Dear Nabokovians,

Vladimir Nabokov suffered from the skin disease psoriasis. I really do not know how severe his complaints were. In February 1937 Nabokov suffered a bad attack (Boyd, The Russian Years). On May 15 of that year, he wrote to Véra: `I continue with the radiation treatments every day and am pretty much cured. You know - now I can tell you frankly - the indescribable torments I endured in February, before these treatments, drove me to the border of suicide - a border I was not authorized to cross because I had you in my luggage.'  He went sunbathing a lot as did `radiation therapies' (Selected Letters).  Boyd mentions one more exacerbation of psoriasis, which occurred in the late sixties when the strain of writing ‘Ada’ fell from Nabokov's shoulders. (Boyd, The American Years).

How about his fiction? Nabokov devotes one page, all‑in‑all, to the disease, in ‘Ada’. He mentions `a spectacular skin disease that had been portrayed recently by a famous American novelist in his Chiron and described in side-splitting style by a co-sufferer who wrote essays for a London weekly'. With this famous writer Nabokov refers to Updike and his novel The centaur; the essayist of the a London weekly is hitherto unknown (as far as I know). The two psoriasis patients in Ada exchange notes with tips: `Mercury!' or `Höhensonne works wonders'. Other pieces of advice are found in a one‑volume encyclopedia, and involve taking hot baths at least twice a month and avoiding spices. A doctor describes these patients as `Crimson-blotched, silver-scaled, yellow-crusted wretches, harmless psoriatics'. The narrator is less pathetic and speaks of `meek martyrs'.

And in ‘Pale Fire’ psoriasis is attributed to Shade’s daughter who has ‘psoriatic fingernails’ (Pale Fire, 355).

My question is: are there other references to psoriasis in Nabokov’s fiction or non-fiction? The reason why I ask this is a keen interest in the disease. Some years ago I published an article on ‘Literature and psoriasis’ (British Medical Journal 1997:1709-1711), including the above Nabokov references. Now I am reworking this material for a booklet on the same theme. Therefore I am very eager to know whether I missed certain phrases on the disease by Nabokov.

Thanks in advance.

Frans Meulenberg

Erasmus University / Medical Center

Department of Philosophy, medical ethics and history