The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Part 42

WINGSTROKE.

"Wingstroke" (Udar krila), written in October 1923, was published in Russkoye Ekho (The Russian Echo), an emigre periodical in Berlin, in January 1924, and now in the current collections. Although the story is set in Zermatt, it refracts the recollection of a brief vacation Nabokov had taken in St. Moritz in December 1921, with his Cambridge friend Bobby de Calry.

We learn from a letter to his mother (who had moved to Prague late in 1923 while Nabokov remained in Berlin, where, in April 1924, he married Vera Slonim) that, in December 1924, he sent her a "continuation" of "Wingstroke," presumably in published form. To date, no trace of this piece has been found. My English translation was published, with one differently worded sentence, under the t.i.tlle "Wing-beat" in The Yale Review, vol. 80, nos. 1 and 2, April 1992.

D.N.

G.o.dS.

Nabokov wrote "G.o.ds" (Bogi) in October 1923. The story remained unpublished until the current collections.

Nabokov was working on what is probably his most important play, the five-act Traghediya Gospodina Morna (The Tragedy of Mr. Morn), soon to be published for the first time by Ardis Press.

D.N.

A MATTER OF CHANCE.

"Sluchaynost'," one of my earliest tales, written at the beginning of 1924, in the last afterglow of my bachelor life, was rejected by the Berlin emigre daily Rul' ("We don't print anecdotes about cocainists," said the editor, in exactly the same tone of voice in which, thirty years later, Ross of The New Yorker was to say, "We don't print acrostics," when rejecting "The Vane Sisters") and sent, with the a.s.sistance of a good friend, and a remarkable writer, Ivan Lukash, to the Rigan SeG.o.dnya, a more eclectic emigre organ, which published it on June 22, 1924. I would never have traced it again had it not been rediscovered by Andrew Field a few years ago.

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

THE SEAPORT.

"The Seaport" (Port), written during the first months of 1924, appeared in Rul' on December 24 of the same year, and now in the current collections. This story was later published, with a handful of minor changes, in Vozvrashchenie Chorba (The Return of Chorb, Slovo, Berlin, 1930), Nabokov's first collection of short stories, which also included twenty-four poems. "The Seaport" has, in part, an autobiographical genesis: in July 1923, during a visit to Ma.r.s.eilles, Nabokov was fascinated by a Russian restaurant that he visited numerous times and where, among other things, two Russian sailors proposed that he embark for Indochina.

D.N.

REVENGE.

"Revenge" (Mest'), written in the spring of 1924, appeared in Russkoye Ekho on April 20, 1924, and now in the current collections.

BENEFICENCE.

"Beneficence" (Blagost'), written in March 1924, was published in Rul' on April 28, 1924. Subsequently it appeared in The Return of Chorb, and now in the current collections.

D.N.

DETAILS OF A SUNSET.

I doubt very much that I was responsible for the odious t.i.tle ("Katastrofa") inflicted upon this story. It was written in June 1924 in Berlin and sold to the Riga emigre daily SeG.o.dnya, where it appeared on July 13 of that year. Still under that label, and no doubt with my indolent blessings, it was included in the collection Soglyadatay, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

I have now given it a new t.i.tle, one that has the triple advantage of corresponding to the thematic background of the story, of being sure to puzzle such readers as "skip descriptions," and of infuriating reviewers.

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

THE THUNDERSTORM.

Thunder is grom in Russian, storm is burya, and thunderstorm is groza, a grand little word, with that blue zigzag in the middle.

"Groza," written in Berlin sometime in the summer of 1924, was published in August 1924 in the emigre daily Rul' and collected in the Vozvrashchenie Chorba volume, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

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

LA VENEZIANA.

"La Veneziana" (Venetsianka) was written mainly in September 1924; the ma.n.u.script is dated October 5 of that year. The story remained unpublished and untranslated until the current collections, becoming the t.i.tle story for the French and Italian volumes. The recently completed English version was printed separately in a special edition celebrating the sixtieth birthday of Penguin, England, in 1995.

The painting by Sebastiano (Luciani) del Piombo (ca. 14851547) that almost certainly inspired the canvas described in the story is Giovane romana detta Dorotea, ca. 1512. Nabokov may have seen it at the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum (now the Staatliche Museen) in Berlin. Possibly the painter's birthplace-Venice-induced Nabokov to transform the lady from "Romana" to "Veneziana." And it is almost certainly the same artist's Ritratto di donna, which is in the Earl of Rador's collection at Longford Castle, to which Nabokov alludes in his brief mention of "Lord Northwick from London, the owner ... of another painting by the same del Piombo."

D.N.

BACHMANN.

"Bakhman" was written in Berlin in October 1924. It was serialized in Rul', November 2 and 4 of that year, and included in my Vozvrashchenie Chorba collection of short stories, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. I am told that a pianist existed with some of my invented musician's peculiar traits. In certain other respects he is related to Luzhin, the chess player of The Defense (Zashchita Luzhina, 1930), G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1964.

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

THE DRAGON.

"The Dragon" (Drakon), written in November 1924, was published in a French translation by Vladimir Sikorsky, and now in the current collections.

D.N.

CHRISTMAS.

"Rozhdestvo" was written in Berlin at the end of 1924, published in Rul' in two installments, January 6 and 8, 1925, and collected in Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. It oddly resembles the type of chess problem called "selfmate."

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

A LETTER THAT NEVER REACHED RUSSIA.

Sometime in 1924, in emigre Berlin, I had begun a novel tentatively ent.i.tled Happiness (Schastie), some important elements of which were to be reslanted in Mashen'ka, written in the spring of 1925 (published by Slovo, Berlin, in 1926, translated into English under the t.i.tle of Mary in 1970, McGraw-Hill, New York, and reprinted in Russian from the original text, by Ardis and McGraw-Hill, in 1974). Around Christmas 1924, I had two chapters of Schastie ready but then, for some forgotten but no doubt excellent reason, I sc.r.a.pped chapter 1 and most of 2. What I kept was a fragment representing a letter written in Berlin to my heroine who had remained in Russia. This appeared in Rul' (Berlin, January 29, 1925) as "Pis'mo (Letter) v Rossiyu," and was collected in Vozvrashchenie Chorba, in Berlin, 1930. A literal rendering of the t.i.tle would have been ambiguous and therefore had to be changed.

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

THE FIGHT.