THE POETS
From room to hallway a candle passes
and is extinguished. Its imprint swims in one’s eyes,
until, among the blue-black branches,
a starless night its contours finds.
It is time, we are going away: still youthful,
with a list of dreams not yet dreamt,
with the last, hardly visible radiance of Russia
on the phosphorent rhymes of our last verse.
And yet we did know—didn’t we?—inspiration,
we would live, it seemed, and our books would grow
but the kithless muses at last have destroyed us,
and it is time now for us to go.
And this not because we’re afraid of offending
with our freedom good people; simply, it’s time
for us to depart—and besides we prefer not
to see what lies hidden from other eyes;
not to see all this world’s enchantment and torment,
the casement that catches a sunbeam afar,
humble somnambulists in soldier’s niform,
the lofty sky, the attentive clouds;
the beauty, the look of reproach; the young children
who play hide-and-seek inside and around
the latrine that revolves in the summer twilight;
the sunset’s beauty, its look of reproach;
all that weighs upon one, entwines one, wounds one;
an electric sign’s tears on the opposite bank;
through the mist the stream of its emeralds running;
all the things that already I cannot express.
In a moment we’ll pass across the world’s threshold
into a region—name it as you please:
wilderness, death, disavowal of language,
or maybe simpler: the silence of love;
the silence of a distant cartway, its furrow,
beneath the foam of flowers concealed;
my silent country (the love that is hopeless);
the silent sheet lightning, the silent seed.
Signed: Vasiliy Shishkov
The Russian original appeared in October or November 1939 in the Russkiya Zapiski, if I remember correctly, and was acclaimed by Adamovich in his review of that issue with quite exceptional enthusiasm. (“At last a great poet has been born in our midst,” etc.—I quote from memory, but I believe a bibliographer is in the process of tracking down this item.) I could not resist elaborating the fun and, shortly after the eulogy appeared, I published in the same Poslednie Novosti (December 1939? Here again the precise date eludes me) my prose piece “Vasiliy Shishkov” (collected in Vesna v Fialte, New York, 1956), which could be regarded, according to the émigré reader’s degree of acumen, either as an actual occurrence involving a real person called Shishkov, or as a tongue-in-cheek story about the strange case of one poet dissolving in another. Adamovich refused at first to believe eager friends and foes who drew his attention to my having invented Shishkov; finally, he gave in and explained in his next essay that I “was a sufficiently skillful parodist to mimic genius.” I fervently wish all critics to be as generous as he. I met him, briefly, only twice; but many old literati have spoken a lot, on the occasion of his recent death, about his kindliness and penetrativeness. He had really only two passions in life: Russian poetry and French sailors.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
ULTIMA THULE and SOLUS REX
The winter of 1939–40 was my last season of Russian prose writing. In spring I left for America, where I was to spend twenty years in a row writing fiction solely in English. Among the works of those farewell months in Paris was a novel which I did not complete before my departure, and to which I never went back. Except for two chapters and a few notes, I destroyed the unfinished thing. Chapter 1, entitled “Ultima Thule,” appeared in 1942 (Novyy Zhurnal, vol. 1, New York). It had been preceded by the publication of chapter 2, “Solus Rex,” in early 1940 (Sovremennyya Zapiski, vol. 70, Paris). The present translation, made in February 1971 by my son with my collaboration, is scrupulously faithful to the original text, including the restoration of a scene that had been marked in the Sovremennyya Zapiski by suspension points.
Perhaps, had I finished my book, readers would not have been left wondering about a few things: was Falter a quack? Was he a true seer? Was he a medium whom the narrator’s dead wife might have been using to come through with the blurry outline of a phrase which her husband did or did not recognize? Be that as it may, one thing is clear enough. In the course of evolving an imaginary country (which at first merely diverted him from his grief, but then grew into a self-contained artistic obsession), the widower becomes so engrossed in Thule that the latter starts to develop its own reality, Sineusov mentions in chapter 1 that he is moving from the Riviera to his former apartment in Paris; actually, he moves into a bleak palace on a remote northern island. His art helps him to resurrect his wife in the disguise of Queen Belinda, a pathetic act which does not let him triumph over death even in the world of free fancy. In chapter 3 she was to die again, killed by a bomb meant for her husband, on the new bridge across the Egel, a few minutes after returning from the Riviera. That is about all I can make out through the dust and debris of my old fancies.
A word about K. The translators had some difficulty about that designation because the Russian for “king,” korol, is abbreviated as “Kr” in the sense it is used here, which sense can be rendered only by “K” in English. To put it rather neatly, my “K” refers to a chessman, not to a Czech. As to the title of the fragment, let me quote Blackburne, Terms & Themes of Chess Problems (London, 1907): “If the King is the only Black man on the board, the problem is said to be of the ‘Solus Rex’ variety.”
Prince Adulf, whose physical aspect I imagined, for some reason, as resembling that of S. P. Diaghilev (1872–1929), remains one of my favorite characters in the private museum of stuffed people that every grateful writer has somewhere on the premises. I do not remember the details of poor Adulf’s death, except that he was dispatched, in some horrible, clumsy manner, by Sien and his companions, exactly five years before the inauguration of the Egel bridge.
Freudians are no longer around, I understand, so I do not need to warn them not to touch my circles with their symbols. The good reader, on the other hand, will certainly distinguish garbled English echoes of this last Russian novel of mine in Bend Sinister (1947) and, especially, Pale Fire (1962); I find those echoes a little annoying, but what really makes me regret its noncompletion is that it promised to differ radically, by the quality of its coloration, by the amplitude of its style, by something undefinable about its powerful underflow, from all my other works in Russian. The present translation of “Ultima Thule” appeared in The New Yorker, April 7, 1973.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
THE ASSISTANT PRODUCER
“The Assistant Producer” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
“THAT IN ALEPPO ONCE …”
“ ‘That in Aleppo Once …’ ” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
A FORGOTTEN POET
“A Forgotten Poet” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
TIME AND EBB
“Time and Ebb” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
CONVERSATION PIECE, 1945
“Conversation Piece, 1945” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS
“Signs and Symbols” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
FIRST LOVE
“First Love” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A DOUBLE MONSTER
“Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
LANCE
“Lance” is from Nabokov’s Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
THE VANE SISTERS
Writt
en in Ithaca, New York, in February 1951. First published in the Hudson Review, New York, Winter 1959, and in Encounter, London, March 1959. Reprinted in the collection Nabokov’s Quartet, Phaedra, New York, 1966.
In this story the narrator is supposed to be unaware that his last paragraph has been used acrostically by two dead girls to assert their mysterious participation in the story. This particular trick can be tried only once in a thousand years of fiction. Whether it has come off is another question.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
Appendix
Following are Nabokov’s Bibliographical Note to Nabokov’s Dozen (Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1958) and his forewords to the three collections he published with McGraw-Hill, New York: A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (1973), Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and Details of a Sunset and Other Stories (1976).
Bibliographical Note to Nabokov’s Dozen (1958)
“The Aurelian,” “Cloud, Castle, Lake,” and “Spring in Fialta” were originally written in Russian. They were first published (as “Pilgram,” “Oblako, ozero, bashnya,” and “Vesna v Fial’te”) in the Russian émigré review Sovremennyya Zapiski (Paris, 1931, 1937, 1938) under my pen name V. Sirin and were incorporated in my collections of short stories (Soglyadatay, Russkiya Zapiski publisher, Paris, 1938, and Vesna v Fial’te i drugie rasskazï, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1956). The English versions of those three stories were prepared by me (who am alone responsible for any discrepancies between them and the original texts) in collaboration with Peter Pertzov. “The Aurelian” and “Cloud, Castle, Lake” came out in the Atlantic Monthly, and “Spring in Fialta” in Harper’s Bazaar, and all three appeared among the Nine Stories brought out by New Directions in “Direction,” 1947.
“Mademoiselle O” was originally written in French and was first published in the review Mesures, Paris, 1939. It was translated into English with the kind assistance of the late Miss Hilda Ward, and came out in the Atlantic Monthly and in the Nine Stories. A final, slightly different version, with stricter adherence to autobiographical truth, appeared as chapter 5 in my memoir Conclusive Evidence, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1951 (also published in England as Speak, Memory, by Victor Gollancz, 1952).
The remaining stories in the present volume were written in English. Of these, “A Forgotten Poet,” “The Assistant Producer,” “ ‘That in Aleppo Once …’,” and “Time and Ebb” appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and in Nine Stories; “Conversation Piece” (as “Double Talk”), “Signs and Symbols,” “First Love” (as “Colette”), and “Lance” came out first in The New Yorker; “Double Talk” was reprinted in Nine Stories; “Colette,” in The New Yorker anthology and (as chapter 7) in Conclusive Evidence; and “Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster” appeared in The Reporter.
Only “Mademoiselle O” and “First Love” are (except for a change of names) true in every detail to the author’s remembered life. “The Assistant Producer” is based on actual facts. As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating “real life” than “real life” is responsible for plagiarizing me.
V.N.
Foreword to Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975)
Of the thirteen stories in this collection the first twelve have been translated from the Russian by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author. They are representative of my carefree expatriate tvorchestvo (the dignified Russian word for “creative output”) between 1924 and 1939, in Berlin, Paris, and Mentone. Bits of bibliography are given in the prefaces to them, and more information will be found in Andrew Field’s Nabokov: A Bibliography, published by McGraw-Hill.
The thirteenth story was written in English in Ithaca, upstate New York, at 802 East Seneca Street, a dismal grayish-white frame house, subjectively related to the more famous one at 342 Lawn Street, Ramsdale, New England.
V.N., December 31, 1974, Montreux, Switzerland
Foreword to Details of a Sunset and Other Stories (1976)
This collection is the last batch of my Russian stories meriting to be Englished. They cover a period of eleven years (1924–1935); all of them appeared in the émigré dailies and magazines of the time, in Berlin, Riga, and Paris.
It may be helpful, in some remote way, if I give here a list of all my translated stories, as published, in four separate volumes in the U.S.A. during the last twenty years.
Nabokov’s Dozen (New York, Doubleday, 1958) includes the following three stories translated by Peter Pertzov in collaboration with the author:
1. “Spring in Fialta” (Vesna v Fial’te, 1936)
2. “The Aurelian” (Pil’gram, 1930)
3. “Cloud, Castle, Lake” (Oblako, ozero, bashnya, 1937)
A Russian Beauty (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1973) contains the following thirteen stories translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author, except for the title translated by Simon Karlinsky in collaboration with the author:
4. “A Russian Beauty” (Krasavitsa, 1934)
5. “The Leonardo” (Korolyok, 1933)
6. “Torpid Smoke” (Tyazhyolyy dym, 1935)
7. “Breaking the News” (Opoveshchenie, 1935)
8. “Lips to Lips” (Usta k ustam, 1932)
9. “The Visit to the Museum” (Poseshchenie muzeya, 1931)
10. “An Affair of Honor” (Podlets, 1927)
11. “Terra Incognita” (same title, 1931)
12. “A Dashing Fellow” (Khvat, 1930)
13. “Ultima Thule” (same title, 1940)
14. “Solus Rex” (same title, 1940)
15. “The Potato Elf” (Kartofel’nyy el’f, 1929)
16. “The Circle” (Krug, 1934)
Tyrants Destroyed (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1975) includes twelve stories translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author:
17. “Tyrants Destroyed” (Istreblenie tiranov, 1938)
18. “A Nursery Tale” (Skazka, 1926)
19. “Music” (Muzyka, 1932)
20. “Lik” (same title, 1939)
21. “Recruiting” (Nabor, 1935)
22. “Terror” (Uzhas, 1927)
23. “The Admiralty Spire” (Admiralteyskaya igla, 1933)
24. “A Matter of Chance” (Slucbaynost’, 1924)
25. “In Memory of L. I. Shigaev” (Pamyati L. I. Shigaeva, 1934)
26. “Bachmann” (same title, 1924)
27. “Perfection” (Sovershenstvo, 1932)
28. “Vasiliy Shishkov” (same title, 1939)
Details of a Sunset (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1976) contains thirteen stories translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author:
29. “Details of a Sunset” (Katastrofa, 1924)
30. “A Bad Day” (Obida, 1931)
31. “Orache” (Lebeda, 1932)
32. “The Return of Chorb” (Vozvrashchenie Chorba, 1925)
33. “The Passenger” (Passazhir, 1927)
34. “A Letter That Never Reached Russia” (Pis’mo v Rossiyu, 1925)
35. “A Guide to Berlin” (Putevoditel’ po Berlinu, 1925)
36. “The Doorbell” (Zvonok, 1927)
37. “The Thunderstorm” (Groza, 1924)
38. “The Reunion” (Vstrecha, 1932)
39. “A Slice of Life” (Sluchay iz zhizni, 1935)
40. “Christmas” (Rozhdestvo, 1925)
41. “A Busy Man” (Zanyatoy chelovek, 1931)
V.N., Montreux, 1975
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Dmitri Nabokov was born in 1934 in Berlin and came to the United States as a young child with his parents. He graduated from Harvard, served in the U.S. Army, and then began the vocal studies that led him to become an opera and concert performer (as a basso) around the world. He has translated most of his father’s Russian short stories and plays and many of his novels into English.
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
Nabokov's Dozen: Thirteen Stories Page 28
