The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (117 page)

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

“ ‘That in Aleppo Once …’ ” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“A Forgotten Poet” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“Time and Ebb” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“Conversation Piece, 1945” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“Signs and Symbols” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“First Love” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

Written in Ithaca, New York, in February 1951. First published in the
Hudson Review
, New York, Winter 1959, and in
Encounter
, London, March 1959. Reprinted in the collection
Nabokov’s Quartet
, Phaedra, New York, 1966.

In this story the narrator is supposed to be unaware that his last paragraph has been used acrostically by two dead girls to assert their mysterious participation in the story. This particular trick can be tried only once in a thousand years of fiction. Whether it has come off is another question.

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

“Lance” is from
Nabokov’s Dozen
, 1958 (see
Appendix
).

“Easter Rain” was published in the April 1925 issue of the Russian émigré magazine
Russkoe Ekho
, the only known extant copy of which was discovered in the 1990s. It was translated by Dmitri Nabokov and Peter Constantine.

“The Word” was first published in the January 7, 1923, issue of
Rul’;
Dmitri Nabokov’s translation appeared in the December 26, 2005, issue of
The New Yorker
.

Following are Nabokov’s Bibliographical Note to
Nabokov’s Dozen
(Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1958) and his forewords to the three collections he published with McGraw-Hill, New York:
A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
(1973),
Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
(1975), and
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
(1976).

“The Aurelian,” “Cloud, Castle, Lake,” and “Spring in Fialta” were originally written in Russian. They were first published (as
“Pilgram,” “Oblako, ozero, bashnya,”
and
“Vesna v Fial’te”)
in the Russian émigré review
Sovremennyya Zapiski
(Paris, 1931, 1937, 1938) under my pen name V. Sirin and were incorporated in my collections of short stories
(Soglyadatay
, Russkiya Zapiski publisher, Paris, 1938, and
Vesna v Fial’te i drugie rasskazï
, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1956). The English versions of those three stories were prepared by me (who am alone responsible for any discrepancies between them and the original texts) in collaboration with Peter Pertzov. “The Aurelian” and “Cloud, Castle, Lake” came out in the
Atlantic Monthly
, and “Spring in Fialta” in
Harper’s Bazaar
, and all three appeared among the
Nine Stories
brought out by New Directions in “Direction,” 1947.

“Mademoiselle O” was originally written in French and was first published in the review
Mesures
, Paris, 1939. It was translated into English with the kind assistance of the late Miss Hilda Ward, and came out in the
Atlantic Monthly
and in the
Nine Stories
. A final, slightly different version, with stricter adherence to autobiographical truth, appeared as chapter 5 in my memoir
Conclusive Evidence
, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1951 (also published in England as
Speak, Memory
, by Victor Gollancz, 1952).

The remaining stories in the present volume were written in English. Of these, “A Forgotten Poet,” “The Assistant Producer,” “ ‘That in Aleppo Once …’,” and “Time and Ebb” appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly
and in
Nine Stories;
“Conversation Piece” (as “Double Talk”), “Signs and Symbols,” “First Love” (as “Colette”), and “Lance” came out first in
The New Yorker;
“Double Talk” was reprinted in
Nine Stories;
“Colette,” in
The New Yorker
anthology and (as chapter 7) in
Conclusive
Evidence;
and “Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster” appeared in
The Reporter
.

Only “Mademoiselle O” and “First Love” are (except for a change of names) true in every detail to the author’s remembered life. “The Assistant Producer” is based on actual facts. As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating “real life” than “real life” is responsible for plagiarizing me.

V.N.

The Russian originals of the thirteen Englished stories selected for the present collection were composed in western Europe between 1924 and 1940, and appeared one by one in various émigré periodicals and editions (the last being the collection
Vesna v Fialte
, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1956). Most of these thirteen pieces were translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author. All are given here in a final English form, for which I alone am responsible. Professor Simon Karlinsky is the translator of the first story.

V.N.

Of the thirteen stories in this collection the first twelve have been translated from the Russian by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author. They are representative of my carefree expatriate
tvorchestvo
(the dignified Russian word for “creative output”) between 1924 and 1939, in Berlin, Paris, and Mentone. Bits of bibliography are given in the prefaces to them, and more information will be found in Andrew Field’s
Nabokov: A Bibliography
, published by McGraw-Hill.

The thirteenth story was written in English in Ithaca, upstate New York, at 802 East Seneca Street, a dismal grayish-white frame house, subjectively related to the more famous one at 342 Lawn Street, Ramsdale, New England.

V.N.,
December 31, 1974, Montreux, Switzerland

This collection is the last batch of my Russian stories meriting to be Englished. They cover a period of eleven years (1924–1935); all of them appeared in the émigré dailies and magazines of the time, in Berlin, Riga, and Paris.

It may be helpful, in some remote way, if I give here a list of all my translated stories, as published, in four separate volumes in the U.S.A. during the last twenty years.

Nabokov’s Dozen
(New York, Doubleday, 1958) includes the following three stories translated by Peter Pertzov in collaboration with the author:

A Russian Beauty
(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1973) contains the following thirteen stories translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author, except for the title translated by Simon Karlinsky in collaboration with the author:

Tyrants Destroyed
(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1975) includes twelve stories translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author:

Details of a Sunset
(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1976) contains thirteen stories translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author:

V.N.,
Montreux, 1975

Dmitri Nabokov was born in 1934 in Berlin and came to the United States as a young child with his parents. He graduated from Harvard, served in the U.S. Army, and then began the vocal studies that led him to become an opera and concert performer (as a basso) around the world. He has translated most of his father’s Russian short stories and plays and many of his novels into English.

ADA, OR ARDOR

Ada, or Ardor
tells a love story troubled by incest, but is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72522-0

BEND SINISTER

While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay,
Bend Sinister
is first and foremost a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72727-9

DESPAIR

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965, thirty years after its original publication,
Despair
is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72343-1

THE ENCHANTER

The Enchanter
is the precursor to Nabokov’s classic novel,
Lolita
. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72886-3

THE EYE

The Eye
is as much farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Smurov is a lovelorn, self-conscious Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer greater indignities in the afterlife.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72723-1

THE GIFT

The Gift
is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native language and the crowning achievement of that period of his literary career. It is the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré who dreams of the book he will someday write.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72725-5

GLORY

Glory
is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a young Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a “perilous, daredevil” project to illegally reenter the Soviet Union.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72724-8

INVITATION TO A BEHEADING

Invitation to a Beheading
embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world; in an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for “gnostical turpitude.”

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72531-2

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE

Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing store, is ruddy, self-satisfied, and masculine, but repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72340-0