Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Had I met that shaggy troglodyte who first thought of approaching the neighbour in the next cave to offer him a deerskin for a handful of precious stones, I’d have gladly torn his head off. My sweet love, my joy, what a turn-up! I didn’t come back for one silly reason, and now another, even sillier, has come up, almost like a pretext. And now I’m concerned only about you; I no longer need any of those Morns. Well, this new year has got off to a rather bumpy start.

  I’m sorry I wrote nonsense to you. My brains are dishevelled – their hairpins have fallen out: just as there are bare-headed people, I’m somehow bare-brained … Do you understand?

  I’ll wait two or three days more and set off for Berlin on foot. When the sun comes out, you are downy. I still don’t know what I’ll do with you when I come back. But you won’t change my mind about those elders! I’ve read Nilus and Krasnov – c’est tout dire. Do you know, for example, that it was the masons who arranged the earthquake in Japan? I love you, truly, more than the sun.

  V.

  A VISION

  In the snows of a midnight wilderness

  I dreamt of the mother of all birches,

  and someone – some shifting hoar-frost –

  quietly walked to it carrying something:

  carried on his shoulder, in high anguish,

  my Russia – a child’s coffin,

  and under the lonely birch,

  in a pale-dusting snowdrift,

  he bent, in a white quivering,

  bent, like smoke under wind.

  The little coffin with its light body

  was committed to the purest and silent snow.

  And the whole snowy wasteland,

  praying, looked on high,

  where clouds drifted, brushing

  the moon with slender wings.

  In a gap of moonlit ice,

  the naked birch now swayed,

  now bent like a bow,

  and there were shadows on the snow:

  There on this snowy grave

  now pressed together, now straightened out, now

  wrung in hopeless despair,

  like the shadows of God’s hands.

  He rose up; and along the plain,

  he withdrew forever into the night –

  the face of the Divine, the vision, the hoarfrost,

  leaving no trace.

  Vl. Sirin

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [17 January 1924]

  TO: 41, Landhausstr., Berlin, W.

  [Prague]

  17–I–24

  My love, I’m returning on Wednesday the 23rd. This is final. My announcement has already appeared in Rul’. My name is printed in such bold type that I thought for a moment it was a death announcement. If you happen to come across a room with board, costing no more than a dollar a day (but preferably 3 marks), then inform this Mr N. himself. You know I am now so used to my pen-name that it’s strange to see my real name.

  Frost and sunshine today, and because of that the snow on the roofs looks like a layer of purplish gouache; every little bit of smoke stands out in the air. I have a scene and a half left till the end of my cursed tragedy; I will try to publish it in Berlin. Do you know, two days ago our poor Yakobson threw himself in the Spree, wanting, like Sadko, to give a little concert to the mermaids. Fortunately, a ‘greenie’s’ valiant dive interrupted his underwater tour; he pulled the composer out, the score under his arm. Lukash writes me that the poor fellow has a terrible cold, but has generally perked up greatly. There you go.

  I never thought I’d dream about Berlin as a heaven on … earth (the heaven in the sky is, most likely, quite boring – and there is so much fluff there – seraphims’ – that, they say, smoking is forbidden. Sometimes, though, angels themselves smoke – in their sleeves. But when the archangel goes by, they throw their cigarettes away: this is what falling stars are). You will come to my place once a month to tea. When my income dries up, I will Amerigo, with you. Just now, both of my sisters went off for an exam. I composed a ‘song about failure’ for them, after which they both burst into tears. I love you.

  I have re-read, over this time, all of Flaubert. Read – or re-read – ‘Madame Bovary’. It’s the most brilliant novel in world literature – in the sense of the perfect harmony between content and form – and the only book which, in three places, makes me feel hot under my eyeballs: lacrimae arsi (this is not in Latin).

  Somehow it seems to me today that you and I will soon be very happy. ‘The scarlet ribbon of dawn I will entwine like silk around your waist’ (or something like that) – though it’s not very fashionable, my love.

  I’ll sit down to Morn again now. My God, how I want to read it to you … I love you furiously and endlessly: your handwriting, like your gait, your voice, the colour of a cautious dawn. Kisses, on your eyes – and further, along the black tape. Love you.

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 3 PP.]

  [24 January 1924]

  TO: 41, Landhausstr., Berlin W.

  [Prague]

  24–I–24

  My dear love,

  I arrive in Berlin at five p.m., on Sunday the 27th, at the Anhalter station. The reason for my delay was money. On top of that Mother got sick, and I caught a bad cold too, crossing the Moldau over melting ice. My cold is lifting, and Mother too is better, so nothing now can prevent me from arriving on Sunday. It seems to me, my happiness, that you’re angry with me for my slowness? But if you only knew how many trifles crowd around me, how many stupid thorns at every step … My family has to move from this apartment to another one – and once again, frustrations flock on my shoulders – and gloomy conversations. Only one thing makes me happy: the day after tomorrow, Morn will shoot himself: I have some fifty or sixty lines left, in the last – eighth – scene. I will certainly have to keep sanding and polishing the whole thing, but the essential will be done.

  As for our pantomime, a certain Asta Nielsen has taken a liking to it – but she’s asking for some changes in the first act. Our other pantomime, ‘The Living Water’, will be on in a few days at ‘Sinyaya ptitsa’.

  I am incredibly worn out by my work. At night, my dreams rhyme, and all day I have an aftertaste of insomnia. My thick notebook with drafts will go to you – with a dedication in verse. Indirectly, in some meandering kind of way – like the story of the Medes – you inspired me with this. Without you I wouldn’t have moved this way, to speak the language of flowers.

  But I am tired. When I was seventeen, I used to write on average two poems a day, each of them taking me about twenty minutes. Their quality was doubtful, but I didn’t even try to write better then, thinking that I was performing little miracles and that over miracles I didn’t need to think. Now I know that, indeed, reason is a negative part of creativity and inspiration a positive one, but only through their secret conjunction is the white spark born, the electrical flicker of perfect creation. Nowadays, working seventeen hours on end, I can write no more than thirty lines a day (that I won’t cross out later), and that by itself is already a step forward. I remember myself, hazy and excited – in our mushroom birch-grove – gathering chance words to express a chance thought. I had favourite words then, such as ‘gleams’, ‘transparent’, and a strange propensity for rhyming ‘rays’ and ‘flowers’ although I was very punctilious about my feminine rhymes. Later – and even now – I had real philological passions, when for a whole month and even longer I would overindulge one particular word I’d lovingly selected. For instance, I have recently had a little episode with the word ‘hurricane’ – maybe you noticed …

  I can talk about all this only to you. I am becoming more and more firmly convinced that art is the only thing that matters in life. I am ready to endure Chinese torture to find a single epithet – and in science, in religion what excites and engages me is only the colour, only the man in side-whiskers and a top-hat, lowering – on a rope – the smoke-pipe of the first funny locomotive passing under the bridge and draggi
ng behind it the little cars full of ladies’ exclamations, the movements of tiny coloured parasols, the rustle and squeaking of crinolines. Or, in the domain of religion, the shadows and red highlights sliding across the knitted brow, the sinewy shaking hands of Peter, warming himself by the fire in the cold dawn, when the second cocks are crowing now closer, now further off – and a light wind passes by, and the cypresses bow with restraint …

  Today, I looked over a huge calico plan of my estate (fortunately it had stayed with my other papers), and walked along its paths in my imagination, and now I have a feeling as if indeed I really have just been home. There must be snowdrifts there now, branches in white mittens, and ultra-crisp sounds from beyond the river – someone is chopping wood … And in the papers today is the news that Lenin is dead.

  My love, what happiness it’ll be to see you again, to hear the singing of your vowels, my love. Come to the railroad station – because here’s what has happened (only don’t be angry!) – I can’t remember (for God’s sake, don’t be angry!) – I can’t remember (promise, you won’t be angry?) – I can’t remember your telephone number!!! I recall, there was a seven in it, but beyond that?… And this is why, when I get to Berlin, I’ll have to write to you – but where will I get stamps for the letter? – since I’m scared of the post office!!!

  We’ll have a wonderful time in Berlin. I led a very modest life here. Visited only the Kramářs – and that rarely – but today I am going, for a change of air, to Marina Tsvetaeva’s. She is absolutely charming (Ah … indeed?).

  See you soon, my love, don’t be angry with me. I know that I am a very boring and unpleasant man, drowned in literature … But I love you.

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [13 August 1924]

  [TO: Berlin]

  [Prague?]

  13–VII[I]–24

  My delightful, my love, my life, I don’t understand anything: how can you not be with me? I’m so infinitely used to you that I now feel myself lost and empty: without you, my soul. You turn my life into something light, amazing, rainbowed – you put a glint of happiness on everything – always different: sometimes you can be smoky-pink, downy, sometimes dark, winged – and I don’t know when I love your eyes more – when they are open or shut. It’s eleven p.m. now: I’m trying with all the force of my soul to see you through space; my thoughts plead for a heavenly visa to Berlin via air … My sweet excitement …

  Today I can’t write about anything except my longing for you. I’m gloomy and fearful: silly thoughts are swarming – that you’ll stumble as you jump out of a carriage in the underground, or that someone will bump into you in the street … I don’t know how I’ll survive the week.

  My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation – and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine – mounds of happiness. And I am floating with you, in you, aflame and melting – and a whole life with you is like the movement of clouds, their airy, quiet falls, their lightness and smoothness, and the heavenly variety of outline and tint – my inexplicable love. I cannot express these cirrus-cumulus sensations.

  When you and I were at the cemetery last time, I felt it so piercingly and clearly: you know it all, you know what will happen after death – you know it absolutely simply and calmly – as a bird knows that, fluttering from a branch, it will fly and not fall down … And that’s why I am so happy with you, my lovely, my little one. And here’s more: you and I are so special; the miracles we know, no one knows, and no one loves the way we love.

  What are you doing now? For some reason I think you’re in the study: you’ve got up, walked to the door, you are pulling the door wings together and pausing for a moment – waiting to see if they’ll move apart again. I’m tired, I’m terribly tired, good night, my joy. Tomorrow I’ll write you about all kinds of everyday things. My love.

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [17 August 1924]

  [TO: Berlin]

  [Dobřichovice]

  17–VII[I]–24

  I’m more than thinking about you – I’m living about you, my love, my happiness … I’m already expecting a letter from you – although I know that it’ll be late, since they’ll have to forward it to me from Prague. Mother and I are in a beautiful hotel, where it’s all so expensive that we have to stay in one room – huge, it’s true. The view from the window is wide and open: rows of poplars along the river, farmed fields beyond – green, turquoise, greyish brown squares – and further on, wooded hills through which it’s lovely to roam: it smells of mushrooms and there are damp, wild raspberries. Not many people: all elderly couples from Prague, like slow quiet pedestals. No Russians – too expensive for them – but the Chirikovs and Tsvetaeva live nearby, where the roofs of the little village glow red in the valley.

  My dear love, my priceless joy, you haven’t forgotten me, have you? The whole way I ate your sandwiches and plums and peaches: very tasty, my love. I arrived in Prague around nine and had quite a long bumpy ride home in a big black coach. My family has a small apartment, but excellent – only the cost’s going up and they have no funds. Besides, from five o’clock in the morning a thundering procession of drays, wagons and trucks starts up, so that while you’re half-awake you feel as if the whole house is slowly rolling somewhere, rumbling and rattling.

  It turns out that it makes no sense for Olga to go to Leipzig. If she leaves, she loses her grant; and her singing is all arranged here: she has an extraordinary voice and will soon start performing. Please thank your cousin in my name and Mother’s – thank her warmly.

  I’ll return to Berlin next Monday or Tuesday. I want to pile up more lessons – please help if you can, my darling. But in general things are bad, there’s nothing to live on, Mother’s very sad and nervous, dreams about going to Berlin, to Tegel. I’d be ready to break rocks if only I could help her in any way. The ten dollars I brought with me will be enough to live on for a week – very comfortably and quietly. Only it’s raining drops like beads today, and I have to crack balls at billiards.

  My sunshine, my tremor of joy, had you been here with me I would have been completely happy. Here there’s quiet, solitude and greenery. Terrible clay storks and dwarves here and there in the garden – obviously of German origin. Terraces, fountains. We have lunch and dinner outdoors.

  A little task: copy please (retype) the poems ‘Prayer’ (the Easter one) and ‘Rivers’. Send the first to Rul’ and the second to Rul’ too. No typos, my joy. Can you do this? Also, write to me whether anything’s appeared in ‘Segodnya’.

  I must go to lunch, my joy. I love you. I can hear your little toothy sigh. And the rustle of your lashes against my cheek. You’re my happiness. If you want – call Mme Tatarinov and tell her I’m arriving in a week. And please give my best regards to your father.

  Kisses, my love, deep ones, to the point of fainting, I am waiting for your letter, I love you, I move carefully so as not to break you, as you ring out inside me – so crystal-like, so entrancingly …

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [18 August 1924]

  [TO: Berlin]

  18–VIII–24

  Dobřichovice

  I still haven’t received anything from you, my love. But I am full of hope (with a small ‘h’). You delicately bite your lower lip, then say: ‘I don’t like it when you joke like that …’ Forgive me, my joy.

  I love you today with a special kind of wide, sunny love, saturated with a pine smell – because all day long I have been wandering in the hills, seeking out amazing footpaths, bowing with tenderness, to familiar butterflies …

  The down of flowers was fluttering above the glades like soft sparse snow, grasshoppers stridulated and golden cobwebs – wheels of sunl
ight – stretched across the trail, clinging to my face … And a lush soughing ran through the trees, and the shadows of clouds glided along distant slopes … It felt very free, and light, and like my love for you. Meanwhile, in Mokropsy (there is such a hamlet), Chirikov, tiny, in a Russian shirt, was standing there on his terrace. A little old man completely devoid of talent.

  I go to bed at nine o’clock and I get up at nine. I drink raw milk by the bucketful (another of my weaknesses). Mother and I are separated by a white wardrobe placed in the middle of the room. We argue in the morning who’ll take the tub first.

  There’s only one unpleasant thing: a little pooch, shaggy, female, with a timid expression on her face and with a tail curved like a French horn. Just as soon as we go to bed, this pooch begins to yap under our windows. It stops and starts. At first Mother was touched, then she began to count the seconds between the bouts of yapping, then we had to close the window. We met the pooch in the garden today. She looked at us intelligently and affectionately. But I dread to think what will happen tonight. It’s worse than the dray-carts in Prague.

  How are you, my wonderful happiness? Have you learned lots of new English words? Are you playing chess? I’m sick with longing to see you walk in this room now, flutter your eyelashes and become soft all of a sudden, like a little piece of cloth … My sweet legs …

  Oh, my joy, when will we really live together – in a charming spot, with a view of the mountains, with a pooch yapping under our window? I need so little: a bottle of ink, a speck of sun on the floor – and you; but the latter is not all that little, and fate, God, the seraphs know this perfectly well – and withhold and withhold …

  I’m deliberately not writing anything now, I suppress metric lines that jump out from God knows where, I respectfully but firmly evade the muse’s temptations. I only translate – with quiet rage – such phrases of Korostovets’s as this: ‘Contemporary Europe after, on the one hand, heavy scrapes in the area of political achievements par excellence, but nevertheless, doomed, as such, to perish or in the best case, to be forgotten, and, on the other hand … ’ And so on. Such hogwash.