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VERA Review/Clarence Brown in Seattle Times
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Book brings Nabokov's wife out of shadows
by Clarence Brown
Special to The Seattle Times
That this exhaustively researched and well-written biography should even
exist seems more than might reasonably be expected. Vladimir Nabokov would
simply not have been the person or the writer that we know by that name
had he never made Vera Slonim his wife. And yet Vera, this essential
component of the complex phenomenon known as Nabokov, did everything
possible to make herself invisible, to deflect attention, to confound
those who would praise or even acknowledge her. To undertake her biography
would seem as promising a project as to photograph a regret or to
fingerprint an ambition. Yet Stacy Schiff's splendid book not only exists
but is also an absorbing, often wildly amusing, and deeply moving
narrative.
The greatest of obstacles that the author faced must have been, first, to
discern the faint presence always in the near vicinity of the blinding
radiance of Vladimir, and then to write about that presence rather than
about the radiance that both lit and obscured it.
This obstacle Schiff has not entirely overcome. Some will feel for pages
at a time that Vera is suddenly remembered much in the way a kind hostess
seeks to draw into the talk around the table some shy provincial among her
guests. She contributes a word or two and then falls silent again, while
all attention returns to the lion of the evening. But once the reader has
grasped the fact that, after a certain
point, to say "Nabokov" is inevitably to mean "Vera and Vladimir," the
apparent fault fades to nothing.
Vladimir Nabokov stemmed from that rarest of Russian social classes, the
liberal aristocracy. They wished the Czar's absolutism to be curbed by a
Constitution, and they regarded anti-Semites of any rank as not only
morally wrong but also beneath social notice. (Nabokov's father was shot
to death in Berlin by a monarchist assassin.) The wife that Vladimir chose
from the large Russian colony of exiles in Berlin in 1925 was Jewish.
Ordinary Russian bigots, especially those with titles, could not have been
more appalled. Vera was followed all her life by spiteful charges of
having estranged her husband from the Russian language and from Russia.
To all appearances, Vera is absent even from "Speak, Memory," Nabokov's
great autobiography. But her absence is apparent only. The book is
dedicated to her and (though speed readers might miss it) the passages
addressed to "you" are directly addressed to Vera. Every book was
dedicated to Vera, read to her in drafts, dictated to her as she sat at
the typewriter, and proofread by her. Using her four languages,
she even vetted all the translations she could.
She was, in short, his audience. "To Vera" at the opening of every book
must be taken with the utmost literalness. She was the addressee.
She has often been called his muse. That is fanciful and meaningless, but
addressee is the concrete person without whom no act of communication
occurs. Anyone who has spent his life in speaking to large rooms full of
people will understand to what extent the audience shapes the lecture.
Things you'd planned to say suddenly become unsayable; things of which
you'd been unaware fall from your lips to astonish you more than anyone.
Vera's mere listening to "Lolita" did more than we shall ever know to
determine what we read when we read "Lolita."
Her relationship to Nabokov's greatest novel is complex and unending. When
news of its subject leaked out, the presence at his side of a strikingly
beautiful wife deflected suspicions of pedophilia. When Nabokov, in
despair that a book with that subject could ever be published, was on his
way to burn the manuscript in a trash can in Ithaca, she wrestled it from
him. And once it had been published, it was Vera's tireless if invisible
hucksterism that made it a huge success and liberated them both from
penury. Best sellers seldom result, and then only in part, from
literary merit. Luck is also needed. Vera was "Lolita's" luck.
by Clarence Brown
Special to The Seattle Times
That this exhaustively researched and well-written biography should even
exist seems more than might reasonably be expected. Vladimir Nabokov would
simply not have been the person or the writer that we know by that name
had he never made Vera Slonim his wife. And yet Vera, this essential
component of the complex phenomenon known as Nabokov, did everything
possible to make herself invisible, to deflect attention, to confound
those who would praise or even acknowledge her. To undertake her biography
would seem as promising a project as to photograph a regret or to
fingerprint an ambition. Yet Stacy Schiff's splendid book not only exists
but is also an absorbing, often wildly amusing, and deeply moving
narrative.
The greatest of obstacles that the author faced must have been, first, to
discern the faint presence always in the near vicinity of the blinding
radiance of Vladimir, and then to write about that presence rather than
about the radiance that both lit and obscured it.
This obstacle Schiff has not entirely overcome. Some will feel for pages
at a time that Vera is suddenly remembered much in the way a kind hostess
seeks to draw into the talk around the table some shy provincial among her
guests. She contributes a word or two and then falls silent again, while
all attention returns to the lion of the evening. But once the reader has
grasped the fact that, after a certain
point, to say "Nabokov" is inevitably to mean "Vera and Vladimir," the
apparent fault fades to nothing.
Vladimir Nabokov stemmed from that rarest of Russian social classes, the
liberal aristocracy. They wished the Czar's absolutism to be curbed by a
Constitution, and they regarded anti-Semites of any rank as not only
morally wrong but also beneath social notice. (Nabokov's father was shot
to death in Berlin by a monarchist assassin.) The wife that Vladimir chose
from the large Russian colony of exiles in Berlin in 1925 was Jewish.
Ordinary Russian bigots, especially those with titles, could not have been
more appalled. Vera was followed all her life by spiteful charges of
having estranged her husband from the Russian language and from Russia.
To all appearances, Vera is absent even from "Speak, Memory," Nabokov's
great autobiography. But her absence is apparent only. The book is
dedicated to her and (though speed readers might miss it) the passages
addressed to "you" are directly addressed to Vera. Every book was
dedicated to Vera, read to her in drafts, dictated to her as she sat at
the typewriter, and proofread by her. Using her four languages,
she even vetted all the translations she could.
She was, in short, his audience. "To Vera" at the opening of every book
must be taken with the utmost literalness. She was the addressee.
She has often been called his muse. That is fanciful and meaningless, but
addressee is the concrete person without whom no act of communication
occurs. Anyone who has spent his life in speaking to large rooms full of
people will understand to what extent the audience shapes the lecture.
Things you'd planned to say suddenly become unsayable; things of which
you'd been unaware fall from your lips to astonish you more than anyone.
Vera's mere listening to "Lolita" did more than we shall ever know to
determine what we read when we read "Lolita."
Her relationship to Nabokov's greatest novel is complex and unending. When
news of its subject leaked out, the presence at his side of a strikingly
beautiful wife deflected suspicions of pedophilia. When Nabokov, in
despair that a book with that subject could ever be published, was on his
way to burn the manuscript in a trash can in Ithaca, she wrestled it from
him. And once it had been published, it was Vera's tireless if invisible
hucksterism that made it a huge success and liberated them both from
penury. Best sellers seldom result, and then only in part, from
literary merit. Luck is also needed. Vera was "Lolita's" luck.