Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  ‘C. O.’: Chambre Obscure (Camera Obscura), trans. Doussia Ergaz (Paris: Grasset, 1934).

  ‘Course du F.’: La Course du fou (The Defence), trans. Denis Roche (Paris: Fayard, 1934).

  Greta Garbo: Swedish film actress and celebrated beauty (1905–90).

  c’est tellement typique: Fr. ‘That’s so typical’.

  Kirill: Kirill Nabokov, VN’s youngest brother, now a student in Louvain.

  Peltenburg misses: Vera and Leonora, daughters of Leo Peltenburg, Evsey Slonim’s Dutch business partner; VN and VéN tried to play the role of matchmakers for them.

  Svyatoslav: Svyatoslav Svyatoslavovich Malevsky-Malevich (1905–73), businessman, diplomat and artist.

  Svetik … weird for me to utter: Svetik was also the nickname of VN’s fiancée Svetlana Siewert, who broke off with him at her parents’ insistence in January 1923.

  en sursaut: Fr. ‘with a start’.

  ‘Yakor’’: The Anchor, ed. G. V. Adamovich, M. L. Kantor (Berlin: Petropolis, 1936), an anthology of Russian émigré poetry; reprint, eds. O. Korostelev, L. Magarotto and A. Ustinova (St Petersburg: Aleteya, 2005).

  Aleksandr Yakovlevich: Unidentified.

  Letter of 27 January 1936

  French evening: At La Maison d’Art, 185 Avenue Louise, Brussels.

  Maurois: André Maurois (1885–1967), popular French novelist.

  Anna Pavlova: Anna Pavlovna (Matveevna) Pavlova (1881–1931), foremost ballerina of her time.

  N. R. F.: Nouvelle Revue Française.

  Rilke: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), Bohemian-Austrian poet who wrote in German.

  Russian evening: On 26 January, VN gave a reading to the Club of Russian Jews in Belgium, at 65 rue de la Concorde, Brussels.

  ‘Invitation’: The dystopian novel Invitation to a Beheading (Priglashenie na kazn’), written June–December 1934, serialized in Sovremennye zapiski, 58–59 (1935) and 60 (1936); in book form, Paris: Dom Knigi, 1938.

  Eleonora: Leonora Peltenburg.

  faisait de son mieux: Fr. ‘was doing all she could’.

  Auerbach: Unidentified.

  Mme Bazilevsky: Wife of Pyotr Georgievich Bazilevsky (1913–93), agrarian engineer and entomologist.

  Ilyashenko: Possibly Vladimir Stepanovich Ilyashenko (1884–1970), poet.

  Kaplan: Possibly Sergey Kaplan, VN’s former pupil in Berlin.

  Shcherbatovs: Prince Pavel Borisovich Shcherbatov (1871–1951), aide-de-camp of Tsar Nicholas II, and his wife, Anna Vladimirovna (née Baryatinsky, 1879–1942), who settled in Brussels and are buried there. One of their eight children, Anna Pavlovna Shcherbatov (1909–2010), had married VN’s cousin Sergey Sergeevich Nabokov (1902–98) in 1929.

  Sergey: Sergey Sergeevich Nabokov, VN’s cousin.

  a little boy: Nicolas (Nikolay Sergeevich) Nabokov (1929–85).

  Semyonlyudvigoviches: Francs: from here on, VN, apparently fearing that his letters might be scrutinized, refers to his earnings outside Germany in various coded forms, possibly to avoid tax penalties upon his return. The Belgian franc becomes Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank, the philosopher and theologian he mentioned in his previous letter.

  Masui: Jacques Masui (1909–75), French writer.

  Margarita: Otherwise unidentified.

  Graun: Carl Heinrich Graun (1704–59), German composer, especially of Italian opera, ‘the great-grandfather of Ferdinand von Korff, my grandfather’ (SM, p. 54).

  genealogical titbits: Cousin Sergey would remain a passionate genealogist and contribute to the information VN drew on in his 1951 autobiography and its 1966 revision.

  out of ‘War and Peace’: In War and Peace (1863–9), Lev Tolstoy features kulebyaka – a pie of sour or pastry dough with multi-layered savoury stuffing – served at the name-day party of Natasha Rostov (I.i.xv).

  On a beaucoup admiré: Fr. ‘They much admired’.

  Très svietski: Combines the French ‘very’ and, in Roman letters, the Russian word for ‘high-society’, as if in the manner of a French-speaking nineteenth-century Russian aristocrat.

  ‘Despair’: The novel Otchayanie, serialized in Sovremennye zapiski (54–6) in 1934, would not appear in book form (Berlin: Petropolis) until 20 February 1936.

  Kulisher: Presumably Aleksandr Kulisher.

  Regina: Unidentified.

  au dire de Zina: Fr. ‘according to Zina’.

  Letter of 30 January 1936

  Long’s: London publisher John Long Ltd, who published Camera Obscura, trans. Winifred Roy, in ‘1935’ (actually January 1936) and would publish Nabokov’s own translation of Despair in 1937.

  Antwerp reading: For the Cercle Russe (Russian Circle), at the Brasserie de la Bourse, 19 rue des XII mois, Antwerp, on 27 January 1936.

  two hundred and fifty Belgian pages: VN refers to the Belgian francs he earned in Belgium.

  Pumpyansky: Leonid Semyonovich Pumpyansky, journalist and poet.

  married to a Russian Jewess: Maria Markovna Hellens (née Miloslavsky, 1893–1947).

  Jaloux: Edmond Jaloux (1878–1949), French novelist and critic.

  au dire de: Fr. ‘according to’.

  du Boz: Charles Du Bos (1882–1939), French critic and essayist.

  ‘Thyrse’: Le Thyrse: Revue d’art et de littérature, a French journal published in Brussels, 1899–1944.

  une occasion … : Fr. ‘an opportunity like this will never be offered again’.

  Le plaa: Unidentified.

  the Club: Russian Jewish Club in Belgium.

  qui commence à m’agacer: Fr. ‘which is starting to annoy me’.

  V. V. Baryatinsky: Prince Vladimir Vladimirovich Baryatinsky (1874–1941), journalist, playwright, political commentator, brother of Anna Vladimirovna Shcherbatov (née Baryatinsky) and uncle of Anna Pavlovna Nabokov (née Shcherbatov), the wife of VN’s cousin, Sergey Sergeevich Nabokov.

  av. de Versailles: VN would stay at 130 Avenue de Versailles, the apartment of Ilya Fondaminsky, where Vladimir Zenzinov also lived.

  P. N. … print me in big letters, and Khodasevich in small: There was a long-standing feud between poet and critic Georgy Adamovich, who ruled the literary sections of Poslednie novosti, and poet and critic Khodasevich, who wrote a literary column in Paris’s rival émigré daily, Vozrozhdenie. Despite Adamovich’s antipathy towards VN too, he appears to have relished still more the chance to needle Khodasevich.

  Ilyusha: Fondaminsky.

  A. O.’s illness: Amalia Osipovna Fondaminsky died in 1935 of tuberculosis.

  Kornilov’s: Restaurant ‘Chez Kornilov’, 6, rue d’Armaillé, Paris 17.

  Iv. Al.: Bunin.

  how his six-year-old son died: Bunin married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni (1879–1963) in Odessa in 1898. Their only son, Nikolay, died of meningitis at the age of five. In summer 1918, Bunin and his new, ‘civil’ wife Vera Nikolaevna Muromtsev (1881–1961; they married in 1922) left Moscow for Odessa, then occupied by Austrian troops. They did not flee in April 1919, when the Red Army approached the city, but stayed in Odessa and experienced the terror and starvation of the Civil War. After reaching France, Bunin recorded his Odessa experiences in Okayannye dni (Cursed Days) (Paris: Vozrozhdenie, 1926).

  ‘Mitya Shakhovskoy’ (Father Ioann) … Mitya’s Love: Mitina lyubov’ (Mitya’s Love, 1924) tells the story of a young man’s obsessive love for an actress; Katya’s unfaithfulness and his own spiritual turmoil lead to Mitya’s suicide. By 1936, Dmitry Alekseevich Shakhovskoy (Father Ioann), brother of Zinaida Shakhovskoy, had served for ten years as a Russian Orthodox priest in France and Germany; in May 1937 he would become archimandrite.

  Letter postmarked 2 February 1936

  Vlad. Mikh.’s: Vladimir Mikhaylovich Zenzinov’s.

  ‘yo, heave ho’: ‘Ey, ukhnem’, the song of the Volga boatmen, also known as ‘Dubinushka’ (‘The Cudgel’).

  two ‘Despairs’: Otchayanie (Berlin: Petropolis, 1936).

  Zina: Shakhovskoy.

  Kalashnikov: Mikhail Kalashnikov, with whom VN fi
rst shared rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1919–20, then lodged with nearby until 1922. In 1921 Kalashnikov introduced VN to Svetlana Siewert, his cousin, who became VN’s fiancée the next year. VN later felt uncomfortable at having been on friendly terms with someone he had come to think a philistine vulgarian.

  Ira: Irina Kyandzhuntsev.

  my film (Hôtel Magique): Never realized.

  Shifrin: Semyon Savelievich Shifrin (1894–1985), engineer, producer, manager of France Libre film studio, co-owner of Grand Production Cinématographique, and from 1928 director of Sequana-film.

  Matusevich’s: Iosif Aleksandrovich Matusevich (1879–1940?), artist, writer and playwright; on editorial board of Poslednie novosti.

  Igor: Possibly Igor Platonovich Demidov.

  Fedotov: Georgy Petrovich Fedotov (1886–1951), historian, philosopher, translator and co-editor, with Stepun and Fondaminsky, of the Paris journal Novyi Grad.

  Zeldoviches: Berta Grigorievna Zeldovich (1882–1943), translator.

  the Dahls: Most likely, VN’s four-volume set of Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka (Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great-Russian Language, 1863–6, 1880), by Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl (1801–72).

  Girshfeld: Unidentified.

  Neskin: Unidentified.

  Zyoka: Georgy Hessen.

  the old man: Zyoka’s father, Iosif Hessen.

  Sarah: Sarah Yakovlevna Hessen, first wife of Georgy (Zyoka) Hessen.

  Poplavsky’s: Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky (1903–35), promising young poet, whose mysterious death from poisoning was much talked about. VN later reproached himself for ‘the ill-tempered review in which I attacked him for trivial faults in his unfledged verse’ (SM, p. 287).

  ‘merde’: Fr. ‘shit’.

  ‘It is me’: One of several titles VN was considering for an autobiography he had written (recently?) in English. It remains unclear how much of its material he used for the autobiographical sketches he published in the late 1940s and early 1950s and integrated into Conclusive Evidence (in the US) and Speak, Memory (in the UK) in 1951.

  Have you sent Despair: Apparently, the typescript of VN’s English translation, to John Long (see letter of 4 February 1936).

  Letter postmarked 3 February 1936

  Kaplan’s idiotic undertaking: His attempt to organize a Sirin reading in Eindhoven (see letter of 27 January 1936).

  Raisa’s: Added in VéN’s later hand: ‘Abr[amovna] Tatarinova (Tarr)’.

  dédommagement: Fr. ‘compensation’ (for the cost of keeping him).

  both critics: Presumably Georgy Adamovich at Poslednie novosti and Vladislav Khodasevich at Vozrozhdenie.

  Felix: Unidentified.

  Bobby: Count Robert de Calry, VN’s friend at Cambridge.

  the books of mine he’d read about in the N.Y. Times: Camera Obscura (in a review by Alexander Nazaroff, ‘New Russian Books in Varied Fields’, New York Times Book Review, 17 December 1933, pp. 8, 20) and Despair (in a review by Nazaroff, New York Times Book Review, ‘Recent Books by Russian Writers’, 18 August 1935, pp. 8, 18), both reviewed on the occasion of their serial appearance in Sovremennye zapiski.

  Countess Grabbe: Countess Elizaveta Nikolaevna Grabbe (1893–1982), married in 1916 to Prince Sergey Sergeevich Beloselsky-Belozersky (1867–1982).

  Tatyana: Tatyana Siewert, sister of Svetlana Siewert, VN’s ex-fiancée, and Kalashnikov’s cousin.

  Claude Farrère: Frédéric-Charles Bargone, pen-name Claude Farrère (1876–1957), novelist, winner of the 1905 Prix Goncourt, but soon out of favour.

  his wife: Olga Borisovna Margolin (1899?–1942), who in 1933 became Khodasevich’s fourth wife.

  Zaytsevs: Boris Konstantinovich Zaytsev and his wife Vera Alekseevna.

  ‘Invitation’: Invitation to a Beheading.

  Il. Is.: Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky.

  1) Russian Beauty … 3) Breaking the News: ‘Krasavitsa’ (‘A Russian Beauty’), Poslednie novosti, 18 August 1934, p. 3; ‘Sluchay iz zhizni’ (‘A Slice of Life’), Poslednie novosti, 22 September 1935, p. 3; ‘Opoveshchenie’ (‘Breaking the News’), Poslednie novosti, 8 April 1934, p. 2; all appeared in Sog.

  Denis: Roche.

  the Khodasevich evening: The VN–Khodasevich double bill on 8 February.

  Ilyusha: Fondaminsky.

  Mother Maria: Elizaveta Yurievna Skobtsov (Pilenko, Kuzmin-Karavayev, Mother Maria), whom VN met in 1932.

  A.O.: Amalia Osipovna Fondaminsky.

  Zyoka: Georgy Hessen.

  Vava’s: Vladimir Iosifovich Hessen (1901–82), writer and memoirist, son of Iosif Hessen.

  the old man: Iosif Hessen.

  Letter postmarked 4 February 1936

  translation: Of Despair.

  Douglas: British novelist Norman Douglas (1868–1952), whose South Wind (1917) VN greatly admired.

  Marcel: VN wrote in his later hand ‘Gabriel’ before ‘Marcel’ and ‘the philosopher’ after, indicating that this was a letter shown to Andrew Field in January 1971 as part of his research for Nabokov: His Life in Part (New York: Viking, 1977).

  Alta Gracia: Altagracia de Jannelli, VN’s American agent.

  Raisa: Tatarinov.

  B.G.: Berta Grigorievna Zeldovich.

  Editeurs Réunis: Not the conglomerate of French publishers printing bestsellers, but the leading Russian bookstore in Paris, also a publisher.

  Parchevsky: Konstantin Konstantinovich Parchevsky (1891–1945), lawyer, political commentator and journalist.

  Berdyaev: Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1884–1978), philosopher.

  Alfyorov: Anatoly Vladimirovich Alfyorov (1903–54), writer and literary critic.

  Sofiev: Yury Borisovich Sofiev (1899–1975), poet.

  Chichikov: Hero of Myortvye dushi (Dead Souls 1842), by Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol (1809–52).

  Sharshun: Sergey Ivanovich Sharshun, pen-name V. Mirnyi (1888–1975), Dadaist artist and writer.

  Yanovsky: Vasily Semyonovich Yanovsky (1906–89), writer and doctor.

  Chervinsky: Lidiya Davydovna Chervinskaya (1907?–88), writer, poet and literary critic.

  Hepner: Benno (Bruno) Pavlovich Hepner (1899–?), lawyer, historian and sociologist.

  Pushkin’s nanny: Arina Rodionovna Matveev (née Yakovlev, 1758–1828), of whom Pushkin was very fond and to whom he dedicated several poems.

  Ilya: Fondaminsky.

  ‘a thought once uttered is untrue’: A line from Tyutchev’s poem ‘Silentium’ (1830?), which VN translated into English in 1941–3, V&V, p. 237.

  Letter postmarked 6 February 1936

  faux air: False air.

  alléché: Fr. ‘enticed’.

  by the epigraph to ‘Invitation’: Which, being in French, he could read: ‘Comme un fou se croit Dieu, nous nous croyons mortels’ (‘As a madman believes he is God, we believe ourselves mortal’), attributed to the invented Pierre Delalande’s Discours sur les ombres (Discourse on Shades).

  that volume of Œuvres libres: L’aguet: nouvelle inédite, trans. Denis Roche, Œuvres libres, 164 (February 1935).

  Sofa’s: Sofia Slonim.

  Nina’s: Berberova’s.

  Plus belle – osait-on dire: Fr. ‘Better looking – dare I say it’.

  Chaikovsky: Pyotr Ilyich Chaikovsky (1840–93), Russian composer; Nina Berberova, Chaikovsky, istoriya odinokoy zhizni (Chaikovsky, History of a Lonely Life) (Berlin: Petropolis, 1936).

  apres-midi: Afternoon.

  Makeev: Nikolay Vasilievich Makeev (1889–1973), journalist, artist, philosopher, historian and member of the Socialist Revolutionary party.

  Le Cerf: Ferdinand Le Cerf (1881–1945), leading French lepidopterist, at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

  Chapman: Thomas Algernon Chapman (1842–1921), British physician, expert on butterfly biology.

  Micropteryx: A family of very primitive moths with functional mandibles.

  thing: VN has written vest’, ‘news’, but may have intended veshch’, ‘thin
g’.

  Ornithoptera: A genus of the Birdwing butterflies of India, Southeast Asia and Australia.

  rumina: The papilionid butterfly Zerynthia rumina, the Spanish Festoon.

  Melitaea: A genus of the Checkerspot butterflies Nymphalidae, a completely different family.

  Parnassians: A genus of papilionid butterflies.

  Kardakov in Dahlem: Kardakov became head of the Lepidoptera Section of the German Entomological Museum and Institute in Dahlem, southwest Berlin, in 1934.

  Oberthür: Charles Oberthür (1845–1924), French lepidopterist, with whom Fyodor’s father in The Gift is said to have worked.

  Sarah: Hessen.

  the old man: Iosif Hessen.

  Haskell: Arnold Haskell (1903–80), ballet and theatre critic.

  Gubsky: Nikolay Mikhaylovich Gubsky (1889?–1971), writer.

  Malcolm Burr: Writer, translator, entomologist (1878–1954).

  Galina: Galina Nikolaevna Petrov (née Kuznetsov, 1900–1976), poet, translator, memoirist and Bunin’s mistress. From 1927 to 1942, she lived from time to time with the Bunins in Grasse, in the Alpes Maritimes.

  Kolomeytsevs: The family of VN’s Aunt Nina.

  Grunelius: Possibly Alexandre Grunelius. VN and VéN spent a vacation with Nicolas and Nathalie Nabokov at the home of the Gruneliuses in Kolbsheim in 1932.

  au courant: Fr. ‘up to date’.

  Léon: Pavel (Paul) Leopoldovich Léon (1893–1942), lawyer, historian of literature and James Joyce’s secretary; husband of Lucie (Elizaveta Matveevna) Léon Noel (née Ponizovsky, 1900–1972), the sister of Aleksandr Matveevich Ponizovsky (?–1943), VN’s friend at Cambridge. In 1939, Lucie Léon Noel would help VN copy-edit his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.

  Letter postmarked 8 February 1936

  Lyusya: Ilya Feigin.

  Anyutochka: Anna Feigin.

  just like in Marseilles: The assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia (1888–1934), on 9 October 1934 in Marseilles. Alexander’s son Prince Peter (1923–70) inherited the throne when he was nine years old. The regency was established, with King Alexander’s cousin, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, serving as a regent from 1934 to 1941. The heir seized the throne after a coup d’état, becoming King Peter II of Yugoslavia.