Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977

by Vladimir Nabokov

  I would appreciate if you could tell Mr. Tony White that I have received the galleys of SPEAK, MEMORY and shall return them in good time. I must also see the LAUGHTER IN THE DARK proofs: Your 1963 edition was riddled with misprints. I assume that I shall also be given an opportunity to see the proofs of the other three works.

  Thank you very much for showing me the cover material.

  Sincerely yours,

  TO: HEATHER MANSELL

  CC, 1 p.

  Montreux Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  Nov. 28, 1968

  Dear Miss Mansell,

  I have your telegram

  "IN VIEW BUTTERFLIES ON PROPOSE SPEAK MEMORY COVER FEATURED IN PLATE OPPOSITE PAGE 228 / sic / WEIDENFELD EDITION COULD YOU RECONSIDER YOUR OBJECTION? WILL SUBMIT NEW DESIGN PNIN/ DOZEN STOP BLURB MEMORY FOLLOWS MANSELL PENGUIN BOOKS"

  You are mistaken. The butterfly you figure on your cover for SPEAK, MEMORY is the one called daphnis by Schiffermüller and meleager by Esper and belongs to the subgenus called Meleageria by Sagarra, whilst the butterfly I figure on the plate facing p. 288 of the Weidenfeld edition of the book is the one called cormion by me, and belongs structurally to the subgenus called Lysandra by Hemming. My butterfly differs in male organ, wing shape, upperside coloration and underside pattern from your butterfly. Yours is a butterfly widely distributed throughout the southern part of central Europe and Russia; mine is an extremely rare freak, possibly a hybrid between Meleageria daphnis (meleager) and Lysandra coridon. The upper of your two figures is presumably a female of the Meleageria species (the colored photograph gives it an impossible green shade of blue and a revolting red rim); the female of my butterfly remains unknown to me (my two types are both males). And finally your butterfly is precisely one of the two, M. daphnis (meleager), from which I separate my L. cormion as a distinct organism!

  To recapitualte: You illustrate the wrong butterfly on your cover. This adds a gratuitous pictorial muddle to an obscure and subtle taxonomic problem. I cannot reconsider my objection.

  Sincerely yours,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: ROBIE MACAULEY

  TL (XEROX), 1 p.

  Montreux Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  December 24, 1968

  Dear Mr. Macauley,

  I have received your cable "Imminence book publication permits us use one section only from Ada in April we want chapters five, six, nine, fifteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-five total about fifteen thousand words offer ten thousand dollars please cable reply"—and have answered by cable "Delighted but would want a little more money to cope with tax. Letter follows."

  The idea is that I would like fifteen thousand—to make the figure neater ("dollar per word") and to help me defray the tax which other wise will eat up a considerable part of the plump ten thousand.

  I greatly approve your choice of chapters. Please indicate the number of each chapter when you print the thing. May I be sure that there will not be any changes, cuts, or bridgings without my knowledge and consent (for instance, in Chapter Twenty, a phrase must be decoded). Should omissions be inevitable, please indicate them by means of a few dots.

  Illustrations, if any, should be pleasing, elegant, lyrical, lyrotic. The material should be printed from the corrected McGraw-Hill proofs (which I am working on today between spells of enthralling TV lunar pictures.)

  Merry Christmas!

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: HUGH M. HEFNER

  CC, 1 p.

  Montreux Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  December 28, 1968

  Dear Mr. Hefner,

  I wish to thank you, Mr. Spectorsky and The Playboy for your letter, charming cards and gifts and the bonus.

  It pleases me very much to know that "One Summer in Ardis" (an excellent title suggested by Mr. Macauley) will appear in Playboy.1

  Have you ever noticed how the head and ears of your Bunny resemble a butterfly in shape, with an eyespot on one hindwing?2 Happy New Year.

  Yours sincerely,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: FRANK E. TAYLOR

  TLS, 1 p. Lilly Library.

  Montreux, Switzerland

  Montreux Palace Hotel

  January 6, 1969

  Dear Frank,

  I just got the photostat of the new jacket design for ADA, and do not like it at all. The lettering is dumpy, with apertures en cul-de-poule. The coloration of the word ADA recalls at first blush the nacrine inner layer of a dejected shellfish, and, at a closer inspection, the bleak marblings of a ledger's edge. At six paces the D of the title looks like a badly deformed O. Please, let us go back to the joyful, elegant, black VN and red ADA on a white ground!

  I wrote you yesterday thanking you for the duplicate set. In the same letter I mentioned how I stand with the Atlantic.

  We did not go to Rome after all to avoid being caught in strikes and riots.

  Thanks for your good wishes. We wish you a marvelous year, too.

  Cordial greetings.

  V

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: FRANK E. TAYLOR

  CC, 1 p.

  Montreux, Switzerland

  Montreux Palace Hotel

  January 14, 1969

  Dear Frank,

  I would not like to interfere in any way with your publicity plans. "Erotic masterpiece" sounds all right, though, as you are no doubt aware, it has been loosely applied in the recent past to books like Poxus and Capri Corn1—and also to my own Lolita. Prompted by your question, I have rapidly passed in review such epithets as "fantastic," "iridescent," "demonic," "mysterious," "magic," "glorious," and the like; but, let me repeat, I entirely rely upon your good taste and experience.

  Incidentally "Paris Match", whose reporter I had refused to receive, has retaliated with a spatter of nonsense about me (January 9, 1969) and an idiotic bit about Ada, but I don't think it needs shaking a stick at.

  We shall be of course absolutely delighted to see you and your wife here. Even if you cannot come do let me know where to get in touch with you while you are in Europe.

  Yours ever,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: GEORGE WEIDENFELD

  CC, 1 p.

  Montreux, January 20, 1969

  Dear George,

  I have just seen a copy of Harold Nicolson's Diaries and Letters, 945–92 (a Christmas present from Miss Alison). It contains a passage (p. 370) which I would like to comment upon by placing on re cord (and this is the purpose of my note) that the statement attributed to me ("Niggs tells me that VN said to him that all his life he had been fighting against the influence of Some People")1 is terribly exaggerated. I did say to Nigel Nicolson (in 1959 in London) that I greatly admired Some People and I may have added that in my thirties (when writing Sebastian Knight) I was careful to steer clear of its hypnotic style. But the idea of "fighting all my life" against its influence on me is, of course, nonsense. You may show this note to Nigel Nicolson—just for the record.

  Cordially,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: FRANK E. TAYLOR

  CC, 1 p.

  Montreux, Palace Hotel

  March 9th, 1969

  Dear Frank,

  I was very pleased to receive your letter from New York. Thank you for sending me the three copies of the Literary Guild magazine and the Publishers Weekly with the excellent Adavertisement. It contains, however, three little errors. If you propose to repeat its text anywhere, please note that Van did not seduce Lucette; that the name of the emigré publishing house is not "Slava", but "Slovo;" and, most important, that there should be no "a" between "is" and "random variation" (see p. 416 of the novel: "is random variation").

  I recall that at some point in the past either you, or Mr. Booher, or Mr. Kemeny mentioned that it would please McGraw-Hill to concentrate in their hands as many of my works as possible. In the light of this admirable idea I would like you to know that Phaedra (who
published my THE EYE, THE WALTZ INVENTION, THE QUARTET and my Russian translation of LOLITA) are on the brink of bankruptcy and are trying to dispose of their business. Oscar de Liso, who owns Phaedra, ran an ad to that effect.

  Warm greetings from us both.

  Yours ever,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  PS. Please do not use any of the Lit. Guild illustrations for publicity. They are well drawn artistically but otherwise quite wrong. The two little slum girls have no resemblance whatsoever to those meticulously described in my book; only in movies and cartoons do people begin a duel by standing back to back; the pistols are wrong. On the other hand, the moths (minus the delinquents), the boat on the dial and my sepia profile are very successful.

  TO: FRANK E. TAYLOR

  March 1969

  TELEGRAM

  LT

  LOVELY FAT ADA BUT NOTHING IS PERFECT IN LIFE BAD MISPRINT IN PENULT LINE LAST PAGE OF BOOK VIEW DESCRIBED SHOULD BE VIEW DESCRIED.

  NABOKOV

  EXP VLADIMIR NABOKOV PALACE HOTEL MONTREUX SWITZERLAND

  TO: WILLIAM HONON1

  TELEGRAM

  I WANT A LUMP IN HIS THROAT TO OBSTRUCT THE WISECRACK

  NABOKOV

  Exp. Vladimir Nabokov, Palace Hotel, Montreux Le 13 mars 1969

  TO: PLAYBOY

  TELEGRAM

  DEAR PLAYBOY ADA FRAGMENTS BEAUTIFULLY PRINTED BUT GOODNESS WHAT ILLUSTRATIONS THAT IMPROBABLE YOUNG MAMMAL AND TWO REVOLTING FROGS

  NABOKOV

  Exp. Vladimir Nabokov, Palace Hotel, Montreux March 17, 1969

  TO: FRANK E. TAYLOR

  April 1969

  TLS, 1 p. Lilly Library.

  Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  Dear Frank,

  With your buxom Ada against my breast, my bathroom scale reckons my weight at 88½ kg.; without her at 87. What a splendid, enchantingly appetizing volume! Tolstoy says about his Anna K. that she "carried her embonpoint gracefully." How Ada would have maddened Leo!

  As I cabled you yesterday, I somehow overlooked—probably in page proof—a bothersome little misprint on the last page. My MS gives the correct "view descried" (not "described"). I wonder if this could be cured in ensuing copies? Webster's condemns "described" when used in the sense of "descried."

  Inspiration seems on the point of visiting me again despite my being so dreadfully drained after Ada.

  Yours ever,

  V

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: MORRIS BISHOP

  TLS, 1 p. Mrs. Morris Bishop

  Montreux

  7 April 1969

  Dear Morris,

  We were all set (including reservations on two Italian liners) to attend all sorts of festivities and ceremonies in NY in May but had to cancel our visit. You will receive a copy of my little Ada but not, alas, the invitation to a planned cocktail.

  In the meantime we have, and treasure, your Middle Ages.1 Your text is robust, colorful, tremendously talented. From notes I made while reading it I see that I chuckled enthusiastically over the "intimate" insects (p. 78). Of the two wonderful paragraphs (p. 102) dealing with education, I noticed, without much surprise, that the female child received twice as much attention as the boy did. Your marvelous unique humor crops up, God bless it, quite frequently (p. 115: "...apparently to include a roast peacock"; p. 116: "treasured teeth"; p. 131: "complete saint"; p. 373: "the rest of him"), and of course the best (incomparably best) translations are those on pages 303 and 312–13.

  I humbly submit that Frederic II (p. 57) could not have known anything (Thirteenth Century!) about hummingbirds (which exist only in the New World). The illustrations are beautifully chosen but not all are satisfactorily identified (e.g.: p. 362, the tapestry weaver, one of the gems of its age).

  Many thanks for this splendid gift. Véra and I send our love to both of you.

  Yours ever,

  V

  TO: FRANK E. TAYLOR

  TLS, 1 p. Lilly Library

  Montreux-Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  April 21, 1969

  Dear Frank,

  In Ch. 19 of Part One, p. 120, 1.4 "Stanley" should be "Speke" (who discovered the source of the Nile and sent the famous cable). Since Van's jocular misidentification looks uncommonly like a silly lapse on my own part, it might be wise to substitute "Speke" for "Stanley" if and when a second printing is to be prepared.

  Dmitri has taken to Monza my copy of Ada, so I have now stopped dipping into the book (and surfacing with a gasp) for the time being. Vera is in Geneva and may stay there for another week.

  Yours ever

  V

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: BUD MACLENNAN

  TL (XEROX), 1 p.

  Montreux-Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  25 April, 1969

  Dear Miss MacLennan,

  Panther's Cover Design for my QUARTET is perfectly dreadful and disgusting. Why should a collection of poetical tales be degraded to the rank of a horror movie by a designer who has never read them?

  I emphatically object to this monocled skull.

  Yours sincerely,

  Vladimir Nabokov

  TO: ANDREW FIELD1

  TL (XEROX), 3 pp.

  Montreux-Palace Hotel

  Montreux, Switzerland

  April 25, 1969

  Dear Andrew,

  My wife is not well, and I have some difficulty in coping with my voluminous and complicated correspondence, but your charming letters have special precedence.

  The 23 pictures2 arrived just before my birthday and I am writing to Stephen Sternheimer (c/o of his father) to thank him for this absolutely magnificient birthday present. I am also deeply touched by the captions in an unknown Russian hand, by their text and tone, by this extraordinary link established between my childhood and old age through the sensitive minds of strangers in a fabled and sad land into which my books somehow penetrate.

  Only six of the photographs would I want to appear in print. They have now been re-numbered by me from 1 to 6. The buildings that appear in the other pictures are quite unknown to me. The oak is not the one I remember. The snow adds, rather tactfully, its own white mask to the layers of change and loss.

  I shall have the captions typed in the original Russian and sent to you, with my comments and corrections (for example the Vyra house was destroyed by fire long before World War Two, in the nineteen twenties, and of course neither my brother, nor I could have visited Russia with the German invaders).

  Thanks for remembering my modest birthday.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Photos

  (0)

  Photographs of the "Nabokov Lands in the St Petersburg region" (see VN's SPEAK, MEMORY, frontispiece, map sketched in 1965) which an American visitor obtained in that area ("had 23 pictures made and developed there" says his father in a letter of April 2, 1969) in the beginning of 1969, half a century after VN left Russia. The American visitor airmailed the photos to Prof. Andrew Field in Australia asking him to have the pictures sent to VN for his 70th birthday.

  (00)

  An anonymous Russian has penned amazingly precise captions on the back of the pictures. It appears from those precious inscriptions that memories of the Nabokovs and knowledge of VN's books are alive and warm in his native countryside.

  (1)

  The Rozhestveno manor-house inherited by VN from his uncle Rukavishnikov in 1916. This is its northern façade showing its back porch. For the house's history see SPEAK, MEMORY, p. 64–65 & 72; and for more private associations, p. 233 of the same work. The road above which the house stands on its lone hill, some fifty miles south of St Petersburg (Leningrad) is now called the Kiev Highway (formerly Warsaw Highway). The shell is intact, the inside is said to be unrecognizable.

  (2)

  The crypt of the Rukavishnikovs (VN's grandfather, grandmother and their eldest son Vladimir, who died circa 1890) just across the river Oredezh, on its north bank.
The logs are the church's firewood.

  (3)

  The place (west of the sinuous Oredezh) where VN's parents' country house (Vyra estate) once stood. Nothing remains of it except traces of its foundation.

  (4)

  The main avenue of the Vyra park (greatly invaded by firs).

  (5)

  The road and bridge leading to Batovo, VN's paternal grandmother's estate (which belonged to the Ryleev family in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, see p. 63 of SPEAK, MEMORY), about two miles west of Rozhestveno.