Glory

The present work closes the series of definitive English versions in which my entire set of nine Russian novels (written in Western Europe between 1925 and 1937, and published by
émigré
houses between 1926 and 1952) is available to American and British readers. He who cares to scan the list given below should mark the dramatic gap between 1938 and 1959:

The present translation is meticulously true to the text. My son took three years, on and off, to make a first draft, after which I spent three months preparing a fair copy. The very Russian preoccupations with physical movement and gesture, walking and sitting, smiling and glancing from-under-the-brows, seems especially strong in
Podvig
, and this made our task still tougher.

Podvig
was begun in May 1930, immediately after my writing
Soglyadatay
, and completed by the end of that year. My wife and I, who were then still childless, rented a parlor and bedroom on Luitpoldstrasse, Berlin West, in the vast and gloomy apartment of the one-legged General von Bardeleben, an old gentleman solely occupied in working out his family tree; his large brow had a somewhat Nabokovian cast, and, indeed, he was related to the well-known chess player Bardeleben, whose manner of death resembled that of my Luzhin. One day in early summer Ilya Fondaminski, chief editor of the Sovremennye Zapiski, arrived there from Paris to buy the book
na kornyu
, “in the rooted state” (said of grainfields before they are harvested). He was a Social-Revolutionist, a Jew, a fervent Christian, a learned historian, and an altogether delightful man (later murdered by the Germans in one of their extermination camps), and vividly do I remember the splendid zest with which he slapped his knees before rising from our grim green divan after the deal had been clinched!

The book’s—certainly very attractive—working title (later discarded in favor of the pithier
Podvig
, “gallant feat,” “high deed”) was
Romanticheskiy vek
, “romantic times,” which I had chosen partly because I had had enough of hearing Western journalists call our era “materialistic,” “practical,” “utilitarian,” etc., but mainly because the purpose of my novel, my only one with a purpose, lay in stressing the thrill and the glamour that my young expatriate finds in the most ordinary pleasures as well as in the seemingly meaningless adventures of a lonely life.

It would make things too easy for a certain type of reviewer (and particularly for those insular innocents whom my work affects so oddly that one might think I hypnotize them from the wings into making indecent gestures) were I to point out the faults in the novel. Suffice it to say that, after all but lapsing into false exotism or commonplace comedy, it soars to heights of purity and melancholy that I have only attained in the much later
Ada
.

How do the main characters of
Glory
stand in relation to those of my other fourteen (Russian and American) novels?—the human-interest seeker may ask.

Martin is the kindest, uprightest, and most touching of all my young men; and little Sonia, of the lusterless dark eyes and coarse-looking black hair (her father, judging by his name, had Cheremissian blood), should be acclaimed by experts in amorous lure and lore as being the most oddly attractive of all my young girls, although obviously a moody and ruthless flirt.

If Martin to some extent can be considered a distant cousin of mine (nicer than I, but also much more naive than I ever was), with whom I share certain childhood memories, certain later likes and dislikes, his pallid parents,
per contra
, do not resemble mine in any rational sense. As to Martin’s Cambridge friends, Darwin is totally invented, and so is Moon, but “Vadim” and “Teddy” existed in the reality of my own Cambridge past: they are mentioned under their initials, N.R. and R.C., respectively, in my
Speak, Memory
, 1966, Chapter Thirteen, penult paragraph. The three staunch patriots, dedicated to counter-Bolshevist work, Zilanov, Iogolevich, and Gruzinov, belong to that group of people, politically situated just to the right of the old Terrorists and just to the left of the Constitutional Democrats, and as far from Monarchists on one side as from Marxists on the other, whom I was well acquainted with in the entourage of the very magazine which serialized
Podvig
, but none is an exact portrait of a specific individual. I feel obliged to give here the proper determination of this political type (recognized at once, with the unconscious precision of common knowledge, by the Russian
intelligent
who was the main reader of my books) because I still cannot reconcile myself to the fact—deserving to be commemorated by an annual pyrotechnical display of contempt and sarcasm—that in the meantime American intellectuals had been conditioned by Bolshevist propaganda into utterly disregarding the vigorous existence of liberal thought among Russian expatriates. (“You’re a Trotskyite, then?” brightly suggested an especially limited left-wing writer, in New York, 1940, when I said I was neither for the Soviets nor for any Tsar.)

The hero of
Glory
, however, is not necessarily interested in politics—that is the first of two mastertricks on the part of the wizard who made Martin. Fulfillment is the fugal theme of his destiny; he is that rarity—a person whose “dreams come true.” But the fulfillment itself is invariably permeated by poignant nostalgia. The memory of the childish reverie blends with the expectation of death. The perilous path that Martin finally follows into forbidden Zoorland (no connection with Nabokov’s Zembla!) only continues to its illogical end the fairy-tale trail winding through the painted woods of a nursery-wall picture. “Fulfillment” would have been, perhaps, an even better title for the novel: Nabokov cannot be unaware that the obvious translation of
podvig
is “exploit,” and, indeed, it is under that title that his
Podvig
is listed by bibliographers; but if you once perceive in “exploit” the verb “utilize,” gone is the
podvig
, the inutile deed of renown. The author chose therefore the oblique “glory,” which is a less literal but much richer rendering of the original title with all its natural associations branching in the bronze sun. It is the glory of high adventure and disinterested achievement; the glory of this earth and its patchy paradise; the glory of personal pluck; the glory of a radiant martyr.