Letters to Véra
Page 71
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Acknowledgements
This project would have been impossible without the late Dmitri Nabokov’s generously making available to us not only the letters to Véra, still in his possession in Montreux in 2002, but also the services of his staff, especially Antonio Epicoco, who located and photocopied the material, Aleksey Konovalov and Cris Galliker. Nikki Smith, Dmitri’s then agent, enthusiastically endorsed the project. The staff of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, especially its director, Isaac Gewirtz, and the cataloguer of the Vladimir Nabokov Archive, Stephen Crook, were always prompt in providing access to the originals once they arrived there later in 2002. Gennady Barabtarlo was enormously generous, meticulous, sensitive and insightful in his close reading of the Russian original manuscript, tapes and transcription and the English translation and notes, and in his solutions to the riddles embedded in Nabokov’s letters of 1926. Andrey Babikov also contributed to the deciphering of the Russian. The late Omri Ronen’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the Russian emigration helped solve some recalcitrant puzzles. Dieter E. Zimmer supplied invaluably precise information on topics he has made his own, Nabokov’s Berlin, his butterflies, and his genealogy, and he and especially Ludger Tolksdorf continued to offer meticulous corrections through the book’s multiple proof stages. Monica Manolescu combed through French periodicals in Strasbourg and Paris to confirm that the stories Nabokov had expected to be published in French journals in 1937 were not in fact published, and she and Maurice Couturier helped resolve a French crux. Maxim Shrayer provided information about Ivan Bunin and helped locate rare Bunin photographs. Bronwen Nicholson made valuable editorial suggestions and helped compile the bibliography. Stanislav Shvabrin offered astute suggestions about fine points of the translation. Galya Diment also checked the transcription of the Russian text. Michael Hurst digitized and enhanced the cassette tapes of Véra Nabokov reading out her husband’s letters to her; Tim Page helped digitize the photographs. And, of course, a special thanks to Véra Nabokov herself, for not only occasioning and preserving these letters, but for reading out so much of them–despite her passion for privacy, her age and her ill-health–into BB’s tape recorder in 1984–5.
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published in Penguin Classics 2014
Copyright © The Estate of Vladimir Nabokov, 2014
Introduction and Appendix Two © Brian Boyd, 2014
Translator’s Note © Olga Voronina, 2014
Cover photograph: courtesy of the Vladimir Nabokov Estate
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the translators have been asserted
Typeset by Claire Mason
ISBN: 978-0-141-93963-6
* See Chronology for key details of the lives of the Nabokovs. Literary and historical figures mentioned here will be briefly identified in the Notes on their first introduction in the Letters. See Index to find their first occurrence there.
* Notes to the letters begin on p. 550. People referred to in letters only by first name, first name and patronymic (in full, abbreviated, or by initials only), or nickname, will be identified in the notes the first time for each variant form but not always thereafter, especially if identities are obvious from the continuous context. But each short name will be noted in the Index, with a cross-reference. Fond, Fondik, I. I., Il. Is., Ilya, Ilya Isidorovich, and Ilyusha, for instance, all refer to Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky, and in the Index will each be cross-referred to ‘Fondaminsky, Ilya Isidorovich’. Words and phrases, other than proper names, written in Roman rather than Cyrillic characters are indicated in italics. Underlined emphases remain in underline. Occasionally VN spells out an English or French word in Cyrillic characters. We indicate this by spacing out the word, as in ‘b r e a k f a s t’.
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