Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 4:58
PM
Subject: RE: Dmitri Nabokov reply to
Aleksei Sklyarenko re ADA's " K.R." (of rozy/beryozy" fame)
Dear Dmitri,
It's not that Van translated from an Antiterran
French version but that VN prepared (or began to prepare) a French version,
as he did elsewhere in his copy, for impending translations into other
languages on Terra. Note that VN notes below his (partly erased) French
version: "in the French version of poems in the book the count of syllables
must correspond to the Russian or Anglo-Russian."
Best wishes,
Brian
EDNOTE: Dmitri
Nabokov here responds to Aleksi Sklyarenko's message of Nov 15 that is
appended below.
----------------------------------
Dear
Alex,
Bravo for identifying Konstantin Romanov.
Van apparently did translate from a French version, which Father wrote out
by hand on p. 265 of his personal copy of the McGraw-Hill edition. There
are a number of his explanatory notes in that volume, and, in my copy,
many emendations based on his jottings, as well as my carefully pondered
corrections of obvious typos and occasional lapses in view of the Vintage
edition. My corrections and the ones Brian did almost contemporaneously
for the anthology do not always agree. As I recall, he published a note on
this matter in THE NABOKOVIAN.