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Часть текста: tape recorder was used. Mr. Nabokov ei! ther wrote out his answers to the questions or dictated them to the interviewer; in some instances, notes from the conversation were later recast as formal questions-and-answers. The interviewer was Nabokov's student at Cornell University in 1954, and the references are to Literature 311-312 (MWF, 12), a course on the Masterpieces of European Fiction (Jane Austen, Gogol, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Stevenson, Kafka, Joyce, and Proust). Its enrollment had reached four hundred by the time of Nabokov's resignation in 1959. The footnotes to the interview, except where indicated, are provided by the interviewer, Alfred Appel, Jr. For years bibliographers and literary journalists didn't know whether to group you under "Russian" or "American. "Now that you're living in Switzerland there seems to be complete agreement that you're American. Do you find this kind of distinction at all important regarding your identity as a writer? I have always maintained, even as a schoolboy in Russia, that the nationality of a worthwhile writer is of secondary importance. The more distinctive an insect's aspect, the less apt the taxonomist is to glance first of all at the locality label under the pinned specimen in order to decide which of several vaguely described races it should be assigned to. The writer's art is his real passport. His identity should be immediately recognized by a special pattern or unique coloration. His habitat may confirm the correctness of the determination but should not lead to it. Locality labels are known to have been faked by unscrupulous insect dealers. Apart from these considerations I think of myself today as an American writer who has once been a Russian o! ne. The Russian writers you have translated and written about all precede the so-called "age of realism, " which is more celebrated by...

2. Вне Лолиты: Вновь открывая Набокова. (Проект CNN, 1999 г.). The Man

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Часть текста: great writers, particularly as the author of "Lolita." But he had many more dimensions, and in the end of his life he became the Eccentric Writer, one who avoided publicity at all costs (even declining election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters), preferring a quiet life engaging in creation and Lepidoptera. Born on, or about, April 23, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nabokov's childhood was spent in storybook fashion. The oldest of five children , he grew up in a wealthy and aristocratic family, shuttling between the family's two homes (one in St. Petersburg , and the other - an estate - 50 miles south in the countryside). He enjoyed playing tennis and soccer, but spent hours at a time embroiled in his passion - chasing and collecting butterflies, a hobby he apparently learned from his father . At the time, Russia was under the rule of Tsar Nicholas II, and Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov , was a respected (and to authorities, controversial) liberal politician. In fact, the elder Nabokov was imprisoned for 90 days in 1908 for signing a political manifesto. Nabokov's mother, Elena Ivanova , raised her three boys and two girls with the help of several governesses and tutors who taught the Nabokov children French and English, along with Russian. At the highly regarded Tenishev School, which Nabokov began attending in 1911, he was described as an aloof, even conceited, student who arrived each day in the family's Rolls-Royce. But Nabokov's dreamy childhood would receive a wake-up call with the Bolshevik revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Rioting forced his family to move, eventually, to England in 1919 where Nabokov and his brother enrolled in Cambridge . Nabokov majored in French and Russian literature. Nabokov in Berlin, 1923 Meanwhile, his father had settled the...

3. Интервью Набокова на английском языке. Playboy, 1964 г.

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Часть текста: The present text takes into account the order of my interviewer's questions as well as the fact that a couple of consecutive pages of my typescript were apparently lost in transit. Egreto perambis doribus! With the American publication of Lolita in 1958, your fame and fortune mushroomed almost overnight from high repute among the literary cognoscenti-- which you bad enjoyed for more than 30 years-- to both acclaim and abuse as the world-renowned author of a sensational bestseller. In the aftermath of this cause celebre, do you ever regret having written Lolita? On the contrary, I shudder retrospectively when I recall that there was a moment, in 1950, and again in 1951, when I was on the point of burning Humbert Humbert's little black diary. No, I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle-- its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works-- at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, my short stories, my book of recollections; but I cannot grudge her this. There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet. Though many readers and...

4. Вне Лолиты: Вновь открывая Набокова. (Проект CNN, 1999 г.). The Writer

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Часть текста: In his spare time (when he wasn't collecting, studying and writing about butterflies), Nabokov invented crosswords, translated texts as encompassing as "Alice in Wonderland," wrote academic papers and lectures, critical reviews, and nonfiction works. He also wrote a screenplay for the 1962 movie version of "Lolita," directed by Stanley Kubrick. In short, he was obsessed with words and was not intimidated by genre. He spent his working life trying to capture the perfect style and structure on the page, in the same way he netted a butterfly that fluttered in his path. Nabokov, known as VN, first gained acclaim in Berlin, writing in his native Russian language and developing a following with fellow émigrés. In 1923, shortly after his graduation from Cambridge, Nabokov was busy with work - he published four plays (including "Death" and "The Grandfather") and two books of poetry ("The Empyrean Path" and "The Cluster"). His first book, "Mary," was published in 1926. The story details a young émigré's longing for the love he left behind in Russia, the battle between what is memory and what is real, and the inevitable disappointment of facing both. The book received little initial attention. Nabokov working on "The Defense" at a hotel in Le Boulou, East Pyrenees, February 1929 That's not to say Nabokov was an unknown. He continued to write, publishing the novels "King, Queen, Knave" (1928), "The Defense" (1930), and "Glory"...

5. Anniversary notes

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Часть текста: the editors, Charles Newman and Alfred Appel, had taken to prepare it and remembered how firmly the guest co-editor, when collecting the ingredients of this great feast, refused to show me any plum or crumb before publication. BUTTERFLIES Butterflies are among the most thoughtful and touching contributions to this volume. The old-fashioned engraving of a Catagramma- like insect is delightfully reproduced twelve times so as to suggest a double series or "block" of specimens in a cabinet case; and there is a beautiful photograph of a Red Admirable (but "Nymphalidae" is the family to which it belongs, not its genus, which is Vanessa-- my first bit of carping). ALFRED APPEL, JR. Mr. Appel, guest co-editor, writes about my two main works of fiction. His essay "Backgrounds of Lolita" is a superb example of the rare case where art and erudition meet in a shining ridge of specific information (the highest and to me most acceptable function of literary criticism). I would have liked to say more about his findings but modesty (a virtue that the average reviewer especially appreciates in authors) denies me that pleasure. His other piece in this precious collection is "Ada Described." I planted three blunders, meant to ridicule mistranslations of Russian classics, in the first paragraph of my Ada: the opening sentence of Anna Karenin (no additional "a," printer, she was not a ballerina) is turned inside out; Anna Arkadievna's patronymic is given a grotesque masculine ending; and the title of Tolstoy's family chronicle has been botched by the invented Stoner or Lower (I must have received at least a dozen letters with...

6. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Chapter four

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Часть текста: Time was when cool debauch was lauded as the art of love, trumpeting everywhere about itself, 8 taking its pleasure without loving. But that grand game is worthy of old sapajous of our forefathers' vaunted times; 12 the fame of Lovelaces has faded with the fame of red heels and of majestic periwigs. VIII Who does not find it tedious to dissemble; diversely to repeat the same; try gravely to convince one 4 of what all have been long convinced; to hear the same objections, annihilate the prejudices which never had and hasn't 8 a little girl of thirteen years! Who will not grow weary of threats, entreaties, vows, feigned fear, notes running to six pages, 12 betrayals, gossiping, rings, tears, surveillances of aunts, of mothers, and the onerous friendship of husbands! IX Exactly thus my Eugene thought. In his first youth he had been victim of tempestuous errings 4 and of unbridled passions. Spoiled by a habitude of life, with one thing for a while ...

7. The wings of desire

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Часть текста: writings by Vladimir Nabokov; edited by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle (Allen Lane, £25) "From the age of seven, everything I felt in connection with a rectangle of framed sunlight was dominated by a single passion," wrote Vladimir Nabokov. "If my first glance of the morning was for the sun, my first thought was for the butterflies it would engender." It was an unusual way to view the world, and one that not many readers - even those who adore Nabokov - may have fully appreciated. In fact, the ferocity of Nabokov's obsession with butterflies has only just been made clear to general readers with the publication of Nabokov's Butterflies, a fascinating volume of unpublished and uncorrected writings on the subject, edited by the Russian author's tireless biographer and critic Brian Boyd, with Robert Michael Pyle, an expert in butterflies. All translations are, as usual, by Nabokov's son Dmitri, who has lavished time and unusual talent on his father's work over several decades. More than 700 densely printed pages on this subject may strike even the most sympathetic reader as overkill. Does...

8. Интервью Набокова на английском языке. Anonymous, 1962 г.

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Часть текста: three or four journalists interviewed me at the St. Rйgis hotel. I have a little cluster of names jotted down in my pocket diary but am not sure which, if any, refers to that group. The questions and answers were typed from my notes immediately after the interview. Interviewers do not find you a particularly stimulating person. Why is that so? I pride myself on being a person with no public appeal. I have never been drunk in my life. I never use schoolboy words of four letters. I have never worked in an office or in a coal mine. I have never belonged to any club or group. No creed or school has had any influence on me whatsoever. Nothing bores me more than political novels and the literature of social intent. Still there must be things that move you-- likes and dislikes. My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting. You write everything in longhand, don't you? Yes. I cannot type. Would you agree to show us a sample of your rough drafts? I'm afraid I must refuse. Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one's sputum. Do you read many new novels? Why do you laugh? I laugh because well-meaning publishers keep sending me-- with "hope-you-will-like-it-as-much-as-we-do" letters - only one kind of fiction: novels truffled with obscenities, fancy words, and would-be weird incidents. They seem to be all by one and the same writer-- who is not even the shadow of my shadow. What is your opinion of the so-called "anti-novel" in France? I am not interested in groups, movements, schools of writing and so forth. I am interested only in the individual artist. This "anti-novel" does not really exist; but there does exist one great French writer, Robbe-Grillet; his work is grotesquely imitated by a number of banal scribblers whom a phony label assists...

9. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Chapter three

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Часть текста: I see what it is like: first — listen, am I right? — a simple Russian family, 12 a great solicitude for guests, jam, never-ending talk of rain, of flax, of cattle yard.” II “So far I do not see what's bad about it.” “Ah, but the boredom — that is bad, my friend.” “Your fashionable world I hate; 4 dearer to me is the domestic circle in which I can…” “Again an eclogue! Ah, that will do, old boy, for goodness' sake. Well, so you're off; I'm very sorry. 8 Oh, Lenski, listen — is there any way for me to see this Phyllis, subject of thoughts, and pen, and tears, and rhymes, et cetera? 12 Present me.” “You are joking.” “No.” “I'd gladly.” “When?” “Now, if you like. They will be eager to receive us.” III “Let's go.” And off the two friends drove; they have arrived; on them are lavished the sometimes onerous attentions 4 of hospitable ancientry. The ritual of the treat is known: in little dishes jams are brought, on an oilcloth'd small table there is set 8 a jug of lingonberry water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV They by the shortest road ...

10. Интервью Набокова на английском языке. BBC Television, 1962 г.

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Часть текста: and was published in The Listener (November 22, 1962). I have mislaid the cards on which I had written my answers. I suspect that the published text was taken straight from the tape for it teems with inaccuracies. These I have tried to weed out ten years later but was forced to strike out a few sentences here and there when memory refused to restore the sense flawed by defective or improperly mended speech. The poem I quote (with metrical accents added) will be found translated into English in Chapter Two of The Gift, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1963. Would you ever go back to Russia? I will never go back, for the simple reason that all the Russia I need is always with me: literature, language, and my own Russian childhood. I will never return. I will never surrender. And anyway, the grotesque shadow of a police state will not be dispelled in my lifetime. I don't think they know my works there-- oh, perhaps a number of readers exist there in my special secret service, but let us not forget that Russia has grown tremendously provincial during these forty years, apart from the fact that people there are told what to read, what to think. In America I'm happier than in any other country. It is in America that I found my best readers, minds that are closest to mine. I feel intellectually at home in America. It is a second home in the true sense of the word. You're a professional lepidopterist? Yes, I'm interested in the classification, variation, evolution, structure, distribution, habits, of lepidoptera: this sounds very grand, but actually I'm an expert in only a very small group of butterflies. I have contributed several works on butterflies to the various scientific journals-- but I want to repeat that my interest in butterflies is exclusively scientific. Is there any connection with your writing? There is in a general way, because I think that in a work of...

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