residence permit.

  the English galleys: Of Despair (London: John Long, 1937).

  ‘Tair’: VN offered ‘Tair’ The Defence, but they wanted to take The Gift instead: see letter of 19 February 1937. The publication never occurred.

  Lol.: Lolly.

  the old man’s: Iosif Hessen’s.

  P. N.: Poslednie novosti or perhaps its editor, P. N. Milyukov. VN wanted to sign a contract with the newspaper to write for it on a regular basis.

  Boulogne: The Bois de Boulogne district in the West of Paris.

  ‘Fialta’: Short story ‘Vesna v Fial’te’ (‘Spring in Fialta’), written April 1936, published Sovremennye zapiski, 61 (1936), pp. 91–113.

  Sablin’s: Evgeny Vasilievich Sablin (1875–1949), diplomat, Russian chargé d’affaires in London (1919–1921). In 1915, as First Secretary of the Russian embassy, he served under K. D. Nabokov, VN’s uncle.

  with Ilyusha’s actors about the play: The actors of the Russian Theatre, sponsored by Ilya Fondaminsky. The play may be Sobytie (The Event), written by VN for the Russian Theatre, although indications in May are that the play he has been writing has not gone well and he may be abandoning whatever concept he was working on.

  the old man’s: Iosif Hessen’s.

  Jeanne: Fondaminsky’s housekeeper.

  ‘mon pauvre petit martyr!’: Fr. ‘my poor little martyr’.

  Letter postmarked 27 [January] 1937

  Pavel’s: Milyukov’s.

  Calmbrood: Vivian Calmbrood, a near-anagrammatic literary alias that VN first used when he published the play Skitaltsy (The Wanderers) as a translation of the invented Calmbrood’s work. He revived the name in 1931, ‘Iz Kalmbrudovoi poemy “Nochnoe puteshestvie” ’ (‘From Calmbrood’s Long Poem “The Night Journey” ’), Rul’, 5 July 1931; Stikhi. Here VN uses the name as another decoy when he reports his earnings.

  both things: The Pushkin talk, ‘Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable’, and the French translation, ‘L’Outrage’, of the story ‘Obida’ (‘A Bad Day’).

  Victor: Again VN refers to himself.

  a meeting of Christians and poets: Perhaps a meeting of Novyi grad (The New City, 1931–9), a philosophico-religious journal edited by Fondaminsky, Fyodor Stepun and Georgy Fedotov.

  Georg. Ivan.: Georgy Ivanov.

  Boris Brodsky: Boris Yakovlevich Brodsky (1901–51?), journalist.

  Mamchenko: Victor Andreevich Mamchenko (1901–82), poet, one of the organizers of the Union of Young Poets and Writers.

  Tsetlin: Mikhail Osipovich Tsetlin, pen-name Amari (1882–1945), writer, poet, literary critic, editor and publisher, poetry editor at Sovremennye zapiski.

  Gaston Gallimard: French publisher (1881–1975), founded Nouvelle Revue Française in 1908 and the publishing house Librairie Gallimard in 1919.

  see Lyusya and give it to him: VN will leave his earnings with Anna Feigin’s cousin Ilya Feigin.

  précipité blanc: Fr. ‘white precipitate’.

  Mme Sablin: Nadezhda Ivanovna Sablin (née Bazhenov, 1892–1966), wife of Evgeny Sablin. VN errs in saying her maiden name was Fomin. Yurik is VN’s cousin, Georgy (Yury) Rausch von Traubenberg.

  Gogel’s sister: Actually the sister of S. K. Gogel’s wife, Aleksandra Ivanovna (née Bazhenov). Sergey Gogel took part with VN in the 1926 mock ‘Pozdnyshev Trial’ in Berlin.

  review from a Belgian newspaper: R. D[upierreux], ‘Conférence de M. Nabokoff-Sirine’, Le Soir, 23 January 1937.

  Letter postmarked 28 January 1937

  Outrage: French ‘Obida’ (‘A Bad Day’). It would be accepted by Mesures for its May 1937 issue (see letter of 15 April 1937) but apparently would not be published there either.

  ‘délicieux, merveilleux, convaincant’: Fr. ‘delicious, marvellous, convincing’.

  P. N.: Pavel Nikolaevich Milyukov.

  Victor: VN refers to himself.

  N. M. Rodzyanko’s: Nikolay Mikhaylovich Rodzyanko (1888–1941), former General Secretary of the Russian Émigré Committee, chair of the labour department of the Central Russian Office in Paris, and son of Mikhail Rodzyanko, a politician and colleague of VDN.

  permis de séjour: Fr. ‘residence permit’.

  Ald.’s very nice article: Mark Aldanov, ‘Vechera “Sovremennykh Zapisok” ’, Poslednie novosti, 28 January 1937, p. 3.

  M.’s : Mme Morevsky’s.

  injections: For his psoriasis.

  Letter postmarked 1 February 1937

  Molly: Molly Carpenter-Lee (1911–after 1973), one of Gleb Struve’s best students, who would help check VN’s translation of Despair into English.

  conférence: Fr. ‘lecture’, ‘talk’: ‘Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable.’

  ‘envolée’: Fr. ‘lift’, ‘take-off.’

  Melo du Dy: Robert Mélot du Dy. The essay included translations of several Pushkin poems: ‘Dans le désert du monde’ (‘Tri klyucha’, ‘Three Springs’); ‘Ne me les chante pas, ma belle’ (‘Ne poy, krasavitsa, pri mne’, ‘My beauty, do not sing for me’); ‘Je ne puis m’endormir’ (‘Mne ne spitsya, net ognya’, ‘I cannot sleep, the light is out’); ‘Pourquoi le vent troublant la plaine’ (‘Zachem krutitsya vetr v ovrage’, ‘Why does the wind swirl in a ravine’), Nouvelle Revue Française, 1 March 1937, 25 (282), pp. 362–78.

  Bernstein: Presumably chess grandmaster Osip Samoylovich Bernstein (1882–1962).

  Rashel’s: Unidentified.

  Vlad. Mikh.: Vladimir Mikhaylovich Zenzinov.

  haircuts to dogs: Irina Guadanini earned a living as a dog-groomer.

  Ald.: Aldanov.

  Roshchin: Nikolay Yakovlevich Fyodorov, pen-name Roshchin (1896–1956), writer, journalist and literary critic, lived with the Bunins from the mid-1920s to the 1940s.

  Polyakov: Aleksandr Polyakov, deputy editor of Poslednie novosti.

  Gen. Golovin’s: General Nikolay Nikolaevich Golovin (1875–1944), military historian and writer.

  Victor: VN refers to himself.

  Chokhaev: Mustafa Chokaev (1890–1941), before the Revolution lawyer and journalist, secretary of the Muslim Faction at the State Duma, worked in Paris as proofreader at Poslednie novosti.

  told me all I needed: VN was checking his account of his character Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev’s apparently fatal last lepidopterological expedition to Central Asia, in The Gift, Ch. 2.

  Kanegisser’s: Leonid Ioakimovich Kannegiser (1896–1918), amateur poet and member of the Party of People’s Socialists; he killed Moisey Uritsky (1873–1918), head of the Petrograd Cheka (security police), for which he was shot.

  sister’s: Elizaveta (Lulu) Ioakimovna Kannegiser.

  mentioning this name … a terrible gaffe: In the serial version of The Gift, VN characterized Yasha Chernyshevsky’s poetry, ‘replete with fashionable clichés’, as ‘a mixture of Lensky and Kannegiser’ (Lensky, in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, is a mediocre Romantic poet) (Sovremennye zapiski, 63 (1937), p. 45). In the eyes of many, VN sullied the memory of Kannegiser, a man whose self-sacrifice was much admired by the Russian emigration. In the later book versions of the novel (Dar, p. 46; The Gift, p. 50), he cut ‘a mixture of Lensky and Kannegiser’.

  K.Q.K.: King, Queen, Knave.

  for the work of Godun. Cherd., K. K., about butterflies: Although VN did not get Konstantin Kirillovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev to write this essay, he would think of doing so himself in the late 1940s (‘A very interesting piece might be written on the whole subject (with illustrations) about butterflies in art beginning with the species figured in 1420–1375 B.C. by an Egyptian under Tuthmosis IV or Amenophis III (British Museum no. 37933). I am a pioneer in this subject,’ letter to George Davis, 10 November 1949, in N’sBs, p. 449), and would start a projected Butterflies in Art in the mid-1960s.

  the Greek: Psoriasis.

  ‘Sali[t] énormément le linge’: Fr. ‘soils linen terribly’.

  Dynkin: Th
e Fondaminskys’ family doctor.

  Victor: VN’s alias for fiscal matters.

  two reviews: Of VN’s readings on 21 and 24 January. Not in the archive. Probably M. (Yury Mandelstam), ‘Vecher V. V. Sirina’ (‘V. V. Sirin Evening’), Vozrozhdenie, 30 January 1937, p. 9; and possibly G. Fischer, ‘Un écrivain russe parle de Pouchkine’ (‘A Russian Writer Speaks on Pushkin’), Le Thyrse, 34, 1937, p. 41.

  The old man: Iosif Hessen.

  the first chapter: Of The Gift.

  Letter postmarked 4 February 1937

  Ger. Abr.: Misspelled Grig[ory] Abr[amovich], one of VN’s decoy aliases.

  Cortn.: Fritz Kortner (1892–1970), actor, film and theatre director, with whom VN discussed a film based on Camera Obscura.

  conférence: Fr. ‘lecture’ or ‘talk’: ‘Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable’.

  Struve: Gleb Struve.

  Grinberg: Savely Isaakovich Grinberg, VN’s former Tenishev schoolmate.

  Mme Gavronsky: Lyubov’ Sergeevna Gavronsky (1876–1943), widow of Boris Osipovich Gavronsky (1875–1932), elder brother of Amalia Fondaminsky.

  Mme Chernavin: Tatyana Vasilievna Chernavin (née Sapozhnikov, 1890–1971), museum curator, formerly with the Hermitage Museum. In 1932, she was able to flee from the USSR, after helping her husband escape from the Gulag.

  Antonini’s: Giacomo Antonini (1901–83), journalist and literary critic, who had reviewed La Course du fou and Chambre Obscure in ‘Russische Romans 1934’, Den Gulden Winkel, December 1934.

  the contract with Long: The contract for the English Despair.

  Victor: VN refers to himself; since he deposited most of his earned income with Ilya (Lyusya) Feigin, ‘writing’ for Lyusya means making more money.

  Rochebrune, cap. St Martin: He means Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, between Monaco and Menton, as a place for them to settle.

  On me fête … : Fr. ‘They make a great deal of me’.

  De-Monza: Anatole de Monzie (1876–1947), former Minister of Education and Fine Arts; from 1935, President of the Committee for the Publication of the French Encyclopaedia.

  Navashin’s: Dmitry Sergeevich Navashin (1889–1937), lawyer, financier, writer, journalist and mason; worked in Soviet banks in Paris, absconded in 1931, and was killed under unresolved circumstances in the Bois de Boulogne.

  ‘il y a cent ans … ’: Fr. ‘A hundred years ago, Pushkin was killed … Now Navashin has been killed.’

  Mme Chardonne’s: Wife of Jacques Boutelleau (1884–1968), pen-name Jacques Chardonne, French writer, who won the Grand Prix of the Académie Française in 1932 for his novel Claire.

  Jeanne: Fondaminsky’s housekeeper.

  Letter postmarked 5 February 1937

  Bonnier: Swedish publishing group based in Stockholm. Nabokov’s Zashchita Luzhina (The Defence) had been published by Bonniers in 1936, as Han som spelade schack med livet (He Who Plays Chess with Life), trans. Ellen Rydelius.

  Mercure: The literary magazine Mercure de France.

  Tair: See letter of 3 November 1932 and note.

  Maurois: As well as novels, André Maurois wrote fictionalized biographies, including Don Juan ou la vie de Byron (1930), of the type VN scorned in his ‘Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable’.

  ‘mon grand ami …’: Fr. ‘unfortunately my great friend Maurois wasn’t able to come’.

  the whole paragraph about ‘Byron’: Presumably paragraph three, where VN writes of a madman he knew (read: invented), who thinks he was present at many moments in the distant past, a past constructed in his imagination only from the banalities he has read: commonplaces like ‘Byron’s melancholy, plus a certain number of those so-called historical anecdotes historians use to sweeten their texts, provided, alas, all the detail and colour he needed’ (‘Pushkin, or the Real and the Plausible’, trans. DN, New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988, p. 39; ‘Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable’, p. 363). The next two paragraphs directly attack biographies romancées, ‘fictionalized biographies’.

  un mot demain: Fr. ‘a word tomorrow’.

  Shvarts: A doctor VéN recommended.

  tout compris: Fr. ‘all included’.

  Mme Schlesinger: Fanni Samoylovna Schlesinger (?–1959), co-founder of the Friends of Russian Writers committee, chaired by Bunin, which provided material assistance to writers.

  ‘écrivain’ … tout court: Fr. ‘writer’; ‘plain’. Presumably business cards for VN.

  Lyusya has amassed: VN refers to his earnings kept at Ilya Feigin’s, ‘butterflies’ here meaning ‘francs’.

  Old man Paul: Pavel Milyukov.

  c’est toujours … : Fr. ‘it’s still something’.

  to the old man: Iosif Hessen.

  El. Lvovna: Elena Lvovna Bromberg.

  Lisbeth: Lisbet Thompson.

  Au fond: Fr. ‘after all’, ‘fundamentally’, here ‘when it comes down to it’.

  aller et retour: Fr. ‘a round trip’.

  Ksyunin: Aleksey Ivanovich Ksyunin (1880?–1938), journalist, writer and publisher of the Belgrade weekly newspaper Vozrozhdenie (Resurrection), not to be confused with the Paris daily of the same name.

  Belgr.: Belgrade.

  Victor: VN’s alias.

  Letter of 8 February 1937

  [8 February 1937]: Undated, no envelope. The references to the dinner at the Tsetlins’ in this letter and in that of 10 February confirm that this was written on 8 February.

  my French reading: At the Salle Chopin, 11 February. Gabriel Marcel had suggested that VN replace Hungarian writer Jolán Földes (1902–63), who had fallen ill at a late hour, in the Feux Croisés lecture series he organized.

  my ‘Course’ and ‘Chambre’: The Defence and Camera Obscura in French.

  much-talked-about Hungarian writer: Jolán Földes’s 1936 novel, A halászó macska utcája, in French La Rue du Chat-qui-pêche (The Street of the Fishing Cat), after the name of Paris’s shortest street, had been a prize-winning international success.

  Plevitskaya: Nadezhda Vasilievna Plevitskaya, née Vinnikova (1884–1940), popular singer of Russian folk songs.

  Vlad. Mikh.: Zenzinov.

  ‘you have made him loathsome’: VN’s ‘Life of Chernyshevsky’ mockingly depicts the Russian liberal thinker and philosopher Nikolay Chernyshevsky as a would-be grand reformer who was at the same time inept at coping even with his own

  life, and a committed realist who was unable to see or understand the concrete world around him.

  Pereverzev: Pavel Nikolaevich Pereverzev (1871–1944), lawyer, in Russia a Socialist Revolutionary member of the Fourth State Duma.

  Etingons: Possibly Max Eitingon (Mark Efimovich (Yakovlevich), 1881–1943), Russian-born psychiatrist, and his wife Mira Yakovlevna (née Burovsky, 1877–1947), actress. Khodasevich mentions ‘Eitingons’ in his ‘Chamber-Courier’s Journal’ (record of 24 January 1937).

  old man Pol!: Pavel Milyukov.

  Je n’en reviens pas: Fr. ‘I can’t get over it’.

  Mme Adamov: Nadezhda Konstantinovna Adamov, doctor of medicine, whom VN had seen in 1932.

  Autrement: Fr. ‘otherwise’.

  a few more journals: In fact, money for safe-keeping.

  Isr. Kogan: Israel Cohen or Kogan, unidentified.

  ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Chorb’ (in Struve’s translations): ‘Passazhir’, Rul’, 6 March 1927, and in VC, 1930; trans. Gleb Struve, ‘The Passenger’, Lovat Dickson’s Magazine, 2: 6 (June 1934), pp. 719–25; ‘Vozvrashchenie Chorba’ (‘The Return of Chorb’), Rul’, 12 November 1925, pp. 2–3 and 13 November 1925, pp. 2–3, and in VC; trans. Gleb Struve, ‘The Return of Tchorb’, This Quarter, 4:4 (June 1932).

  the review from the N. Y. Times: Al. Nazaroff, ‘Recent Books by Russian Writers’, New York Times Book Review, 18 August 1935.

  Tsetlins: Mikhail Tsetlin and his wife, Maria Samoylovna Tsetlin (née Tumarkin, by her first marriage Avksentiev, 1882–1976), former Socialist Revolutionary, hostess, publisher.

  Vlad. Mikh.
: Zenzinov.

  Letter postmarked 10 February 1937

  qui est tout … : Fr. ‘who is as charming as could be’.

  Tu ne le voudrais pas: Fr. ‘You wouldn’t want it’. VéN, after all, had insisted that VN leave Germany after Sergey Taboritsky, one of the assassins of his father, was appointed second-in-command to Hitler’s head of émigré affairs, General Biskupsky.

  my Kirghiz: Chokhaev, to glean information about Central Asia for the second chapter of The Gift.

  Polyakov: Probably Solomon Lvovich Polyakov (pen-name Litovtsev, 1875–1945), journalist, writer and playwright; former employee of the Russian Embassy in London where he worked under VN’s uncle Konstantin Nabokov.

  Gubsky: Nikolay Gubsky, Haskell’s secretary.

  what Pushkin’s Laura imagines: From Act 2 of Pushkin’s The Stone Guest (Kamennyi gost’) (Little Tragedies (Malen’kie tragedii), 1830), where Laura says: ‘A daleko, na severe – v Parizhe – / Byt’ mozhet, nebo tuchami pokryto, / Kholodnyi dozhd’ idyot i veter duet (‘And far up north – in Paris – / Maybe the sky’s covered with clouds, / A cold rain is falling, and the wind is blowing’.)

  Butler: Richard (‘Rab’) Austin Butler (1902–82), Conservative British politician, then Under-Secretary of State for India, whom VN knew at Cambridge; the ‘Nesbit’ of SM.

  Lady Fletcher: Possibly Mary Augusta Chilton, Lady Aubrey-Fletcher, wife of Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher (1887–1969), a crime writer under the pen-name Henry Wade.

  Letter postmarked 12 February 1937

  Yesterday’s matinée: At the Salle Chopin, as part of the Feux Croisés programme.

  plumed by Melot: VN’s translations of Pushkin poems into French, edited by Robert Mélot du Dy.

  Mil.: Milyukov.

  I.I.: Ilya Fondaminsky.

  conférence[s]: Fr. ‘lectures’, ‘talks’.

  the butterflies in London: VN hints at the possibility of making a living in London. In a letter of 27 February 1937, he refers to the money earned in London as his ‘butterflies’.

  ‘c’est un peu fort’: Fr. ‘this is a little much’.

  Fernandez: Ramon Fernandez (1894–1944), philosopher, novelist and an editor at Éditions Gallimard.

  now it ends with ‘grenier’: Fr. ‘garret’: ‘No, the so-called social side of life and all the causes that arouse my fellow citizens decidedly have no business in the beam of my lamp, and if I do not demand an ivory tower it is because I am quite happy in my garret’ (‘Pushkin, or the Real and the Plausible?’, p. 42).