Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

the Club: The Mid-Day Luncheon Club, founded in 1915, hosting politicians, businessmen and celebrities as invited speakers.

  a creepily silent melancholic: Elmer Kneale (1885–1944), bill collector for the Illinois State Register, a founding member of the Mid-Day Luncheon Club and its secretary for twenty-nine years (1915–44).

  Shponka: A character in Gogol’s story ‘Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt’ from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, vol. 2 (1831).

  McGregor: John C. McGregor, anthropologist, Acting Chief of the Illinois State Museum in Springfield (1942–5).

  Carpenter: Frank M. Carpenter (1902–94), paleoentomologist, curator of fossil insects at the Harvard MCZ.

  Paul Angle: Paul Angle (1900–1975), librarian of the Illinois Historical Library and state historian (1932–45).

  Letter postmarked 9 November 1942

  Turck: Dr Charles Joseph Turck (1890–1989), President of Macalester College in St Paul (1939–1958).

  Annecy: Lake Annecy in France.

  news is getting rosier: The Allies broke the Axis lines at El Alamein on 1 November, and the US invasion of North Africa began on 8 November.

  Dasha: Dorothy Leuthold.

  Vogelii Obthr: Lycaena (now Maurus) vogelii Oberthür, the Maurus Blue.

  a bible and a telephone book … communication with the heavens and the office: VN would later refine this observation in the poem ‘The Room’ (1950) (‘The room a dying poet took / at nightfall in a dead hotel / had both directories – the Book / of Heaven and the Book of Bell’, PP, p. 164).

  Letter of 11 November 1942

  arrived here: Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

  Commonsense: ‘The Art of Literature and Commonsense’.

  When he was small … : First published in Atlantic Monthly, January 1943, p. 116.

  the third newspaper today: Perhaps also now to follow the Battle of Stalingrad, where the German advance was stalled by fierce resistance and worsening weather. On 19 November, the Soviet Army launched its eventually victorious counter-attack, a turning point of the Second World War.

  Letter postmarked 7 December 1942

  Honours College: Then part of the State Teachers College, now Longwood University, in Farmville, Virginia.

  Barbour: Thomas Barbour (1884–1946), herpetologist, director of the Harvard MCZ (1927–46).

  Pierce: Charles Pearce, poetry editor of the New Yorker.

  Natasha: Nathalie Nabokov.

  Zenzinov: Vladimir Zenzinov had left Europe for the US in 1939.

  Frumkin: Yakov Frumkin, chair of the Union of Russian Jews, the Jewish rescue organization that helped the Nabokovs to cross to the US.

  Kovarskys: Ilya Kovarsky, whom VN met in Paris in 1932 and 1936, and his wife.

  Dasha: Dorothy Leuthold.

  Hilda: Hilda Ward, who had helped VN translate ‘Mademoiselle O’ from French to English (Atlantic Monthly, January 1943, pp. 66–73).

  Sanford: Dr Leonard Cutler Sanford (1868–1950), surgeon, amateur ornithologist, trustee of the American Museum of Natural History (1921–50).

  Michener: Charles Duncan Michener (b. 1918), from 1942 assistant curator of Lepidoptera at the AMNH.

  needed to prepare and draw the genitalia of my Lysandra cormion: Unclear why he needed to do this, since he had already published on Lysandra cormion in 1941 and would not do so again.

  ‘types’: See note to letter of 7 June 1939.

  worked on her to my heart’s content: This would give rise to the poem ‘On Discovering a Butterfly’, New Yorker, 15 May 1943, p. 26, republished as ‘A Discovery’ in Poems (1959) and PP.

  Grainger’s: Dr James Moses Grainger (1879–1968), professor from 1910, and chair from 1912 to 1950, of the Department of English at the State Teachers College, renamed Longwood College in 1949 and later Longwood University.

  1943

  Postcard postmarked 15 April 1943

  18 years today: The Nabokovs’ wedding anniversary.

  Zyoka: Georgy Hessen and his father Iosif arrived in the US in December 1942.

  museum: American Museum of Natural History, New York, where VN had carried out research in 1940–1.

  A.: Presumably, Anna Feigin, who was now living in New York City.

  1944

  Letter 1 of 5 June 1944

  To: 250 W 104 … : VéN and DN were staying in New York, with Anna Feigin, while DN had his appendix removed.

  my novel: The novel that would end up being called Bend Sinister.

  finish it before you get back: In fact he would not complete the first draft until late May 1946.

  Gogol: His Nikolai Gogol (Norfolk, CT: New Direction, 1944).

  Letter 2 of 5 June 1944

  Wurst. H.: Wursthaus, a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 4 Boylston (now John F. Kennedy) Street from 1917 to 1996.

  Loveridge: Arthur Loveridge (1891–1980), British biologist, curator of herpetology at the Harvard MCZ (1924–57).

  I’VE THOUGHT UP A NEW AEROPLANE: VN marked the sketch with two labels, ‘motor’ and ‘spare wheel’.

  Letter of 6 June 1944

  Clark: Unidentified.

  T. N.: Tatyana Nikolaevna Karpovich.

  M. Mikh.: Mikhail Mikhaylovich Karpovich.

  Dobuzhinskys: The painter Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and his wife Elizaveta Osipovna Dobuzhinsky (née Wolkenstein, 1876–1965) had lived in the US since 1939.

  truly horrendous hospital: In the margin, in VéN’s hand: ‘Massachusetts General’.

  to the hospital where you’d been: In the margin, in VéN’s hand: ‘Harkness Pavilion Cambridge Hospital’. VN identified the hospital in a letter to Edmund Wilson as ‘Mt. Aubrey Hospital’ (9 June 1944, DBDV 148), in fact Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge.

  this morning: ‘This morning’ is added above the line.

  Dr Cooney: Unidentified. There is a horizontal line below this sentence.

  Enfin: Fr. ‘So’.

  hasn’t received the story: ‘A Forgotten Poet’. The New Yorker would reject the story, which was published instead in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1944, pp. 60–65, and in Nabokov’s Dozen (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), pp. 39–54.

  invasion beach: VN was admitted to the hospital on 6 June, the day of the Allied invasion of Normandy (D-Day).

  Postcard postmarked 8 June 1944

  haemoraginal colitis: Haemorrhagic colitis.

  Postcard of 9 June 1944

  Dynnik: Unidentified, unless a nickname, or a mistake, for Dynkin, the Feigins’ family doctor.

  White: Katharine Sergeant Angell White (1892–1977), writer and (1925–60) fiction editor for The New Yorker.

  I replied to her: VN accepted the offer.

  Letter of 11 June 1944

  Date: Since ‘Sunday’ is evidently correct, the actual date must be 11 June 1944.

  Sergey’s: Sergey Mikhaylovich Karpovich, son of Mikhail and Tatyana Karpovich.

  Craigie: The Nabokovs’ apartment at 8 Craigie Circle in Cambridge.

  Letter postmarked 13 June 1944

  The Russian departments we wrote to: Presumably in search of a position for VN, teaching Russian literature. At Wellesley, his position was renewed only a year at a time and until 1946 comprised only basic Russian-language teaching, not literature.

  Grosya: Unidentified.

  1945

  Postcard postmarked 10 February 1945

  A charming school: St Timothy’s College, Stevenson, Baltimore County, Maryland.

  Mrs Bush: Unidentified.

  her namesake in ‘The Gift’: In The Gift, the Riga-born writer Bush becomes a laughing stock when he reads his play in broken Russian to a gathering of émigré Russian writers and readers in Berlin.

  leave for New York: Where he would stay with Georgy Hessen.

  1954

  Letter of 18 April 1954

  HUTSON HOTELS: Letterhead.

  just arrived: VN had been brought to the University of Kansas at Lawrence for the annual Humanities Lecture and supporting talks
and discussions.

  Has Mityushok phoned: DN was then in his junior (third) year of a BA at Harvard University.

  Letter of 20 April 1954

  his typewritten memoirs: From 1948 to 1951, VN’s own memoirs had been published serially, mostly in The New Yorker, but also in Harper’s Magazine and Partisan Review, thus making him a celebrity in the world of American memoirs.

  Elmer: Elmer F. Beth (1901–70), chair of the Department of Journalism and chairman of the Humanities Series Committee at the University of Kansas.

  Ithacan: VN taught at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, from 1948 to 1958.

  the Winters: Unidentified.

  Gatchina: A small town, former imperial residence, south-west of St Petersburg. Winter’s having reached Gatchina, Dieter E. Zimmer notes, ‘probably implies that he had been a translator in the German army during the siege of Leningrad; the ring around the city had been between the city of Gatchina and the Pulkovo Hills (now the St Petersburg airport). The German headquarters in that section of the front had been in Siversky, the estate of VN’s relatives, the Falz-Feins.’

  Andersen: Unidentified.

  Cross: Samuel Hazzard Cross (1891–1946), diplomat, from 1930 professor of Slavic languages at Harvard. VN had a low opinion of Cross’s knowledge of Russian grammar.

  how he pulled out the wrong card: VN explained the intricacies of the card games in which Hermann, the protagonist, engages at the end of Pushkin’s novella The Queen of Spades (1834).

  1964

  Note of 3 May 1964

  A note to accompany a bouquet of flowers. It is written on one side of a small white card and addressed on the other. VéN had entered the clinic after abdominal pains over the previous month, and was operated on for appendicitis.

  1965

  Note of 15 April 1965

  Date: The Nabokovs’ fortieth wedding anniversary.

  1966

  Letter of 2 October 1966

  in the local, Tulsa, newspaper: DN had a singing engagement for Tulsa Opera in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  Minton: Walter J. Minton (1923– ), president of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, which was about to publish Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (dated 1966, published January 1967), with these endpapers.

  ask him for it, if you have a chance: VéN was visiting New York to discuss VN’s publishing future. The Nabokovs had been dissatisfied with the size of the advances they had received from Putnam, their main American publisher since Lolita in 1958; as a result of the discussion with Minton, they asked the William Morris Agency to find another publisher, and in 1967 signed with McGraw-Hill.

  the Grove edition of Miller’s ‘Tropic of Cancer’: Tropic of Cancer, the erotic novel of Henry Miller (1891–1980), first published in 1934 in Paris, faced an obscenity trial after its 1961 American publication by Grove Press. In 1964, the US Supreme Court declared the novel was not obscene. That year, Grove Press published Tropik raka, a small-scale translation (200 copies) of the novel into Russian by émigré Georgy Egorov, made at the request of Miller, who wanted to honour the Russian characters in his book.

  Elena: Elena Sikorski, VN’s sister who, from 1949, had lived in Geneva and had come to Montreux to look after her brother during VéN’s absence.

  Vladimír: Vladimir Vsevolodovich Sikorski (b. 1939), Elena’s son.

  how to fold this thing: The letter is written on an aerogram sheet that folds into an envelope.

  1968

  Note of 8 June 1968

  A note on an index card, in two coloured pencils, red and blue. The italicized lines are written in red, the rest of the note is in blue. In the lower-left corner, a later inscription, possibly in VéN’s hand: ‘8–VI–68, to Verbier’. Verbier is a village in the Valais, south-western Switzerland.

  1969

  Note of 15 April 1969

  Date: A 44th wedding anniversary note, in English, on an index card; only one side is inscribed. Dated at the bottom of the card, in a different pen, but probably also by VN. May have been inserted in a copy of Ada, which had arrived on 10 April.

  Cymbidium lowianum: A species of Lady’s Slipper Orchid.

  Ada & Lucette: Characters in Ada, about to be published in May 1969, and strongly associated with orchids. VN drew a Cattleya orchid for the cover of the Penguin edition of Ada (1970), an image that Penguin adapted.

  Note of 4 July 1969

  Written on an index card. The Nabokovs were holidaying with Anna Feigin in Cureglia.

  Note of 22 July 1969

  Written on an index card. The cross indicates that at the end of 1976 VN selected this for inclusion in Stikhi, his selected Russian poems.

  How I loved the poems of Gumilyov!: ‘Kak lyubil ya stikhi Gumilyova!’ first published in Stikhi, p. 297; translated by DN, Atlantic, April 2000, 75, and in N’s Bs, p. 694.

  1970

  Letter of 6 April 1970

  SAN DOMENICO PALACE HOTEL: Letterhead.

  room 220: Added to the letterhead by VN.

  Monza: A city near Milan where DN lived for many years, because of its Grand Prix racetrack (he raced cars) and proximity to La Scala (he was an opera singer).

  the Montrome one: From Montreux to Rome.

  Euchloe ausonia: The pierid butterfly, the Eastern Dappled White.

  the Cyprian’s silvery star: The Morning Star (Venus, who was reputed to come from Cyprus).

  Letter of 7 April 1970

  (Otherwise you will get what happened to Humbert): Echoes not only Humbert’s fate, but also the mock-injunctions facing Humbert and Lolita: ‘Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet … asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies’; ‘Would sex crimes be reduced if children obeyed a few don’ts? Don’t play around public toilets. Don’t take candy or rides from strangers’; ‘Do not throw waste material of any kind in the toilet bowl. Thank you. Call again. The Management. P. S. We consider our guests the Finest People of the World’ (Lolita, pp. 146, 165, 210).

  … Humbert) ¶: VN indicates the paragraph end here and elsewhere so that VéN does not have to struggle to decipher what could seem like the remainder of the line showing through from the other side of the sheet on the hotel’s very transparent stationery.

  and not ten years ago: VN and VéN had spent some of November 1959 in Taormina, at the Hotel Excelsior.

  Letter of 8 April 1970

  S. in Fialta: ‘Spring in Fialta’.

  red corvo: Corvo rosso, a Sicilian wine.

  je m’excuse de ces mots un peu forts: Fr. ‘Sorry for these rather strong words’.

  Thais Zerynthia hypsipyle cassandra: A sub-species of the papilionid butterfly Zerynthia polyxena, the Southern Festoon. Thais is a superseded generic name, hypsipyle a junior (later, and therefore invalid, according to the law of taxonomic priority) species name.

  ‘Où je peux laver le petit garçon?’: Fr. ‘where I can wash the little boy?’

  phanodorm: A sleeping pill.

  Janits: Or Yanits. Unidentified.

  Galina Kuznetsova’s diary: Grasskiy dnevnik (The Grasse Diary) by Bunin’s mistress Galina Kuznetsova (Washington, DC: Viktor Kamkin, 1967).

  Letter of 8–9 April 1970

  Je tiens: Fr. ‘I care’.

  the 15th: Their 45th wedding anniversary.

  Nebrodi Mountains … shame for us not to wander: ‘Nebrodiyskie’ is a pun on the name of the mountains (Nebrodi). The Russian ne brodi means ‘do not wander’.

  Anyuta: The Nabokovs had brought her from New York to Montreux in 1967 as her mental health began to decline.

  Lifar’s new memoirs: My Life (New York: World Publishing, 1970) by Serge Lifar.

  Diaguiliev: Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872–1929), ballet impresario in Russia and Paris, founder of the Ballets Russes.

  Markevitch: Igor Borisovich Markevitch (1912–83), Ukrainian-born composer and conductor, friend of VN’s through his cousin Nicolas.

  Topazia: Donna Topazia Caetani (1921–90), the second
wife of Igor Markevitch.

  allenburies: Allenbury’s Pastilles.

  Letter of 10 April 1970

  Alfred Friendly: Journalist (1912–83), managing editor of the Washington Post; would visit VN in Sicily and write a short report, ‘Nabokov the Collector’, for the New York Times, 10 May 1970, vii, pp. 32–3.

  tedesko: Ital. ‘German’.

  Puccinian: Sounding out music from operas by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924).

  correspondence: In Russian, (pere)piska.

  Note of 15 April 1970

  Date: The Nabokovs’ wedding anniversary. The date and place ‘15-IV-70 Taormina’ appears to have been added later by VéN. The card presumably accompanied flowers.

  Forty-five springs: ‘Sorok pyat’ vyosen’. VN’s ‘springs’ (vyosen) is a reference to Russian ‘years’ (let), which could also mean ‘summers’ (let) in the genitive plural: ‘forty-five spring-like years’ in effect.

  1971

  Note of 15 April 1971

  A note on a white unlined card. Addressed on one side, inscribed on the other. Presumably the card accompanied flowers. VN’s sketchy drawing of a small butterfly below his initial.

  1973

  Note postmarked 22 January 1973

  Twelve tens: Presumably Swiss francs.

  1974

  Note of 5 January 1974

  A note, on an index card, with a pen-and-ink drawing of a small butterfly.

  thumb hurts: Inserted above the ‘Happy Birthday’ as an explanation for the rough lettering.

  L’année d’Ada und ’Ada: The year when Ada was to be published in French and German. The German did appear (Ada oder Das Verlangen, trans. Uwe Friesel and Marianne Therstappen, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1974); the French translation, however, needed intensive reworking by VN and was not published until 1975 (Ada ou l’ardeur, trans. Gilles Chahine and Jean-Bernard Blandenier with VN, Paris: Fayard, 1975).

  Note of 14 June 1974

  Date: Dated by VéN ‘To me from V. 14–VI–74’. Written on both sides of an index card. VN had traveled to Zermatt a week ahead of VéN in order to hunt butterflies.

  1975

  Note of 14 July 1975

  On a checkered index card.

  1976

  Note of 7 April 1976

  On a lined index card; a rhymed poem in Russian.

  APPENDIX TWO: AFTERLIFE BY BRIAN BOYD

  an article on Nabokov that he understandably disliked: For more detail, see VNAY 394–97. ‘Under the pen name Jacques Croisé, Shakhovskoy declared that the emotional desert of Nabokov’s years of Continental exile had been so complete that in his memoirs “he would even forget the friends of his darkest days.” Shakhovskoy seems to have resented the fact that Conclusive Evidence did not name her, although the émigré pages of Nabokov’s memoirs quite deliberately avoided his private life, limiting themselves to a few comments on those who contributed to Russian literature, in tones far from cold (Fondaminsky, “a saintly and heroic soul who did more for émigré literature than any other man’; Khodasevich, “wrought of irony and metallic-like genius, whose poetry was as complex a marvel as that of Tyutchev or Blok”; “wise, prim, charming Aldanov”). Citing the opinions of Hermann in Despair as if they were Nabokov’s own and not those of a madman and murderer he despised, Shakhovskoy declared that in Nabokov’s world “goodness does not exist, all is nightmare and deceit. Those seeking intellectual comfort would be better swallowing poison than reading Nabokov” ’ (VNAY 396).