Letters to Véra
Page 65
Postcard postmarked 21 April 1937
allez-et-retour: Fr. ‘round trip’.
entre deux gares: Fr. ‘between two stations’. The Berlin–Paris train arrives at the Gare du Nord, the Paris–Toulon train leaves from the Gare de Lyon.
Elena Lvovna’s: Bromberg.
Anna Natanovna’s: Unidentified.
I replied …: Written on the margin of the address side of the card.
Letter postmarked 23 April 1937
‘Mercury’: Possibly an article from their files, by Albert Parry, ‘Belles Lettres among the Russian Émigrés’, American Mercury, 29 (July 1933), pp. 316–19, which singles out VN’s work for high praise and seems to be the first discussion of his work in English.
piece about Wagner in Lit. Digest: ‘Parade’, The Literary Digest, 13 March 1937, p. 13: ‘ “I hate Wagner,” commented Vernon Duke [Vladimir Dukelsky], composer (“April in Paris”). “It is a phobia with me, a Wagner phobia. I feel he brought all sorts of extraneous things into music. He robbed it of its natural life.” ’
regarding Favière: the house rented in Favière. The notes on the house plan read: ‘your and the little man’s room’; beds’; ‘mine; Sasha Chorny’s desk’; ‘the terrace’; ‘M. I.’s room; Anyuta?’; ‘the dining-room (verandah)’; ‘garden’; ‘kitchen’. ‘M.I.’ stands for Maria Ivanovna Chorny.
Maria Ivanovna’s name: Chorny.
épicerie: grocery.
Iv.: Ivanovna.
the absence of gas … : The word ‘gas’ is marked with an X. And an arrow is drawn from it to the paragraph below, in square brackets.
tout compris: Fr. ‘altogether’.
Victor: VN’s earning self.
Letter postmarked 26 April 1937
Victor: VN’s financial alias.
Superv.: Supervielle.
‘Course’: La Course du fou (The Defence in French).
Jean: Jean Fayard.
finished ‘Fialta’ with Roche – it’s turned out magnificently: No French publication around this time known.
Sylvia: Beach.
My excerpt is in the Easter issue: ‘Odinochestvo’ (‘Solitude’), from Ch. 2 of The Gift, Poslednie novosti, 2 May 1937, pp. 2, 4, the Orthodox Easter, and not ‘Podarok’, the first excerpt, published on 28 March 1937, which happened to be the Western Easter.
My pen’s gone on strike: In pencil.
Postcard postmarked 26 April 1937
Anna Nat.: Anna Natanovna, surname unknown.
Zamyatin (… his ‘Cave’… ): The story ‘Peshchera’ (1923).
to whom Gumilyov’s ‘Blue Star’ is dedicated: Gumilyov’s poetic cycle ‘Sinyaya zvezda’ (‘Blue Star’, published in 1923, after the poet’s death) is dedicated to Elena Karlovna du Bouche, whom he met in Paris in 1917. It is unclear whether the meeting took place at her house or at a house of another woman who claimed the fame of the ‘Blue Star’.
Poor, poor Clem Sohn: Written upside down along the top edge of the card. Clements Joseph Sohn (1910–37), American airshow dare-devil, died on 25 April 1937 in Vincennes, France, before a crowd of 100,000. He jumped from an airplane in a home-made wingsuit and opened his parachute only a few hundred metres above ground. This time, neither his main nor his emergency parachute opened.
Ses ailes, ses pauvres ailes … : Fr. ‘his wings, his poor wings’. An echo of ‘Histoire morale d’un serin de Canarie’ (‘The Moral Tale of a Canary’), by Alphonse Karr (1808–90), in his Menus Propos: Mélanges Philosophiques (Small Talk: Philosophical Miscellany, Paris: Michel Levy Frères, 1859), p. 16: ‘il bat joyeusement ses ailes, ses pauvres ailes engourdies!’ (‘he joyfully beats his wings, his poor swollen wings!’).
Anna Maks.: Anna Maksimovna, surname unknown. Unidentified.
Postcard postmarked 27 April 1937
de ta part: Fr. ‘on your part’.
I don’t understand … : On the other side of the card.
I won’t bother … : Written vertically along the left edge of the card.
Postcard postmarked 29 April 1937
Easter and the coronation: 2 May 1937, the Orthodox Easter; 12 May 1937, the coronation of King George VI.
Letter postmarked 1 May 1937
‘Otchayanie’: Despair in Russian.
how many copies … : VN asks how much of the money he keeps at Ilya Feigin’s should he take?
our dates: the 8th and the 10th: 8 May, anniversary of their first meeting; 10 May, Dmitri’s third birthday.
the nastily cheap short story: Zamyatin, ‘Drakon’ (‘The Dragon’), 1918.
Red Army man: The Red Army soldier in Zamyatin’s story stabbed a man whose face looked too intelligent.
an old ‘procuress over the romps of young whores’: From Pushkin’s ‘Delvigu’ (‘To Delvig’ 1821): ‘Tak tochno, pozabyv segodnya / Prokazy mladosti svoey, / Glyadit s ulybkoy vasha svodnya / Na shashni molodykh
a short story is revolving: The next story he would publish (in November but with a 25–6 June 1937 date of composition) would be ‘Ozero, oblako, bashnya’ (‘Cloud, Castle, Lake’).
has not taken a bath: As part of an unusually severe interpretation of the penitence for Lent.
Vera Nikolaevna: Muromtsev, Bunin’s wife.
Tout ça est très rigolo: Fr. ‘This is all quite comical’.
seven reviews: Apart from the three about to be cited, these were News Review, 15 April 1937, Tribune, 16 April 1937, Public Opinion, 23 April 1937, and Sunday Times, 25 April 1937.
‘Outstanding quality’: Birmingham Sunday Mercury, 18 April 1937.
‘Undoubted distinction’: Edinburgh Evening News, 20 April 1937.
‘the small number of world humorists!’: Reynolds News, 25 April 1937.
the old man: Iosif Hessen.
Postcard postmarked 3 May 1937
my excerpt: ‘Odinochestvo’ (‘Solitude’).
Pilsky: Pyotr Moiseevich Pilsky (1876?–1941), journalist, head of the literary department of the Riga Segodnya.
long-winded article: Review of ‘ “Sovremennye zapiski”, kniga 63’, Segodnya, 29 April 1937, p. 3.
a new masked little excerpt – the story featuring Pushkin: This excerpt, also from Ch. 2 of The Gift, would end up not being published separately.
paskhas: An Easter dish in the shape of a pyramid made of curds and butter, with sugar, eggs and other rich ingredients added for flavour. In 1937 the Orthodox Easter fell on 2 May.
ailleurs: Fr. ‘elsewhere’.
Letter postmarked 5 May 1937
Allemagne: This address is crossed out and another hand has written the new one over it: ‘8 Koulova / Praha-Dejvici / Tschékoslovakei’.
Evsey Laz.: Evsey Lazarevich Slonim, VéN’s father.
Mar. Pavlovna: Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna.
Sûreté: The detective branch of the French police force; the police in general.
Lena: Elena Sikorski, VN’s sister.
‘Printemps à F.’: ‘Spring in Fialta’ in French.
placed an excerpt: In Poslednie novosti. As secretary of the editorial office of Sovremennye zapiski, Rudnev may have objected in general to the small newspaper pre-serializations (in the case of Ch. 1, about one ninth of the total) ahead of serialization in their own journal, or perhaps only to the failure to obtain permission for each excerpt.
Demidov: Igor Demidov, deputy editor of Poslednie novosti.
P. N.: Pavel Nikolaevich Milyukov.
working on that era now: In his capacity as a historian.
Ivan: Bunin.
‘have copied it all from somewhere – great work!’: Ch. 2 of The Gift depicts Konstantin Godunov-Chernyntsev’s lepidopterological explorations through Central Asia, as imagined by his son, Fyodor, who wanted to accompany him on his last expedition, from which he never returned. Fyodor, and VN, imagine Count Godunov’s travels in brilliant detail by drawin
g inspiredly on a plethora of sources, identified and reproduced in Dieter E. Zimmer, Nabokov reist im Traum in das Innere Asiens (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2006).
Illustration: Plan of the Fondaminsky apartment, marking up the following locations: ‘dining-room’; ‘I’; ‘V[ladimir] M[ikhaylovich]‘; ‘Ilya’; ‘bathroom’; ‘dishwashing’; ‘entrance hall’; ‘Elen[a] Aleks[androvna Peltser]’.
Postcard of 7 May 1937
aller et retour: Fr. ‘round trip’.
the card is valid only for me: From the word ‘me’, VN drew an arrow to the top edge of the card, where he added: ‘i.e. for you it is ready as well, but you must come in person to claim it.’
cr.: Crowns.
Letter postmarked 10 May 1937
three-year-old: Dmitri turned three on the day VN wrote this letter.
bonhomme: Fr. ‘fellow’.
Gallimard … reading ‘Despair’: Despair would be published as La Méprise, trans. by Michael Stora (Paris: Gallimard, 1939).
Never, never, never: He kept his word.
Vera Nikolaevna: Muromtsev, Bunin’s wife.
Zurov: Leonid Fyodorovich Zurov (1902–71), writer, art critic; Bunin’s secretary.
Ivan: Bunin.
poddyovka: A man’s long tight-fitting coat, worn among the lower-middle classes in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Rashel: Possibly the Rashel mentioned in the letter of 1 February 1937.
Ira B.’s: Probably Irina Brunst’s (Kyandzhuntsev’s sister’s).
mais si vous envoulez avec de jolies filles: Fr. ‘but if you would like some with pretty girls …’
Telegram of 10 May 1937
THE LITTLE MAN: DN, on his birthday.
Letter postmarked 12 May 1937
prend plaisir: Fr. ‘takes pleasure’.
this hell must end soon, I suppose: See SM, p. 276: Russian émigrés’ ‘utter physical dependence on this or that nation, which had coldly granted us political refuge, became painfully evident when some trashy “visa”, some diabolical “identity card” had to be obtained or prolonged, for then an avid bureaucratic hell would attempt to close upon the petitioner and he might wilt while his dossier waxed fatter and fatter in the desks of rat-whiskered consuls and policemen. Dokumentï, it has been said, is a Russian’s placenta. The League of Nations equipped émigrés who had lost their Russian citizenship with a so-called “Nansen” passport, a very inferior document of a sickly green hue. Its holder was little better than a criminal on parole and had to go through most hideous ordeals every time he wished to travel from one country to another, and the smaller the countries the worse the fuss they made.’
Postcard postmarked 13 May 1937
Cela devient ridicule: Fr. ‘This is becoming ridiculous’.
Letter postmarked 14 May 1937
Je ne fais qu’: Fr. ‘All I do is’.
Letter of 15 May 1937
avec une allure de: Fr. ‘with the speed of a [swallow]’.
Makl.: Maklakov.
review of ‘The Gift’ today by Khodasevich: ‘ “Sovremennye zapiski”, kniga 63’, Vozrozhdenie, 15 May 1937, p. 9.
‘Azef’: A play by writer, journalist and playwright Roman Borisovich Gul’ (1896–1986), about the agent provocateur Evno Azef.
‘Printemps à F.’: ‘Spring in Fialta’.
Postcard postmarked 17 May 1937
Flora Grig.: Flora Grigorievna Solomon.
performance: Azef at the Russian Theatre.
E. K. and Rostik: Evgenia Konstantinovna Hofeld, EN’s companion, and Rostislav Petkevich, son of VN’s sister Olga, who left him in the care of her mother.
Postcard postmarked 19 May 1937
6.20 (!!) a.m.: VN added ‘Don’t meet me, of course!!’ along the top edge of the card and drew a line from the word ‘a.m.’ to it. Below ‘6.20’ he wrote ‘Wilson’ (the name of a train station in Prague).
Flora: Solomon.
Ida’s: Ida Ergaz.
The din … : Written on the other side of the card.
a wonderful story: Presumably ‘Oblako, ozero, bashnya’ (‘Cloud, Castle, Lake’), which would be dated 25–6 June 1937 on its first publication.
Letter postmarked 21 June 1937
Cook’s: Thomas Cook’s, the travel agency.
s’executer : Fr. ‘cough up’.
Thiébaut: Editor of Revue de Paris.
for Ilyusha: For Fondaminsky, i.e. either for Sovremennye zapiski or for Russkie zapiski, its sister journal from 1937 to 1939, of both of which he was an editor and both of which he supported. The latter would publish the story.
Olga: Petkevich, VN’s sister.
Fargue: Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947), French poet.
Postcard postmarked 22 June 1937
Rubchik: Unidentified.
vous me voyez navrée: Fr. ‘you see me heartbroken’.
‘je porterai les 2000 fr à M. Feigin’: Fr. ‘I will take the 2,000 francs to M. Feigin’.
‘à la revue dirigée par Barbey’: Fr. ‘in the review edited by Barbey’. La Revue hebdomadaire, founded in Paris in 1892; Bernard Barbey (1900–1970), Swiss writer.
1939
Letter of 3 April 1939
Konovalov : Sergey Aleksandrovich Konovalov (1899–1982), Slavist, professor at Birmingham University (1929–45), would become chair of the Russian Division of the New School (Oxford University, 1945–1968) and editor of Blackwell’s Russian Texts, the series of Russian Classics published at Oxford.
Vasil.: Vasilievna.
Mollie: Molly Carpenter-Lee.
Jeeves: Reginald Jeeves, character from 1915 to 1974 in the fiction of P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975): the valet of Bertie Wooster, a wealthy but inept British aristocrat, whom Jeeves saves from various misadventures.
Braykevich: Mikhail Vasilievich Braykevich (1874–1940), former engineer, economist, member of the Constitutional Democratic party, art collector and patron of the arts, closely associated with the World of Art group.
Berdyaev: The philosopher Nikolay Berdyaev was to write VN a letter of recommendation for the position of Russian professor at the University of Leeds.
Priel: Jarl Priel (1885–1965), writer, French translator of VN’s Invitation to a Beheading and The Event.
‘Marianne’: French intellectual weekly, founded by Gaston Gallimard, published from 1932 to 1940.
‘Méprise’: La Méprise (Despair).
Letter of 4 April 1939
Mme Tsetlin’s … all three of them: Mikhail and Maria Tsetlin and their son Valentin.
M. S.: Maria Samoylovna Tsetlin.
Mrs Whale: Winifred Stephens Whale (née Sophia Charlotte Winifred Stephens, 1870–1944), English author and translator.
‘soul of Russia’: The Soul of Russia (London: Macmillan and Co., 1916).
like Tolstoy’s Pierre: Pierre Bezukhov, the tall, fat, bespectacled protagonist of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Struve: Gleb Struve, then lecturer at the University College London’s School of Slavonic Studies.
Duchess of Atholl: Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl (1874–1960).
Bakhmeteff: Boris Aleksandrovich Bakhmeteff (1880–1951), engineer and businessman, professor of civil engineering at Columbia University; until June 1922, ambassador of the Russian Provisional Government to the United States.
the baroness: Budberg.
Polyakovs: Possibly the family of journalist and writer Solomon Polyakov-Litovtsev.
O. Bromberg: Iosif (Osya) Bromberg, a relative of Anna Feigin’s.
Postcard of 5 April 1939
Lord Tyrrel: William George Tyrrell, 1st Baron Tyrrell (1866–1947), Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1925–8), British ambassador to France (1928–34).
Nicholson: Harold Nicolson
her very charming husband: Asher Lee (born Asher Levy, 1909– after 1973), air intelligence officer.
the play: Perhaps a translation of Sobytie (The Event), written in November–December 1937, published Russ
kie zapiski, 4 (April 1938), pp. 43–104 trans. DN, MUSSR); or of Izobretenie Val’sa (The Waltz Invention), written in September 1938, published Russkie zapiski, 11 (November 1938), pp. 3–62 trans. DN with VN (New York: Phaedra, 1966).
Rodzyanko: Possibly Sergey Pavlovich Rodzyanko (1895–1979), son of Pavel Vladimirovich Rodzyanko, whom VéN’s father, Evsey Slonim, used to represent in court (Schiff, p. 22).
Somov: Braykevich became Somov’s closest friend and, after the artist’s death in his arms in Paris in May 1939, the executor of his estate.
Kasim-Bek: Aleksandr Lvovich Kasem-Bek (1902–77), leader (1923–37) of the political group of Russian émigré monarchists ‘Mladorossy’ (Young Russians), founded in 1923 in Munich.
Billig: Possibly I(osif?) M. Billik, translator and journalist whose articles appeared in Novaya rossiya (New Russia). VN mentions Yuzya (Iosif) Bilig, an acquaintance of Sofia Pregel’s, in a letter of 14 November 1932.
Shuvalov: Count Pavel Aleksandrovich Shuvalov (1903–60), film set designer.
Letter of 6 April 1939
‘Lik’ and ‘Museum’: ‘Lik’ (‘Lik’), Russkie zapiski, 14 (February 1939), pp. 3–27, and in VF; ‘Poseshchenie Muzeya’ (‘The Visit to the Museum’), Sovremennye zapiski, 68 (March 1939), pp. 76–87, and in VF.
‘Post (something)’: Presumably Post (or Post Magazine and Insurance Monitor), founded in London in 1840.
‘Match’: A Paris sporting weekly founded in 1926, which became a news weekly in 1938 and would be reborn as Paris-Match in 1949.
‘chien’: Fr. ‘charm’, ‘fascination’.
Bromberg: Iosif Bromberg.
‘Seb. Knight’: VN’s first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (New York: New Directions, 1941), written end 1938–January 1939.
museum: At that time officially the British Museum (Natural History), but also then informally, and now formally, known as the Natural History Museum, Kensington, London.
‘Entomologist’: The Entomologist, in which VN had published in 1920 and 1931.
Herring’s: Erich Martin Hering (1893–1967), German entomologist, curator of the Zoologisches Museum (now Museum für Naturkunde) in Berlin.
my thing (the ‘hybrid’ race) is completely unknown: The butterfly specimens VN caught above Moulinet, in the Alpes-Maritimes, on 20 and 22 July 1938, and would later name Lysandra cormion, in ‘Lysandra cormion, A New European Butterfly’, Journal of the New York Entomological Society, 49:3 (September 1941), pp. 265–67.