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The Library of Dmitri Nabokov
Inscribed and annotated Books by Vladimir Nabokov
09 march 2003 — Sale 05 may 2004, Hôtel des Bergues, Geneva
Book collectors can get very excited over certain books, and the sale of many a great library can create real turmoil in enlightened circles. Then, there are collections of a different kind, the value of which, beyond the usual criteria, is due to the special relationship between the books and their owner. Those books are exceptional. Such is indeed the case with this library. The full measure of its importance will be understood by the fact that, consisting of about one hundred volumes comprising some thirty titles, it does represent a section of world literature.
The sale of Dmitri Nabokov's library is, and will always be, regarded as a historical sale.
After placement of the writer's archives and manuscripts in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library in 1991, this sale is the second and probably last major sale of important documents pertaining to Vladimir Nabokov.
The provenance
of this collection speaks for its authenticity, its cohesion and its exclusive character.
Nabokov seldom signed his presentation copies; most of the signed copies were for his wife and his son Dmitri. Recipient of many of them, and heir to his late mother's books, Dmitri therefore possesses most of the books inscribed by his father – in particular those illustrated with the famous Nabokov butterflies. The same is true of the books from V. Nabokov's personal library, identified by a discreet butterfly sketched on one of the first pages. All the books described herein being part of Dmitri Nabokov's personal collection, their authenticity is beyond all doubt – a welcome certainty since such discreet marks can easily be imitated.
The lives and works of Nabokov
Like Godot or L'Étranger, Lolita was one of those stellar books that suddenly blaze with worldwide glory and propel their author to the very first rank, but cast no light on his other writings. This phenomenon occurs only with truly major writers and highly important books; Lolita is a case in point.
Indeed, Nabokov is one of the great writers of the twentieth century and of Anglo-Saxon literature. Furthermore, he is one of the supreme Russian authors of his century. There is no other instance of a writer responsible for books of such importance in two different languages, an achievement that seems superhuman.
« I am an American author, born in Russia, educated in England where I studied French texts », Nabokov once said. His French writings were few, but their excellence suggests that Vladimir Nabokov might have become a literary virtuoso in three languages, rather than two, in five countries1. He was also an authentic entomologist, discovering two new species of butterflies, and establishing a new taxonomy still valid today. He was an ardent chess player and sportsman. He taught languages, Russian literature and boxing. The Australian scolar Brian Boyd impassioned by Nabokov, set out to write about his life; it took him ten years of his own: 1500 pages in two volumes2. Nabokov married Véra Slonim and they lived together for half a century. They had a son, Dmitri, born in 1934. All three of them always had a close relationship, Dmitri never being away from his parents for long. They worked together, contributing to Vladimir's works till the writer's last days at the Palace-Hotel in Montreux. Vladimir died during the Summer of 1977; Véra followed him in the Spring of 1991. What remains of all this – or, to be more precise, what are the traces that can be found in Dmitri Nabokov's library?
Nabokov is present on every page
Fully aware of his genious and giving the utmost importance to language and the meaning of words, V. Nabokov paid great attention to the translation of his own books. He had a passion for correcting, for changing, for revising. Where Proust's texts were in their definite state when given to the printer, Nabokov would alter his writings long after the books were first printed. Many of the books here bear witness to his never-ending rewriting. In the margins, one finds notes, corrections, translations, often quite long; most of them by V. Nabokov himself, some by Véra or by Dmitri, at Vladimir's behest.
Each of these books therefore is a result of constant change – a unique record of their evolution. Not only in the printed text, but in his personal notations as well, Nabokov himself can be found, on every page.
A large number of Nabokov's annotations pertain to the translation of his own texts. He himself was a translator: from Russian to English and French; from English and sometimes French to Russian. He translated, amongst others, Pushkin, Shakespeare, and Musset. But most of all, Nabokov translated Nabokov. Thus he really knew what translation was all about – or rather, what he considered what it should be, particularly as regards his own texts, which he would sometimes rewrite or write anew. This is stressed in his autobiography, Speak, Memory, the genesis of which took many years, with changes from one language to another, each of those « translations » being not strictly a translation but altogether another text.
On occasion, he would be moderately pleased by the translations provided by his publishers. More often he found translators generally disastrous, declaring that they had, in particular « an overwhelming incompetence for poetry ». « What is translation? On a platter / A poet's pale and glaring head, / A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter, / And profanation of the dead... » (first lines of his poem « On translating Eugene Onegin » in Poems, 1959). Most of the translations were corrected in new revised editions by Vladimir Nabokov himself, or by his son Dmitri, translator of many V. N.'s prose works in collaboration with the author or alone, and currently at work on an anthology of previously untranslated V. N.'s poems. Dmitri was probably the only translator with whom he was fully satisfied, as he emphasized in a number of the dedications.
The corrections and annotations are of great literary and historical importance. However, some of the volumes of Dmitri Nabokov's library do not belong to this category of « working books ». They show the writer's involvment with his work in a more subtle and emotional way, a bond tying together Vladimir, Véra and Dmitri Nabokov; such are, in particular, the volumes with the butterfly dedications.
Véra's and Dmitri's butterflies
Since childhood, through the influence of his parents, Nabokov developed a passion for butterflies. When he was nine years old, he submitted to the University a specimen he thought belonged to an unknown species. He was wrong. But one he submitted some thirty years later was an authentic discovery. By then, few people in the field had a better knowledge than he. Indeed, he had become a well known entomologist, a lepidopterist of international repute, specializing in lycaenidae. The taxonomic denomination of the butterfly he discovered includes his name, as it does in the case of another, later, discovery of his.
Butterflies always represented an essential rather than a marginal part of his activities. Nature was giving him « the same kind of magic [he was searching for] in art: mystification and magic spell intertwined ». If Nabokov's texts appear studded with those « pretty insects », other much rarer butterflies are to be found in some of the books in this collection.
Indeed, a great number of the butterflies Vladimir Nabokov drew when inscribing books to his son and his wife are to be found in Dmitri's library. Some were drawn in ink, others are in colour. Those made for Véra during the last twenty years of his life are probably the most spectacular: they are like highly enameled little creatures with stained-glass wings that might have been touched by a rainbow.
Confronted with such fantasy, the question arises: how realistic are these drawings? Intriguing hybrids of naturalistic realism and sui generis fantasy, they convey Nabokov's idea of creation: « there is no science without imagination; likewise, there is no art that does not rely on facts ». The same principle was applied when giving names to these butterflies: the names are of course imaginary, but in keeping with scientific rules. It is only in these pages, and nowhere else, that the exacting collector will ever find a Colias verae (or, for that matter, a blue Colias), an Armandia wonderlandensis or a Verina raduga. The latter, and a dozen other of these figments, derive from Véra Nabokov's name – in particular the superlative Verina verae dedication.
« à Véra »
These dedications, these butterflies are probably the illustration of a certain concept of art as expressed by Nabokov. But they are also manifestations of a different feeling that can simply be called love; a love that took the form of vivid, touching inventions. A love at a loss to find the right words – a translational problem intensely felt by Nabokov, as was his disdain for « inept sentimental words ». These butterflies seem to convey what Vladimir and Véra shared – a unique and total love.
« I can name a blooming garden in Paris [...] where I noticed, in 1938 or 1939, a quiet girl of ten or so, with a deadpan white face [and] dark, shabby, unseasonable clothes [...] who had deftly tied a live butterfly to a thread and was promenading the pretty, weakly fluttering, slightly crippled insect on that elfish leash [...] » (Speak, Memory, ch. 15).
Every one of Dmitri Nabokov's books bears the precious, intimate and rare imprint of Vladimir Nabokov's genius. They are the writer's legacy to his son, the son who carried on his father's unfinished task of translating and editing. They are offered today to those who can understand their value and their significance. It might be appropriate if the collection were to remain intact as a legacy to world literature; or else, on the contrary, if it were to be scattered, letting Véra's butterflies – and Dmitri's – fly for the first time in all directions.
Alain Nicolas
1 Cf. the introduction to the definitive bibliography that we consulted for preparation of this catalogue: Michael Juliar, Vladimir Nabokov – A Descriptive Bibliography, Garland Publishers, 1986 (with Updates of 1991).
2 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov, Princeton University Press, 1990 et 1991.
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