Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Page 32
Very reluctantly, I must decline it. I am a painfully slow writer: it would take me ten days at least to write my column, and I could not possibly fit this regularly into my crowded schedule. I am not getting any older but neither is my present season that of blooming and energetic youth.
It is, of course, not a matter of pay which I consider quite adequate but purely one of non-elastic time.
With best regards,
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: ERNEST KAY1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, Switzerland
March 3, 1964
Dear Sir,
My husband asks me to send you his answers to your questions of December 27th:
Pencil
Anyhow
Anywhere
It finds me
He has also a question for you: Why do you spell his name with two "a" s?
Yours truly,
(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
TO: DMITRI NABOKOV
HOLOGRAPH PS to Véra Nabokov letter.
Hampshire House
One Fifty Central Park South
New York 19, N.Y.
11 April 1964
In his short opening speech Levin mentioned that the writer's son had climbed the walls within which his father was lecturing.1 Your father embraces you, my dearest. I am writing standing up; that is why the handwriting is so nabokiy [lopsided].
I love you. My dearest! Keep well!
Pápa2
TO: NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
PRINTED LETTER1
Montreux, Switzerland
I have often been asked to allow the reprinting of my old verse translations (such as the three stanzas in the Russian Review. 1945, mentioned by Mr. Arndt) and have always refused since they are exactly what Mr. Arndt says—lame paraphrases of Pushkin's text. They may be a little closer to it than Mr. Arndt's effort but still have nothing in common with the literal translation I have prepared now.
—Vladimir Nabokov
TO: GLLBERTE NABOKOV1
ALS, 1 p. Elena Sikorski.
Montreux-Palace
Montreux
May 5, 1964
My dear Gilberte,
I understand what you are experiencing too well to try to send condolences. Believe me when I say that Vera's thoughts and mine are with you in the profoundest sense. The shock of losing my poor brother was a great one. I regretted very deeply not being able to come to Brussels;2 on the other hand, I know that, with that keen, charming sense of humor that made him such an original being, he would only have been grateful that I was absent, and would have cast no more than a smile on his own funeral. It is a very meager consolation, I know, but one truth is undeniable: the only thing the death of a beloved person cannot take away from us is the living, colored image of him which remains with us like a benediction and a promise.
Affectionately,
Vladimir3
TO: WILLIAM MCGUIRE
TLS (XEROX), 2 pp.
Montreux, August 18, 1964
Palace Hotel
Dear Bill,
I am returning Miss Volochov's Index to Notes on Prosody to you (not to BW) as I think the thing should be retyped taking into account my drastic corrections—the deletion of all non-names, and then forwarded to BW. Yes, I would like to see the galley proofs.
The essay is so short, and the Table of Contents so informative, that the inclusion of "scuds", "tilts" etc. in its index is completely unnecessary. I am quite sure of this, and have deleted all references to them in Miss Volochov's Index. On the other hand, I think that all the titles cross-referred to author should be included.
I have answered your main queries in the corrected Volochov Index. The mistranslation is "Copper" (Edmund Wilson's blunder in his tribute to Pushkin). The correct translation is "Bronze". Thus the slight change in the main Index should be: "Bronze [mistranslated Copper] Horseman"; but in the present index "Bronze Horseman" is enough.
I have taken note of the errors in the general Index listed by Miss Volochov except "Poltava" which despite her strange assertion is indexed both as "Poltava" and under P.'s works!) and the two last (which are for you to settle). I have now completed a list of some thirty errors (all trivial) in the four volumes. I am saving them for later, as you suggest, but the question is should they not be corrected in the British edition or given there under Errata at the end?
Incidentally, I wonder if it would not be worth while to add a footnote on p. 492 of vol. 3 (to "monosyllabic adjectives"): "Not counting, of course, the monosyllabic predicative forms—adverbish mongrels, really—of disyllabic adjectives, such as glup, "is stupid", from glupïy, or bel, "is white", from belïy." I would also like to insert a cautious "most" between "as" and "nonmasculine" on p. 491 of the same volume. Question: Should we include these two corrections in the new edition of Prosody so as to thwart the pounce of purists?
You say you hope I have been as pleased as you about the good press. The only good of it is that some of its banal compliments might be useful for commercial purposes, and this is why I repeat it would be wise to include these pearls of publicity in a full-page advertisement now or in the early fall. It seems to me frivolous, after spending so much money on the production of my work, to let it float away on a random ripple. Otherwise, I have no illusions about these articles. None of the reviewers is really competent. Poor Simmons1 (whose book on Pushkin, teeming with mistranslations and other errors, I generously omitted from my commentary) is no scholar, and his knowledge of Russian has always been very patchy. Lydia Pasternak Slater's translations of her brother's poems are almost as bad as her brother's translations of Shakespeare's plays. Stephen Nichols, Jr., is no doubt a disciple of one of my victims. Salisbury2 is a well-meaning journalist. And so on. I have not seen Barkham's3 review but I do get the S.R. which takes only a fortnight to reach me—much faster than the Santa Maria.
Yes, I have heard from the British publisher about the publication date.4
I hope your boys will arrive in excellent shape. I am sure you will have a splendid year together.
As ever,
V
Vladimir Nabokov
PS. Yes, apostrophization, of course, on p. 32 (orig. 477).
PPS. Please give Miss Oldham my thanks for her letter of August 11.
TO: WILLIAM MCGUIRE
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, Switzerland
August 27, 1964
Dear Bill,
I have decided not to insert an errata slip in the British edition. Thank you for trying to include one of the corrections in the Prosody separatum.
The "Koenig, Dame, Bube" is "King, Queen, Knave", as translated by Dmitri from my Russian, and will be published by Putnam in due time, and "Das Bastardzeichen" is my "Bend Sinister" (about to be republished by Time, Inc. for their reading circle).
Yes, I did intend to delete the entire "rhyme" entry.
I am glad you like my little discourse on reviewers. Good Pushkinists among the expatriates who followed the Russian muse abroad, such as Hodasevich and Gofman,1 are long dead. In Soviet Russia political considerations must taint any mention of my work. The Foundation keeps looking forward to the Edmund Wilson article; but as I have mentioned before his Russian is primitive, and his knowledge of Russian literature gappy and grotesque. (He is a very old friend of mine, and I do hope our quarter-of-a-century correspondence in the course of which I attempted not quite successfully to explain to him such matters as the mechanism of Russian—and English—verse, will be published some day).2
We enjoyed the visit here of Miss Gillmor and Mr. Barrett.
Véra and I send you our kindest regards.
As ever,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: WILLIAM MAXWELL1
TLS, 1 p. Harvard University.
Montreux, October 5, 1964
Dear Bill,
In recent years I have been increasingly hampered by a resolution I took at the very start of my liter
ary career five decades ago never to react either to friendly or adverse reviews of my books. Updike's article on The Defense in an issue of The New Republic2 that I have been shown today is so charming, intelligent, witty and splendidly phrased that I find it very hard not to respond directly. The fact that just before his review's appearance (about which, of course, I knew nothing at the time) I naively chanced to praise his work in a letter to you, is a really diabolical—but otherwise rather satisfying—coincidence, which is the chief reason for my writing this note.
Yours ever,
V
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: JANE HOWARD1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, October 5, 1964
Palace Hotel
Dear Miss Howard,
Thanks for letting me see your jottings.2 I am returning them with my notes and deletions. I do hope you won't find the latter too discouraging. You have done your job extremely well, but I didn't. Much of what I said was idle talk, mainly and lamely meant to entertain you and Mr. Grossman3 in between business.
I am a poor causeur, and this is why I prepare my answers to interviewers in writing; and since this method takes up time, I very seldom grant interviews. Several things that I said, and that you took down, are quite unfit for publication. I cannot discuss my obesity in public. I do not want to embarrass a heroic, and now ailing, cosmonaut by recalling a fishy television program. I find it unseemly to speak of my pedigree or of the butterflies bearing my name. I cannot be made to criticize contemporary writers. I have sufficiently worried poor Zhivago. The Gogol bit has already appeared in my book on Gogol, and the Tolstoy bit, referring to his having been infected by a complaisant Swiss chambermaid, should not be mentioned in this kind of discussion. My remarks about British vulgarity are also not for print in this form. And I would rather not mention the odious Fact4 at all. Finally, the history of Lolita has been aired many times and is old hat, and I have said what I wanted about the film in my written answer.
Let me repeat that it was a great pleasure to talk to you. We all three enjoyed your and Henry Grossman's visit tremendously. Please, do not resent my fastidious and fussy alterations. I did take a lot of trouble with the written answers I sent you.
We hope you had a marvelous stay at Ercoli.
Kindest regards,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: GEORGE WEIDENFELD
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, October 27, 1964
Palace Hotel
Dear George,
Vladimir has now heard indirectly from you (via Dmitri) and from Mr. Thompson (via Walter Minton) that the British Museum has informed you they have available about 50% of Vladimir's butterfly list. He considers this good news. But he has been waiting in vain to hear from your office which are the species on his list that are represented in the BM collection. Of those subspecies they don't have, some could be replaced by others, and many might be found in the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He would like to be put now in direct touch with the person who did the research for you at the BM. He would then also get in touch with the French museum.1
It has now been more than a year since you first mentioned this project. As you know, Vladimir is very much interested. On the other hand, he has been putting off many other things because of it (things that by now would have been accomplished), and the delays and silences are keeping him, he says, "in a constant state of perplexity and irritation." He thinks that if you still intend to go on with the project, some schedule ought to be worked out now. For instance, he finds it rather odd that more than a fortnight has elapsed since Minton told him of your having received the BM report without his having received a copy of it.
There is another small matter I must mention—that of the statements. My letters to your bookkeeping department have so far elicited, piecemeal, all but the PALE FIRE statement (which was due at the end of September, and now October is almost gone). I wonder if you could think of some way to organize this more efficiently, some way that would spare me the necessity of writing so many letters on this subject?
Finally, Vladimir asks me to add that he has received the copies of your charming edition of THE DEFENSE but "has not the vaguest idea when it is coming out."
Besides and beyond those tiresome matters, we are sending you our cordial greetings, and are still hoping that your peregrinations may some day touch Montreux.
Sincerely,
(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
FROM: ALFRED HITCHCOCK
TLS, 3 pp.
November 19, 1964
Dear Mr. Nabokov:
Further to our conversation on the telephone regarding future projects I have in mind and for which I require stories, I would like to give you a rough outline of two of them with the hope perhaps that one or the other might interest you to develop into a story.
If perhaps you would become interested, I would like to point out that I do not require any rights except motion picture and television. Any literary rights would belong to you.
Now the first idea I have been thinking about for some time is based upon a question that I do not think I have seen dealt with in motion pictures or, as far as I know, in literature. It is the problem of the woman who is associated, either by marriage or engagement, to a defector.
I think in the case of the married woman, there is very little question that she sides with her husband. We have, for example, the case of Burgess and MacLean, where Mrs. MacLean eventually followed her husband behind the Iron Curtain, and obviously Mrs. MacLean had no other loyalties. The question I'm really interested in is what would be the attitude of a young woman, perhaps in love with, or engaged to, a scientist who could be a defector.
To give you a crude example, let's imagine that Von Braun's son is as brilliant as his father and has been working on very secret projects. He has become very American and, to all outward appearances, completely removed from any of his father's background. But suddenly one day, he wants to go on a vacation and visit his father's relatives—the old folks.
To the security people this excursion could be interpreted in a way that casts doubt upon his true intentions. In other words, they wonder perhaps whether he's going to defect (naturally there could be other circumstances that would give them this idea).
The young man's fiancee is the daughter of a senator and she was to accompany him on his excursion. The security people, having their doubts about the young man, endeavor to enlist her help.
The motion picture line for this story would develop into the journey behind the Iron Curtain and expressed in terms of action and movement, but within it all, would be the basic problem faced by the girl. Who knows? Maybe she goes over to the side of her fiance. It would depend upon how her character is drawn. It is also possible if she did this, she might be making a terrible mistake—especially if her fiance, after all, turned out to be a double agent.
The feasibility of a man posing as a defector, but in reality is an agent for the government, could arise entirely out of the close security methods within the government. We have seen examples of how the FBI is ignorant of what the CIA is doing, and sometimes the CIA is not always aware of what some higher-ups are doing in these intelligence jobs.
Anyway, Mr. Nabokov, the type of story I'm looking for is an emotional, psychological one, expressed in terms of action and movement and, naturally, one that would give me the opportunity to indulge in the customary Hitchcock suspense.
Now this next idea I'm not sure will really appeal to you but, on the other hand, it might.
Many years ago I started to work on an idea for the English company to which I was under contract. The idea was never completed because I left to come to America. I wondered what would happen if a young girl, having spent her life in a convent in Switzerland due to the fact that she had no home to go to and only had a widowed father, was suddenly released from college at the end of her term. She would be returned to her father, who would be the general manager of a large international hotel (at the time
I imagined it would be the Savoy in London). This general manager, the father of our young heroine, has a brother who is the concierge, another brother who is the cashier, another brother one of the chefs in the kitchen, a sister who is the housekeeper, and a bedridden mother living in a penthouse in the hotel. The mother is about 8o years of age, a matriarch.
The whole of this family are a gang of crooks, using the hotel as a base of operations. Now into this setting comes our young 19-year-old girl. As you will see, the hotel setting—especially the "backstage" part—would be extremely colorful, especially when the bulk of the story would take place, not only backstage, but in the public rooms and even to the night club section. In other words, I was looking for a film that would give us the details of a big hotel and not merely a film played in hotel rooms.
Arnold Bennett, the famous English novelist, had quite a fascination for hotels. He wrote two books, one "Grand Babylon Hotel" and another, "Imperial Palace". This latter book contained enormous detail about the Savoy Hotel, London, although it was actually a work of fiction.
Well there it is, Mr. Nabokov. I sincerely hope you could be interested in one or the other. Naturally I have just indicated the crudest conception of these ideas. I haven't bothered to go into such details as characterizations or the psychological aspects of these stories. For example, in the hotel story I have in the original material, the development of the situation whereby the father of the young girl, having achieved the position of general manager, has no more interest in the unlawful pursuits of the rest of his family; and it is the advent of his daughter that makes his problem so much greater.