Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
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4. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950).
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1. Partisan Review (January-February 1951).
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2. The New Yorker (17 June 1950).
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1. By Paul Bowles (New York: New Directions, 1948).
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1. On 21 April VN asked Fischer to publish Conclusive Evidence in the fall of 1950—not early in 1951.
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2. Despair.
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1. Of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.
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1. The proposed jacket copy compared VN to Sitwell—presumably Edith.
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2. A reference to the pre-Revolution affluence of the Nabokov family.
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3. "It was, perhaps, ironically appropriate that a passion for butterflies should determine the pattern of his new life in exile."
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4. "...as Proust has observed, they 'bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.' "
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5. A final chapter in guise of a review of the book was not included in Conclusive Evidence.
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1. See VN's Lectures on Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Bruccoli Clark, 1980).
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2. "Lodgings in Trinity Lane," Harper's Magazine (January 1951).
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1. Harold Ross's 15 November memo to White: "Could he expand his source field? Shawn and I have had other writers in mind for our idea, and Nabokov might be the man. But, on the other hand, he wouldn't be doing the idea he had in mind, and it might be better not to tamper with that idea. You might ask him about this. In any event, we should certainly like to see whatever he writes on this subject, regardless, and would be willing to hold up doing anything here pending receipt of that.".
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1. "Ivan Petrovich Pavlov," The New Yorker (2 December 1950).
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2. "The Annals of Crime: London Masque," The New Yorker (2, 9, 16 December 1950).
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1. Harry Schwartz was a frequent reviewer of books on Russia.
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1. Ross to VN, 3 January 1951: "I can conceive of no circumstance extraneous to the piece itself (or the pieces) precluding their publication, except the dropping of an atom bomb that would put us out of business, and in that event it is possible that the management would recognize pending undertakings." VN informed White on 10 March that he was postponing the article indefinitely.
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1. Rinehart editor.
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2. The project was dropped.
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1. Patricia Hunt, a member of Life's Nature Department, wrote VN on 31 January asking for his assistance with a projected article about his butterfly collecting. Nothing came of it.
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1. "The Vane Sisters," Hudson Review (Winter 1959). Collected in Nabokov's Quartet (New York: Phaedra, 1966).
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2. "Signs and Symbols" (15 May 1948).
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3. White to VN, 21 March: "We did not work out your acrostic, to be sure, that being rather out of the New Yorker's line, but otherwise, even after reading your letter, we believe that we did understand at least the general purpose of your story. The big difference to us between this one and the story of the old Jewish couple is that the latter aroused our emotions about your characters whereas the story about the Vane sisters did not. I think it's fine to have your style a web, when your web is an ornament, or a beautiful housing, for the content of your text, as it was in 'Conclusive Evidence,' but a web can also be a trap when it gets snarled or becomes too involved, and readers can die like flies in a writer's style if it is unsuitable for its matter. I shall have to stick to my guns on that and on the fact that we did not think these Vane girls worthy of their web."
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1. Representative of English publisher Victor Gollancz.
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2. The title of the Gollancz edition was Speak, Memory (1951).
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1. Editor of the New York Times Book Review.
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2. Ivan Bunin, Memories and Portraits (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951).
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3. Alexander Barrett Klots, A Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America, East of the Great Plains (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951). VN did not receive the assignment.
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1. Finley, of Harvard, had invited VN to teach Humanities 2 as a visiting professor in 1952.
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1. Elena Sikorski's son, Vladimir. Elena Sikorski was now in Geneva, while Evgeniya Konstantinovna Hofeld and Rostislav had remained in Stalinized Prague. DN.
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2. "I'm doing my little Sirin number": a reference to the care VN had dedicated to the style and rhythm of the preceding passage, as he had always done with his Russian poetry and prose, generally signed "Vladimir Sirin," or, in the French spelling, "Sirine." DN.
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3. Stikhotvoreniya 929–95 (Paris: Rifma, 1952).
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4. Evgeniya Konstantinovna Hofeld.
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5. Rostislav.
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6. Because of the potentially dangerous consequences of such correspondence in the police-state atmosphere in which they lived. DN
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7. Translated from Russian by DN.
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1. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard.
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2. Slavic 150b: Modern Russian Literature to 1917, which VN taught at Harvard in Spring 1952.
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3. Bernard G. Guerney, A Treasury of Russian Literature (New York: Vanguard, 1943).
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4. First published as a book in Russian (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1952) and translated into English in 1963.
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1. Samuel Putnam's translation of Don Quixote (New York: Viking, 1949).
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2. See Lectures on Literature (1980), Lectures on Russian Literature (1981), Lectures on Don Quixote (1983)—all published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Bruccoli Clark.
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3. The first explicit mention of Lolita in this correspondence.
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1. Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.
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1. Secretary, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
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2. VN received the grant for 1952–1953. The translation of Eugene Onegin was published by the Bollingen Foundation in 1964.
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1. This sentence is in holograph.
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1. Daughter of Edmund Wilson; she was with Houghton Mifflin.
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1. VN's request was too late for that year's competition.
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1. Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
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2. Probably The Overreacher (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952).
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1. Burma-Shave advertised with jingles on roadside signs.
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2. The company replied that it had more jingles than it could use.
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1. Rostislav, who had no steady job and very little money, was about to become a father.
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2. Evgeniya Konstantinovna Hofeld.
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3. The Song of Igor's Campaign.
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4. Drugie Berega [Other Shores].
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5. Translated from Russian by DN.
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1. Lolita.
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2. Drugie Berega (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1954).
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1. Morris Bishop's reply. Both limericks are in holograph.
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1. Lolita.
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2. Pnin was declined by Viking and published by Doubleday in 1957.
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1. Laughlin was out of the country and unable to read the typescript of Lolita.
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1. Simon & Schuster editor; also associated with the Bollingen Foundation.
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1. VN's edition was not published. (He insisted that the correct translated form of the tide was Anna Karenin.)
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2. These notes plus ten more were later included in Lectures on Russian Literature.
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3. Brockway had suggested that Lolita be submitted to Grove Press.
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1. With TV Opera, National Broadcasting Company.
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1. Editor of On Translation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959) to which VN contributed "The Servile Path."
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1. President of Farrar, Straus & Young.
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1. Laughlin reported to VN on 11 October that he and Robert MacGregor "feel that it is literature of the highest order and that it ought to be published but we are both worried about possible repercussions both for the publisher and the author. Your style is so individual that it seems to me absolutely certain that the real authorship would quickly be recognized even if a pseudonym were used."
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1. Doubleday editor.
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1. Rahv replied on 28 November that it would be impossible for the Partisan Review to publish an excerpt from Lolita pseudonymously.
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1. Lionel Trilling, The Opposing Self (New York: Viking, 1955).
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1. "Pnin's Day," The New Yorker (23 April 1955).
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1. Corrections lists for Lolita; Mme. Ergaz was VN's French agent. In this and the following lists, holograph marks indicating the status and fate of certain corrections have been omitted.
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1. Proprietor of the Olympia Press, Paris, which published both avant garde literature and pornography in English. Lolita was published by the Olympia Press in September 1955.
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1. Maurice Girodias subsequently claimed that it was he who persuaded VN to put his name on Lolita. See DN, "A Few Things That Must Be Said on Behalf of Vladimir Nabokov," Nabokpv's Fifth Arc, ed. J. E. Rivers and Charles Nicol (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).
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2. Partisan Review did not publish Lolita excerpts.
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3. "Problems of Translation: Onegin in English," Partisan Review (Fall 1955).
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1. On 22 September Covici wrote to VN proposing a reduction in the advance for Pnin and explaining that Viking's decision to publish the volume would be contingent upon VN's agreement to perform further work on the material.
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1. On 23 November Covici informed VN that Viking had decided it would be a disservice to VN to publish Pnin.
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1. Mrs. White had retired as fiction and verse editor, although she remained on the New Yorker staff.
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1. President of Harper & Brothers.
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1. The New Russian Word, Russian-language New York daily.
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2. Yuriy Yanovsky, Ukrainian short-story writer and novelist; Marc Slonim, critic, editor, and educator; Ekaterina Kuskova, well-known political personality before the Revolution.
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1. Bishop's wife.
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1. On 23 March Covici wrote expressing concern about the effect Lolita might have on VN's Cornell position.
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1. Pnin was published by Doubleday in 1957. The last sentence of the P.S. is in holograph.
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1. The project was dropped.
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2. The last two sentences are in holograph.
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1. VN did not receive the grant.
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1. PNIN/V. NABOKOV. The Russian words were added in VN's hand.
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2. "There was considerable enthusiasm among the Doubleday editors for Lolita, though we were all apprehensive about possible legal consequences. As I recall, Ken McCormick, the editor-in-chief at the time, would have agreed to publish it if Douglas Black, the president of the company, authorized it. But Black was so strongly opposed that he refused even to read the manuscript." Jason Epstein to Sally Dennison, 23 February 1982; Dennison, (Alternative) Literary Publishing (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1984), p. 175.
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3. The June 1957 issue of The Anchor Review (Doubleday) included an excerpt from Lolita and articles about the novel by VN and F. W. Dupee.
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1. Poet, then on the faculty of Bennington College. Nemerov's letter published in the 30 October New York Times protested against the ban on importation of Lolita into the United States. The Olympia Press Lolita was not banned from the United States. Two copies were confiscated by U.S. Customs in 1956 but subsequently released. Thereafter the novel was legally circulated here. See Maurice Girodias, "A Sad, Ungraceful History of Lolita," The Olympia Reader, ed. Girodias (New York: Grove, 1965).
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1. Pnin.
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2. Edmund Wilson.
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1. "On a Book Entitled Lolita," Anchor Review, #2 (New York: Doubleday, 1957).
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2. ...[Nabokov] turns out to be a master of English prose ... the most extraordinary phenomenon of the kind since Conrad....[He is] something like Proust, something like Franz Kafka, and, probably, something like Gogol...[but he] is as complet
ely himself as any of these other writers ... Edmund Wilso.
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1. John Hollander, "The Perilous Magic of Nymphets," Partisan Review (Fall 1956); Louis Simpson, "Fiction Chronicle," Hudson Review (Summer 1956).
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1. In response to Greene's listing the Olympia Lolita as one of the best books of 1955, John Gordon, chief editor of the London Sunday Express, pronounced it "about the filthiest book I've ever read," setting off a Greene-Gordon feud and fueling the campaign to ban the book in England. It was not banned.
On 17 June 1957 Max Reinhardt, Managing Director of The Bodley Head, wrote VN at Greene's recommendation requesting an option to publish Lolita in England in two or three years. The delay was necessitated by a new obscenity bill pending in Parliament.
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1. Unpublished.
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1. "On a Book Entitled Lolita," The Anchor Review, #2 (1957), 105–112.
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2. F.W. Dupee, "A Preface to Lolita," Anchor Review, #2 (1957), 1–14.
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3. L'Affaire Lolita (Paris: Olympia Press, 1957).
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1. "The Ballad of Longwood Glen." The following sentence is in holograph.
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1. On 25 February 1957 Epstein advised VN against initiating the suit and urged him to remain aloof from the legal question until it clarified itself.
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1. On 1 March Epstein wrote urging VN to seek a long-established American publisher for Lolita and advising him to wait until current Supreme Court obscenity cases were settled.
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2. Partner in the New York publishing house of McDowell, Obolensky.
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3. It is possible that VN meant to write "colloquy." It is also possible he meant, tongue-in-cheek style, that a soliloquy was going on. DN.
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4. Wilson.
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1. McDowell, Obolensky.
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1. New Yorker (6 July 1957).
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1. The CC reads "drains"; it is impossible to emend this typing error.
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2. At this stage of the novel's development, Ultima Thule had been inherited from Solus Rex, a novel Nabokov was writing in France at the outbreak of World War II, and never completed. Two chapters from it, entitled "Ultima Thule" and "Solus Rex," were published in Russian journals in the early 1940s and later appeared in A Russian Beauty (1973). When Pale Fire was published by Putnam in 1962, its loci, characters, and themes had gone through many stages of evolution, and the structure of the novel had assumed a different and totally original form: All the real or imagined events of the Kingdom of Zembla and the story of its ex-monarch are contained in a presumably mad commentator's notes to a 999-line poem composed for the occasion by an invented poet. DN.