The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (115 page)

The “writer” in the story is not a self-portrait but the generalized image of a middlebrow author. The “critic,” however, is a friendly sketch of a fellow émigré, Yuliy Ayhenvald, the well-known literary critic (1872–1928). Readers of the time recognized his precise, delicate little gestures and his fondness for playing with euphonically twinned phrases in his literary comments. By the end of the story everybody seems to have forgotten about the burnt match in the wineglass—something I would not have allowed to happen today.

V.N.,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
, 1976

The reader will be sorry to learn that the exact date of the publication of this story [“The Doorbell”
(Zvonok)]
has not been established. It certainly appeared in
Rul’
, Berlin, probably in 1927, and was republished in the
Vozvrashchenie Chorba
collection, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

V.N.,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
, 1976

“An Affair of Honor” appeared under the title
“Podlets”
(The Cur), in the émigré daily
Rul’
, Berlin, around 1927, and was included in my first collection,
Vozvrashchenie Chorba
, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. The present translation was published in
The New Yorker
, September 3, 1966, and was included in
Nabokov’s Quartet
, Phaedra, New York, 1966.

The story renders in a drab expatriate setting a belated variation on the romantic theme whose decline started with Chekhov’s magnificent novella
Single Combat
(1891).

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973

“The Christmas Story”
(Rozhdestvenskiy rasskaz)
appeared in
Rul’
, December 25, 1928, and now in the current collections. In September 1928 Nabokov had published
Korol’, dama, valet (King, Queen, Knave)
.

The story mentions several writers: the peasant-born Neverov (the pseudonym of Aleksandr Skobelev, 1886–1923); the “social realist” Maksim Gorky (1868–1936); the “populist” Vladimir Korolenko (1853–1921); the “decadent” Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919); and the “neo-realist” Evgeniy Chirikov (1864–1923).

D.N.

This is the first faithful translation of
“Kartofel’nyy el’f,”
written in 1929 in Berlin, published there in the émigré daily
Rul’
(December 15, 17, 18, and 19, 1929) and included in
Vozvrashchenie Chorba
, Slovo, Berlin, 1930, a collection of my stories. A very different English version (by Serge Bertenson and Irene Kosinska), full of mistakes and omissions, appeared in
Esquire
, December 1939, and has been reprinted in an anthology
(The Single Voice
, Collier, London, 1969).

Although I never intended the story to suggest a screenplay or to fire a scriptwriter’s fancy, its structure and recurrent pictorial details do have a cinematic slant. Its deliberate introduction results in certain conventional rhythms—or in a pastiche of such rhythms. I do not believe, however, that my little man can move even the most lachrymose human-interest fiend, and this redeems the matter.

Another aspect separating “The Potato Elf” from the rest of my short stories is its British setting. One cannot rule out thematic automatism in such cases, yet on the other hand this curious exoticism (as being different from the more familiar Berlin background of my other stories) gives the thing an artificial brightness which is none too displeasing; but all in all it is not my favorite piece, and if I include it in this collection it is only because the act of retranslating it properly is a precious personal victory that seldom falls to a betrayed author’s lot.

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973 The story was actually first published in
Russkoye Ekho
in April, 1924. It was reprinted in
Rul’
in 1929.

D.N.

“The Aurelian” (1930) is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“A Dashing Fellow,”
“Khvat”
in Russian, was first published in the early 1930s. The two leading émigré papers,
Rul’
(Berlin) and
Poslednie Novosti
(Paris), rejected it as improper and brutal. It appeared in
Segodnya
(Riga), exact date to be settled, and in 1938 was included in my collection of short stories
Soglyadatay
(Russkiya Zapiski, Paris). The present translation appeared in
Playboy
for December 1971.

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973

“A Bad Day” (entitled in Russian
“Obida,”
the lexical meaning of which is “offense,” “mortification,” etc.) was written in Berlin in the summer of 1931. It appeared in the émigré daily
Poslednie Novosti
(Paris, July 12, 1931) and was included in my collection
Soglyadatay
(Paris, 1938), with a dedication to Ivan Bunin. The little boy of the story, though living in much the same surroundings as those of my own childhood, differs in several ways from my remembered self, which is really split here among three lads, Peter, Vladimir, and Vasiliy.

V.N.,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
, 1976

“The Visit to the Museum”
(Poseshchenie muzeya)
appeared in the émigré review
Sovremennyya Zapiski
, LXVIII, Paris, 1939, and in my collection
Vesna v Fialte
, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1959. The present English translation came out in
Esquire
, March 1963, and was included in
Nabokov’s Quartet
, Phaedra, New York, 1966.

One explanatory note may be welcomed by non-Russian readers. At one point the unfortunate narrator notices a shop sign and realizes he is not in the Russia of his past, but in the Russia of the Soviets. What gives that shop sign away is the absence of the letter that used to decorate the end of a word after a consonant in old Russia but is omitted in the reformed orthography adopted by the Soviets today.

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973

The Russian original
(“Zanyatoy chelovek”)
, written in Berlin between September 17 and 26, 1931, appeared on October 20 in the émigré daily
Poslednie Novosti
, Paris, and was included in the collection
Soglyadatay
, Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938.

V.N.,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
, 1976

The Russian original of “Terra Incognita” appeared under the same title in
Poslednie Novosti
, Paris, November 22, 1931, and was reprinted in my collection
Soglyadatay
, Paris, 1938. The present English translation was published in
The New Yorker
, May 18, 1963.

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973

Written in Berlin in December 1931, published in January 1932 under the title
“Vstrecha” (Meeting)
in the émigré daily
Poslednie Novosti
, Paris, and collected in
Soglyadatay
, Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938.

V.N.,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
, 1976

Mark Aldanov, who was closer than I to the
Poslednie Novosti
(with which I conducted a lively feud throughout the 1930s), informed me, sometime in 1931 or 1932, that at the last moment, this story, “Lips to Lips”
(Usta k ustam)
, which finally had been accepted for publication, would not be printed after all.
“Razbili nabor”
(“They broke up the type”), my friend muttered gloomily. It was published only in 1956, by the Chekhov Publishing House, New York, in my collection
Vesna v Fialte
, by which time everybody who might have been suspected of remotely resembling the characters in the story was safely and heirlessly dead.
Esquire
published the present translation in its September 1971 issue.

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973

“Lebeda”
was first published in
Poslednie Novosti
, Paris, January 31, 1932; collected in
Soglyadatay
, Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938.
Lebeda
is the plant
Atriplex
. Its English name, orache, by a miraculous coincidence, renders in its written form the “
ili beda,”
“or ache,” suggested by the Russian title. Through the rearranged patterns of the story, readers of my
Speak, Memory
will recognize many details of the final section of chapter 9,
Speak, Memory
, Putnam’s, New York, 1966. Amid the mosaic of fiction there are some real memories not represented in
Speak, Memory
, such as the passages about the teacher “Berezovski” (Berezin, a popular geographer of the day), including the fight with the school bully. The place is St. Petersburg, the time around 1910.

V.N.,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
, 1976

“Muzyka,”
a trifle singularly popular with translators, was written at the beginning of 1932, in Berlin. It appeared in the Paris émigré daily
Poslednie Novosti
(March 27, 1932) and in the collection of my stories
Soglyadatay
, published by the Russkiya Zapiski firm, in Paris, 1938.

V.N.,
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975

“Sovershenstvo”
was written in Berlin in June 1932. It appeared in the Paris daily
Poslednie Novosti
(July 3, 1932) and was included in my collection
Soglyadatay
, Paris, 1938. Although I did tutor boys in my years of expatriation, I disclaim any other resemblance between myself and Ivanov.

V.N.,
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975

Although various details of the narrator’s love affair match in one way or another those found in my autobiographical works, it should be firmly borne in mind that the “Katya” of the present story is an invented girl. The
“Admiralteyskaya igla”
was written in May 1933, in Berlin, and serialized in
Poslednie Novosti
, Paris, in the issues
of June 4 and 5 of that year. It was collected in
Vesna v Fialte
, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1956.

V.N.,
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
, 1975

“The Leonardo”
(Korolyok)
was composed in Berlin, on the piney Links of the Grunewald Lake, in the summer of 1933. First published in
Poslednie rouvosti
, Paris, July 23 and 24, 1933. Collected in
Vesna v Fialte
, New York, 1956.

Korolyok
(literally: kinglet) is, or is supposed to be, a Russian cant term for “counterfeiter.” I am deeply indebted to Professor Stephen Jan Parker for suggesting a corresponding American underground slang word which delightfully glitters with the kingly gold dust of the Old Master’s name. Hitler’s grotesque and ferocious shadow was falling on Germany at the time I imagined those two brutes and my poor Romantovski.

The English translation appeared in
Vogue
, April, 1973.

V.N.,
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
, 1973

Andrew Field in his bibliography of my works says he has not been able to ascertain the exact date for
“Pamyati L. I. Shigaeva,”
written in the early 1930s in Berlin, and published probably in
Poslednie Novosti
. I am practically sure that I wrote it in the beginning of 1934. My wife and I were sharing with her cousin, Anna Feigin, the latter’s charming flat in a corner house (Number 22) of Nestorstrasse, Berlin, Grunewald (where
Invitation to a Beheading
and most of
The Gift were
composed). The rather attractive, small devils in the story belong to a subspecies described there for the first time.

V.N.,
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
, 1975

By the middle of 1936, not long before leaving Berlin forever and finishing
Dar (The Gift)
in France, I must have completed at least four-fifths of its last chapter when at some point a small satellite separated itself from the main body of the novel and started to revolve around it. Psychologically, the separation may have been sparked either by the mention of Tanya’s baby in her brother’s letter or by his recalling the village schoolmaster in a doomful dream. Technically, the circle which the present corollary describes (its last sentence existing implicitly before its first one) belongs to the same serpent-biting-its-tail type as the circular structure of the fourth chapter in
Dar
(or, for that matter,
Finnegans Wake
, which it preceded). A knowledge of the novel is not required for the enjoyment of the corollary which has its own orbit and colored fire, but some practical help may be derived from the reader’s knowing that the action of
The Gift
starts on April 1, 1926, and ends on June 29, 1929 (spanning three years in the life of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, a young émigré in Berlin); that his sister’s marriage takes place in Paris at the end of 1926; and that her daughter is born three years later, and is only seven in June 1936, and not “around ten,” as Innokentiy, the schoolmaster’s son, is permitted to assume (behind the author’s back) when he visits Paris in “The Circle.” It may be added that the story will produce upon readers who are familiar with the novel a delightful
effect of oblique recognition, of shifting shades enriched with new sense, owing to the world’s being seen not through the eyes of Fyodor, but through those of an outsider less close to him than to old Russia’s idealistic radicals (who, let it be said in passing, were to loathe Bolshevist tyranny as much as liberal aristocrats did).