Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Page 35
Dear Mr. Lasky,
Legate, I come to you in tears:
My cohorts ordered home!
I've lived in England forty years
What shall I do in Rome?
This Kipling bit that I loved in my boyhood is to introduce the account of a rather silly situation I find myself in. The Lolita and Girodias article had been cleared by my lawyers in New York (Joseph S. Iseman of Paul, Weiss, etc.) and my lawyer in Paris (Maitre Schirman). Nevertheless, Barbara Epstein tells me today that she is afraid to publish it. So, in tears, I come back to you.
I shall eagerly await your answer.
Sincerely,
Vladimir Nabokov
I enclose the article.
TO: MELVIN J. LASKY
CC, 1 p.
Amalfi, May 10, 1966
Hotel Cappuccini Convento
(Italy)
Dear Mr. Lasky,
My husband asks me to thank you for the May issue which has followed him to Amalfi.
He was amused by Robert Graves' article1 in which Graves reproaches Vladimir for using "pal" in writing of Eugene's girl friend (which he never did, of course) and "youthen" (which does not occur in the translation). How absurd that people should write authoritatively of things with which they have not taken the trouble to acquaint themselves. However, Vladimir does not plan to bother you with another "Reply".
He is worried about not having your reaction to his Girodias-Lolita article. It is extremely important for him to have this article published. In fact, it is extremely important for him to have it published as soon as possible. He would consider it a personal favor if you would do this. Girodias is all over the place nowadays, and his anthology with his mendacious article on Lolita is about to be published in England (or has been published).
I believe Vladimir wrote you that the article was examined by two lawyers, one in Paris, the other in New York (Joseph Iseman), that both lawyers pointed out one and the same passage as possibly objectionable, that this passage has been removed accordingly, and that therefore he cannot see why Barbara was afraid to publish it anyway.
We shall stay at the above address for three weeks or so. Please treat this address as confidential.
Sincerely yours,
(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
TO: PROF. CARL R. PROFFER1
CC, 1 p.
September 26, 1966
Montreux, Palace Hotel
Dear Mr. Proffer,
I have read with great pleasure your witty Keys to Lolita2 and here are some little corrections and explanations that occurred to me on the way:
Page 3 The "favorite author" is not Chateaubriand but Delalande mentioned in Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift, who survived Chateaubriand by one year. The quotations, and Delalande himself, are, of course, invented.
Page 11 The abbreviation after "the Nouveau Petit Larousse" stands for "Illustré", not only for "Illinois." The "Little Russian" is nonsense—an impossible pun in French since "rousse" is pronounced quite differently from "russe".
Same page. "Forbeson" is a stock character of old Italian comedy.
Page 15 "Quelquepart Island" is another name for "Quelpart Island", N.E. Canada.
Page 19 "Ormonde" refers to Ormond Bar in Ulysses—you should have caught that.
Page 20 The allusion to Valeriy Bryusov is nonsense.
Page 29 "Hop-hop-hop" comes from Lenore, Bürger's famous ballad.
Page 52 "Vivian Darkbloom" is an anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov" planted at a time (1954) when I toyed with the idea of publishing Lolita anonymously but wished to affirm my authorship in code.
Page 59–60 "Miss Empereur". A similarly named lady is Emma Bovary's music teacher in a similar incident, and "Gustave" is an obvious allusion to Gustave Flaubert. I was surprised you did not see this.
Page 69 Also note that the "waterproof' passage at the end of Ch.20 occurs just before John happens to interrupt the indecent story (about Clare Quilty, the dentist's nephew) that Jean is about to tell. In another passage, she interrupts John when he is about to make an and semitic remark.
Page 72 A considerable part of what Mr. Nabokov thinks has been thought up by his critics and commentators, including Mr. Proffer, for whose thinking he is not responsible. Many of the delightful combinations and clues, though quite acceptable, never entered my head or are the result of an author's intuition and inspiration, not calculation and craft. Otherwise why bother at all—in your case as well as mine.3
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
(Vivian Bloodmark)
TO: BARBARA EPSTEIN
CC, 1 p.
October 13, 1966
Palace Hotel, Montreux
Dear Barbara,
Thanks for letting me see Enright's article.1
You say that it distresses you very much and that you would be awfully glad if I replied.
I never reply in print to scurrilities of this kind, nor can I sympathize with anybody, however "distressed", who would want to publish them.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: PROF. PAGE STEGNER1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, Switzerland
October 14, 1966
Dear Mr. Stegner
Many thanks for your charming letter of Oct. 5 and a copy of ESCAPE,2 which was followed in a little cascade by three other copies from other sources. I read it with considerable interest. It is well written and well constructed (except for the bumpy last run). Had I been shown the MS, it might have been possible to eliminate a few errors of fact (with errors of judgment I am not concerned). I never was the shockheaded, tippling, monarchistic, inferior chessplayer P.P. Rechnoy, married to a dressmaker with a farcical patronymic. Not Kinbote, but his uncle, an irresponsible paraphrast, mistranslates Shakespeare. "Cincinnatus C.'s affinity with Rodion and Monsieur Pierre" is a monstrous idea which if true would have destroyed the entire novel. You should have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from beginning to end.3 Uncle Ruka did not exercise "an abiding influence on Vladimir". There is nothing remotely "absurd" in Dr. Kozlov's titles (they are, in fact, very much like those of my own scientific papers—which is the point of the passage). You have a perfect right to quote Edmund Wilson on my contempt for ignoramuses but your readers might have liked to be told that (in my Encounter article) I proved him to be one. You refer twice to some mysterious faults of mine so "evident" and "obvious" as to be not worth naming: obvious to whom for goodness sake? (my Audience? my Maker? my Tailor?). Such errors do not detract seriously from the essential value of an excellent book whose subject may be alone to notice them, but if ever a second edition loomed and you wished to correct slips of that sort, I would be glad to list them all for you.
My wife and son join me in sending you and your people our very cordial regards.
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: PROF. PAGE STEGNER
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, Switzerland
October 21, 1966
My husband asks me to add that he will be glad to discuss the inclusion of Pnin (Ch 5) in your anthology.1
Dear Mr. Stegner,
My husband thanks you for your good letter. My husband asks me to list some other little errors we have noticed in your book.
p. 7 "Shaversky" should be "Shabelsky"
p. 11 All Russian émigré books came out in paper covers, the same as most French books
p. 12 "Oxford University Press" should be "Henry Holt"
p. 26–29 My husband wants to repeat that there is no connection whatsoever, either in his work or in his mind, between entomology and humbertology. He says "Good thing Diana Butler did not know that there is a butterfly called (long before Lo) 'Nabokov's Nymph'. There is a famous American butterfly called 'Diana', and there was a celebrated British lepidopterist called Butler."
p. 36 "Luchin" should be "Luzhin"
p. 57 "interneutral" should "interneural"
p. 67 There ar
e no chess allusions here, either in Virginia or Roquebrune
p. 84 Quist is not a Negro
p. 94 "cypress" should be "cypresses"
p. 94 Lisa's new lover is not a poet
p. 104 The Ramsdale dentist is Quilty's uncle, not brother
p. 107 Again, the Diana butterfly
p. 111 My husband says that "coitus interruptus" is hardly the right term here
p. 113 He has never read Poe's "Imps of the Perverse"
p. 121 "how far to go" should be "how far up to go"
p. 130 Why could not there be an amusement park outside a secluded cabin?
My husband wants me to confirm that he is supremely indifferent to hostile criticism and advises you to adopt the same attitude when you come to read reviews of your book in The NYRB and The NYBK. He sends you his warm greetings, and so do I. I shall certainly ask Dmitri about that movie. I remember the two of you striding away together.
(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
TO: ALLENE TALMEY1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, November 29, 1966
Palace Hotel
Dear Miss Talmey,
I have received your sumptuous Christmas issue with the delightful Orion and Nabokov.2
I know how easily a careless babbler's reported remarks can acquire a look of inane vulgarity in merciless print or be flawed by some slip between lip and script. Therefore I had asked Mrs. Gilliatt to send me the typescript of the interview before it went to the printers. I received it in mid-September. It was on the whole a brilliant piece of work but I strongly objected to the beginning which looked remarkably tasteless in print as well as to the entire Pasternak bit which was off-key in matters of literary detail ("scarf' should have been "shawl", etc.), and moreover happened to impinge on some other work of mine.
I considered that themes that had casually bobbed up and down in the chitchat at the Tarasp Kurhaus should be drastically revised for print or omitted altogether. On September 16, immediately after reading the piece, I telephoned Mrs. Gilliatt's office and carefully dic tated my revisions to her secretary. In the correspondence that followed I was assured by Mrs. Gilliatt that they would be taken into account.
I have now received the review and am appalled to discover that my wishes have been ignored.
The passages I objected to completely spoil the article for me and cannot be redeemed by the splendid pictures. However, they are splendid, and the essay is full of talent, and I wish you a happy Christmas.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
Could you send me a second copy please for my files?
TO: LONDON SUNDAY TIMES
PRINTED LETTER1
Sir—I strongly object to the remark in "The Red Letter Forgers" (December 18, 1966) about my father who, according to your four investigators, was shot by a monarchist because "he was suspected of being too Left-wing." This nonsense is distasteful to me for several reasons: it is remarkably similar to the glib data distorting truth in Soviet sources; it implies that the chieftains of the Russian emigration were bandits; and the reason it gives for the murder is false.
My father had been one of the leaders of the Constitutional-Democratic Party in Russia long before the revolution, and his articles in the émigré Rul—the only influential Russian-language daily in Berlin—merely continued the strain of West European liberalism, in the large sense, that had marked his life since at least 1904.
Although there could be found a number of decent elderly persons among the Russian monarchists in Berlin and Paris, there were no original minds or influential personalities among them. The stauncher reactionaries, Black Hundred groups, votaries of new and better dictatorships, shady journalists who claimed that Kerenski's real name was Kirschbaum, budding Nazis, blooming Fascists, pogromystics and agents provocateurs, remained on the lurid fringe of Russian expatriation and were not representative in any way of the liberal intelligentsia, which was the backbone and marrow of émigré culture, a fact deliberately played down by Soviet historians; and no wonder: it was that liberal cultural core, and certainly not the crude and ambiguous activities of extreme rightists, that formed a genuine anti-Bolshevist opposition (still working today), and it was people like my father who pronounced the first and final verdict on the Soviet police state.
The two sinister ruffians who attacked P. N. Milyukov at a public lecture in Berlin on March 28, 1922, had planned to assassinate him, not my father; but it was my father who shielded his old friend from their pistol bullets and, while vigorously knocking down one of the assailants, was fatally shot by the other.
I wish to submit that at a time when in so many Eastern countries history has become a joke, this precise beam of light upon a precious detail may be of some help to the next investigator.
Vladimir Nabokov
Montreux, Switzerland
TO: STEPHEN FAY1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, January 1, 1967
Palace Hotel
Dear Mr. Fay,
Many thanks for your letter of December 23, 1966. It was awfully nice of you to telephone, and I am very pleased that my letter has been displayed so prominently and faithfully in today's issue of The Sunday Times.
I would be delighted to talk to you about émigré politics and society. As I told you I am not particularly interested in politics and history, and everything I wanted to say about my own émigré impressions in the twenty years between 1919 and 1940 (after which I migrated to America) has been expressed in the first two sections of Chapter Fourteen of my Speak, Memory, a revised edition of which is about to appear in London and New York. Moreover, in the same work, section 1 of Chapter Nine contains a concise biography of my father.
I could not supply from memory exact data and details of events that took place so many years ago; anyway, I would welcome your telling me beforehand what questions you would like to discuss with me. I shall look forward to meeting you.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: HUGH M. HEFNER1 AND A. C. SPECTORSKY
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, January 14, 1967
Palace Hotel
Dear Mr. Hefner and Mr. Spectorsky,
I want to thank you warmly for the many kindnesses—the good wishes, the beautiful cigarette box, the album in which I was pleased to find myself represented, and the 500 doll, bonus. I apologize for being so late with my thanks and my own New Year wishes of happiness and prosperity for yourselves and for Playboy. I was submerged in work some of which had to be finished by Christmas but was not.
I always enjoy reading Playboy, and the latest issue was especially entertaining and informative.
Cordially yours,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: HUGH M. HEFNER
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, Palace Hotel
January 27, 1967
Dear Mr. Hefner,
After receiving your bonus I now receive your prize.1 I want to tell you how very much touched I am.
This is the first time that any magazine—or in fact any kind of publication—has awarded me a prize. But then Playboy can be always depended upon to provide brilliant surprises.
Cordially,
Vladimir Nabokov
TO: ENCOUNTER
PRINTED LETTER1
I welcome Freud's "Woodrow Wilson"2 not only because of its comic appeal, which is great, but because that surely must be the last rusty nail in the Viennese Quack's coffin.
Vladimir Nabokov
Montreux,
Switzerland
TO: MORRIS BISHOP
TLS, 1 p. Mrs. Morris Bishop.
Montreux, February 7, 1967
Palace Hotel
Dear Morris,
I am reading and admiring your and Alison's LETTERS FROM PETRARCH1 in your magnificently limpid style. Many thanks for your kind letter. Passio et morbo aureliana occurs in the work of an old aurelian (chrysalid lover), and thus is stamped in my mind. I tried to turn it into your bet
ter Latin in the British edition of my book but it resulted in a hideous misprint. Jezabel was Athalie's mother whose messy remains were disputed by devouring dogs entre eux—poor ribby beasts that did not expect such a sumptuous feast.
One of my young biographers has visited you in Ithaca—lucky fellow! He saw my Papilio waterclosetensis!2
Véra joins me in sending you and Alison our warmest love.
What is little Alison's address in Cambridge?3
TO: WALLACE STEGNER1
CC, 1 p.
Montreux, February 18, 1967
Palace Hotel
Dear Mr. Stegner,
If I started to list all the enchanting, heartrending, and eminently enviable things in Wolf Willow (such as the splendid rhythms in the bronze boot paragraph or in the geometry of sky one; the green cow manure fights, the gopher in the cyclone, or bottoming out—the little hero!—and the flood, and the flies, and the cactus spine), I would only stop because, after all, you know them perfectly well yourself.
Many passages I read with nostalgic exceitement: I have had some unforgettable butterfly collecting in the Glacier Park region (we rented a cabin near Babb, and later in Waterton) and at many points between Browning and the Dakotas—which is not far from your collecting localities, and I think I smelled your Shepherdia (henceforth to be known as Stegneria), though not there but on a lake in Oregon. I was also happy to meet in your book our good old Russian "yellow acacia", caragana (to which I devoted some space in my book on Eugene Onegin, vol.3, p.12)