15 potins de famille: family gossip.
16 terriblement etc.: terribly grand and all that, she likes to tease him by saying that a simple farmer like him should not have married the daughter of an actress and an art dealer.
17 je dois etc.: I must watch my weight.
18 Olorinus: from Lat. olor, swan (Leda’s lover).
19 lenclose: distorted “clothes” (influenced by “Ninon de Léñelos”), the courtesan in Veré de Vere’s novel mentioned above.
20 Aleksey etc.: Vronski and his mistress.
21 phrase etc.: stock phrase.
22 She Yawns: Chillon’s.
23 D’Onsky: see p. 13.
24 comme etc.: shedding floods of tears.
25 N’a pas le verbe etc.: lacks the gift of the gab.
26 chiens etc.: dogs not allowed.
27 rieuses: black-headed gulls.
28 Golos etc.: Russ., The Phoenix Voice, Russian-language newspaper in Arizona.
29 la voix etc.: the brassy voice telephoned … the trumpet did not sound pleased this morning.
30 contretemps: mishap.
31 phalène: moth (see also p. 138).
32 tu sais etc: you know it will kill me.
33 Bozhe moy: Russ., oh, my God.
1 et trêve etc.: and enough of that painted-ceiling style of mine.
2 ardis: arrow.
3 ponder: pun on Fr. pondre, to lay an egg (allusion to the problem of what came first, egg or hen).
4 anime etc.: Lat., soul.
5 assassin pun: a pun on pointe assassine (from a poem by Verlaine).
6 Lacrimaval: Italo-Swiss. Pseudo-place-name, “vale of tears.”
7 coup de volant: one twist of the steering wheel.
8 dream-delta: allusion to the disintegration of an imaginary element.
9 unfortunate thinker: Samuel Alexander, English philosopher.
10 Villa Jolana: named in honor of a butterfly, belonging to the subgenus Jolana, which breeds in the Pfynwald (see also p. 128).
11 Vinn Landère: French distortion of “Vinelander.”
12 à la sonde: in soundings (for the same ship see p. 521).
13 Comment etc.: what’s that? no, no, not 88, but 86.
14 droits etc.: custom-house dues.
15 après tout: after all.
16 on peut etc.: see p. 247.
17 lucubratiuncula: bit of writing in the lamplight.
18 duvet: fluff.
19 simpler: simpler to take off from the balcony.
20 mermaid: allusion to Lucette.
1 Stepan Nootkin: Van’s valet.
1 blyadushki: little whores (echo of p. 410).
2 Blitzpartien: Germ., quickies (quick chess games).
1 Compitalia: Lat., crossroads.
2 E, p. i: referring to “epistemic” (see above).
1 j’ai tâtê etc.: I have known two Lesbians in my life, that’s enough.
2 terme etc.: term one avoids using.
3 le bouquin … guéri, etc.: the book … cured of all its snags.
4 quel livre etc.: what a book, good God.
5 gamine: lassie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg on April 23, 1899. His family fled to the Crimea in 1917, during the Bolshevik Revolution, then went into exile in Europe. Nabokov studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, earning a degree in French and Russian literature in 1922, and lived in Berlin and Paris for the next two decades, writing prolifically, mainly in Russian, under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940 he moved to the United States, where he pursued a brilliant literary career (as a poet, novelist, memoirist, critic, and translator) while teaching Russian, creative writing, and literature at Stanford, Wellesley, Cornell, and Harvard. The monumental success of his novel Lolita (1955) enabled him to give up teaching and devote himself fully to his writing. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977. Recognized as one of the master prose stylists of the century in both Russian and English, he translated a number of his original English works—including Lolita—into Russian, and collaborated on English translations of his original Russian works.
A PUBLISHING EVENT
The final, unfinished novel from
Vladimir Nabokov
The Original of Laura
After years of controversy surrounding the fate of Nabokov’s final manuscript, Knopf will publish the last work by one of the 20th century’s acknowledged masters of literature. An essential part of Nabokov’s oeuvre, The Original of Laura blurs the line between the author’s life and fiction. This edition, uniquely designed by Chip Kidd, includes facsimiles of the 138 note cards on which it was written.
Available November 2009 in hardcover from Knopf
$35.00 • 304 pages • 978-0-307-27189-1
Please visit www.aaknopf.com
BOOKS BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV
ADA, OR ARDOR
Ada, or Ardor tells a love story troubled by incest, but is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72522-0
BEND SINISTER
While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, Bend Sinister is first and foremost a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72727-9
DESPAIR
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965, thirty years after its original publication, Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72343-1
THE ENCHANTER
The Enchanter is the precursor to Nabokov’s classic novel, Lolita. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72886-3
THE EYE
The Eye is as much farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Smurov is a lovelorn, self-conscious Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer greater indignities in the afterlife.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72723-1
THE GIFT
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native language and the crowning achievement of that period of his literary career. It is the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré who dreams of the book he will someday write.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72725-5
GLORY
Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a young Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a “perilous, daredevil” project to illegally reenter the Soviet Union.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72724-8
INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world; in an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for “gnostical turpitude.”
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72531-2
KING, QUEEN, KNAVE
Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing store, is ruddy, self-satisfied, and masculine, but repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72340-0
LOLITA
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous and controversial novel, tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72316-5
LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS!
Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on th
e Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899). Focusing on the central figures of his life, the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life’s work and his life itself.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72728-6
THE LUZHIN DEFENSE
As a young boy, Luzhin is unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen—an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge, and rises to the rank of grandmaster, but at a cost: in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72722-4
PALE FIRE
Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreward and commentary by Shade’s self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72342-4
PNIN
Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72341-7
THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT
Many knew of Sebastian Knight, distinguished novelist, but few knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career. After Knight’s death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with clues found in the novelist’s private papers.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72726-2
SPEAK, MEMORY
Speak, Memory is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works.
Autobiography/Literature/978-0-679-72339-4
ALSO AVAILABLE
The Annotated Lolita, 978-0-679-72729-3
Laughter in the Dark, 978-0-679-72450-6
Lolita: A Screenplay, 978-0-679-77255-2
Mary, 978-0-679-72620-3
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, 978-0-679-72997-6
Strong Opinions, 978-0-679-72609-8
Transparent Things, 978-0-679-72541-1
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com
Ada, or Ardor Page 56
