[back]
***
1. Department of English, University of California, Berkeley.
[back]
***
1. Editor at The Nation.
[back]
***
2. By Mark Dudintsev.
[back]
***
1. See VN's 5 February 1957 letter.
[back]
***
1. Jakobson and VN had planned to collaborate on a translation of Slovo o polku Igorevc, which VN translated alone as The Song of Igor's Campaign (1960).
[back]
***
1. The Anchor Review, #2.
[back]
***
2. W. H. Auden, "The Dyer's Hand: Poetry and the Poetic Process."
[back]
***
3. Herbert Lüthy, "The Void of Jean-Paul Sartre."
[back]
***
4. Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori.
[back]
***
1. Lolita, trans. E. H. Kahane (Paris: Gallimard, 1959).
[back]
***
1. Of the Bolligen Foundation.
[back]
***
* under separate cover
[back]
***
1. Robie Macauley, The End of Pity and Other Stories (New York: McDowell, Obolensky, 1957).
[back]
***
1. President of G. P. Putnam's Sons. According to "The Lolita Case," Time (17 November 1958), Minton learned about Lolita from "onetime Latin Quarter showgirl" Rosemary Ridgewell. Her finder's fee was "the equivalent of to% of the author's royalties for the first year, plus 10% of the publisher's share of the subsidiary rights for two years."
[back]
***
1. Evgeniya Konstantinovna Hofeld had just died.
[back]
***
2. Sonia Slonim, Véra Nabokov's sister.
[back]
***
3. Baron Yuriy E. Rausch von Traubenberg, VN's cousin.
[back]
***
4. DN was a squad leader.
[back]
***
5. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. Girodias replied on 9 October that the royalties had been paid to VN's Paris agent.
[back]
***
1. Of Swedish publishers Wahlström & Widstrand. The 1957 Swedish edition was withdrawn because the translation was unacceptable to VN; a second Wahlström & Widstrand translation was also withdrawn.
[back]
***
2. The Defense.
[back]
***
1. For A Hero of Our Time. (New York: Doubleday, 1958).
[back]
***
2. Heinemann had published Pnin in England.
[back]
***
* due to a combination of condensation and omission in chapters 12 and 13.
[back]
***
1. By James Agee.
[back]
***
2. By Mackinlay Kantor.
[back]
***
1. On 3 December Minton wrote VN: "I rather doubt that any publisher will make the blanket guarantee you suggest, or at least make it in terms which are actually effective.... I can therefore only say to your request that we will do our best to make LOLITA the success it deserves and will do everything practical to prevent its being prosecuted."
[back]
***
1. Literary critic.
[back]
***
2. "A Review of a Novel You Can't Buy" (14 November 1957); Schickel wrote VN on 26 December 1957 apologizing for identifying him as a biology professor.
[back]
***
1. Department of English, Cornell University
[back]
***
2. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1957).
[back]
***
3. From "Whispers of Immortality" by T. S. Eliot.
[back]
***
4. E. E. Cummings
[back]
***
5. Abrams did not act on VN's advice and corrections in subsequent editions.
[back]
***
1. Minton had suggested to VN three courses of action: i) VN to file suit to abrogate the contract in Paris; 2) VN to sign a contract with an American publisher providing for division of the royalty with Girodias; 3) VN to sign a contract with an American publisher and ignore the dispute with Girodias.
[back]
***
1. On 16 January VN wrote to Walter J. Minton: "Here is a copy of my letter to Girodias, mailed today. If this does not do it, I shall admit to defeat."
[back]
***
1. VN's holograph note in the margin: "if you re-read my letter of Jan. 16 to him, you will see that this is unfounded"
[back]
***
1. My Brother's Keeper (New York: Viking, 1958).
[back]
***
2. By Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
[back]
***
1. Editor of the English literary journal, Nine.
[back]
***
1. President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
[back]
***
1. Novelist Willingham had informed VN that Mary Chase was writing a play entitled Lolita.
[back]
***
1. Of Cornell University Press.
[back]
***
1. At the time Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.
[back]
***
1. A critical book by Levin.
[back]
***
1. Orville Prescott, "Books of the Times": "To describe such a perversion with the pervert's enthusiasm without being disgusting is impossible. If Mr. Nabokov tried to do so he failed." On 21 August, Minton reported reorders for the first week: Monday, 1,943; Tuesday, 2,789; Wednesday, 670; Thursday, 1,375.
[back]
***
1. A photograph of the Nabokovs' St. Petersburg house, Bol'shaya Morskaya 47 (now Herzen Street).
[back]
***
2. Elena Sikorski's husband was seriously ill.
[back]
***
3. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. Director, Cornell University Press.
[back]
***
1. "'Lolita' and the Lepidopterisf. Author Nabokov Is Awed by Sensation he Created," Life International (13 April 1959).
[back]
***
2. Mark Goulden of W. H. Allen.
[back]
***
3. Jacques Chambrun, agent who wanted to handle the Lolita movie rights.
[back]
***
1. Treasurer of G. P. Putnam's Sons.
[back]
***
2. Stanley Kubrick and fames Harris.
[back]
***
1. Dept, of Romance Literature, Cornell U.
[back]
***
2. Gordon Fairbanks, Division of Modern Languages.
[back]
***
1. Literary critic.
[back]
***
2. The best-sellers list.
[back]
***
1. The author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes wrote VN on 25 September: "I have enjoyed 'Lolita' more than any book since 'Huckleberry Finn' and am endlessly grateful to you."
[back]
***
2. James MacArthur, the son of Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur.
[back]
***
[back]
***
2. The published text omitted not after term.
[back]
***
3. Goldwin Smith Hall housed the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
[back]
***
1. Mexican publishing house Editorial Diana.
[back]
***
2. "Nabokov's Artistry" (November 1958).
[back]
***
1. Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University.
[back]
***
2. Herbert Gold received the appointment.
[back]
***
1. Editor at Doubleday.
[back]
***
2. Nabokov's Dozen..
[back]
***
1. Of Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.
[back]
***
2. Ilya Fondaminsky.
[back]
***
2. A large number of manuscripts and practically all the correspondence and other papers referred to remain in the Nabokov Archive that was subsequently organized in Montreux. DN.
[back]
***
1. Peter de Peterson, the son of VN's aunt Natalya Nabokov de Peterson.
[back]
***
2. Peter de Peterson, the son of VN's aunt Natalya Nabokov de Peterson.
[back]
***
1. This collection of translations was not published.
[back]
***
1. As translator.
[back]
***
2. Refers to an illegally authorized edition of Lolita for sale in Israel under the Olympia Press imprint.
[back]
***
3. Harry Warren, songwriter who had been approached about writing the song "Lolita."
[back]
***
1. On 19 January Reinhardt wrote VN conveying Graham Greene's concern that a cut version of Lolita was to be published in England and repeated the Bodley Head offer to publish the complete text.
[back]
***
1. 23 January 1959. List of signers: J. R. Ackerley; Walter Allen; A. Alvarez; Isaiah Berlin; C. M. Bowra; Storm Jameson; Frank Kermode; Allen Lane; Margaret Lane; Rosamund Lehmann; Compton Mackenzie; Iris Murdoch; William Plomer; V. S. Pritchett; Alan Price Jones; Peter Quennell; Herbert Read; Stephen Spender; Philip Toynbee; Bernard Wall; Angus Wilson.
[back]
***
2. Partner in Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Member of Parliament.
[back]
***
1. Sec William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past (Princeton: Bollingen Series/Princeton University Press, 1982). See also The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, ed. Simon Karlinsky (New York: Harper & Row, 1979) for background on this project.
[back]
***
2. Not published.
[back]
***
The Enchanter, trans. DN (New York: Putnam, 1986).
[back]
***
1. Oxford scholar who had asked for information about VN's father.
[back]
***
1. Poems (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959).
[back]
***
1. Published April 1959.
[back]
***
1. "Lolita and the Lepidopterist," 13 April 1959.
[back]
***
2. An altered text of this letter was published in the 6 July 1959 issue of Life International along with a letter from Maurice Girodias.
[back]
***
1. Wahlstrom & Widstrand published an abridged Swedish translation of Pnin. Doubleday arranged for the edition to be destroyed.
[back]
***
1. The acquaintance between VN and Gleb Petrovich Struve went far back, to the emigration and the university years (Nabokov and Struve had met while the former was at Cambridge and the latter at Oxford, and they had become friends in Berlin soon thereafter). Struve had a distinguished career as a scholar, teacher, and critic of literature, and, for a long period, was professor of Slavic Literatures at the University of California at Berkeley. He is not to be confused with Prof. Nikita Struve, who vigorously propounded the lame hypothesis that VN was the real author of "Agheyev's" Novel with Cocaine. (It has since been established that the book was the work of Mark Levi.) DN.
[back]
***
2. Edmund Wilson.
[back]
***
3. Reference to the assertions of certain proponents of "schools" and "influences." DN.
[back]
***
4. Georgy Ivanov, émigré poet.
[back]
***
5. Irina Odoevtsev, poet and novelist; Ivanov's wife.
[back]
***
6. Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelyov, novelist and short-story writer.
[back]
***
7. The Russian form of "Thomas."
[back]
***
8. VN did not want his appraisal misconstrued as petty rivalry. DN.
[back]
***
9. Translated from Russian by Véra Nabokov and DN.
[back]
***
1. Cambridge University friend.
[back]
***
1. The Song of Igor's Campaign was published in the Vintage paperback series by Random House in 1960.
[back]
***
1. This letter was not mailed.
[back]
***
1. The cartoon by John Dempsey depicts a middle-aged man attempting to check into a motel with a very young girl. He is saying to proprietors, one of whom is holding a copy of Lolita: "Dammit, what's the matter with you people? She's my daughter, I tell you!"
[back]
***
1. Renato Poggioli, Harvard professor.
[back]
***
2. French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet.
[back]
***
1. As opposed to Pasternak's own early poems, some of which VN had praised highly. DN.
[back]
***
2. Translated from Russian by Véra Nabokov and DN.
[back]
***
1. Co-producer of Lolita movie; partner in Harris-Kubrick Pictures.
[back]
***
1. New York: Putnam, 1962.
[back]
***
1. Word play on ragazzo ("boy" in Italian) and rÃ-tsar ("knight" in Russian).
[back]
***
2. Presumably in response to DN's cable that his Italian concert debut had gone well.
[back]
***
3. Véra Nabokov's cousin Anna Feigin, a close family friend.
[back]
***
4. Lucia Davidova, pioneer aviatrix, a close family friend.
[back]
***
5. For Lolita.
[back]
***
6. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. Of Cornell University.
[back]
***
1. R. V. Pandit, publisher of an unauthorized edition of Lolita in India.
[back]
***
1. Presumably Gregory Boyington, whose novel Tonya was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1960.
[back]
***
1. Louis Aragon of Le Nouvel Observateur.
[back]
***
1. André Schwarz
-Bart and Michel Butor, French novelists.
[back]
***
1. Director and co-producer of the Lolita movie.
[back]
***
2. Agent Irving ("Swifty") Lazar.
[back]
***
1. Kubrick had expressed concern about VN's stipulation that he be allowed to write the first draft of the screenplay without the participation of Kubrick and Harris.
[back]
***
1. Novelist and officer of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
[back]
***
1. Published 15 May 1960.
[back]
***
2. Henry Popkin, "The Famous and Infamous Wares of Monsieur Girodias," New York Times Book Review (17 April 1960).
[back]
***
1. Dwight Macdonald's "Masscult and Midcult" quotes Kubrick on p. 230.
[back]
***
1. Lolita: A Screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov was published in 1974 by McGraw-Hill.
[back]
***
1. Translated from Russian by DN.
[back]
***
1. DN had yielded to the various temptations of a project to arrange a "Lolita" contest at DN's Milan apartment. For two days those lodgings were invaded by decidedly postpubescent aspiring nymphets, some with provincial mothers in tow. The jury was composed of DN's opera colleagues—Anna Moffo, Giulio Fioravanti, and others—as well as friends prominent in other fields. The Italian press and newsreels gave the event considerable coverage. VN's assessment of this puerile stunt was perfectly accurate. DN.
[back]
***
2. Typed in Russian on English-language keyboard. Translated by DN.
[back]
***
1. DN's parents were concerned about the possible consequences of his amorous adventures. DN.
[back]
***
1. Fiction editor at Esquire.
[back]
***
2. "The Man Who Scandalized the World," Esquire (August 1960).
[back]
***
3. Esquire published corrections in the June 1961 issue with a cartoon.
[back]
***
1. Unpublished.
[back]
***
1. Chairman of the State of New Jersey Tercentenary Commission; he had asked VN for a "New Jersey experience."
[back]
***
1. Pale Fire. Esquire declined VN's offer because of its policy against publishing poetry.
[back]
***
1. Compiler of a projected book of celebrity recipes.
[back]
***
1. Pale Fire (New York: Putnam, 1962).
[back]
***
2. Feodor Shalyapin (Chaliapin), great Russian basso.
[back]
***
3. Vladimir and Vira Nabokov did not return to America, except for isolated visits for professional or personal reasons.
[back]
***
Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977 Page 55
