"Some curious additional information might be
given if I took myself more seriously." (VN, 1963,
Montreux)
In the Foreword to "The Defense" Nabokov informs that he started to
write the novel in the Spring of 1929 and finished it in December 1929 (Berlin).
The Foreword was written in Dec.1963. Zashchita
Luzhina under my penname, 'V. Sirin,' ran in the émigré Russian quarterly
Sovremennye Zapiski (Paris) and immediately afterwards was brought out in book
form by the émigré publishing house Slovo (Berlin, 1930). That paper-bound
edition, 234 pp., 21 by 4 cm., jacket a solid dull black with gilt lettering, is
now rare and may grow even rarer...Poor Luzhin has had to wait thirty-five years
for an English-language edition.
How are we to calculate the time lapse between this novel's appearance in
Russian and in English? There is a neat indication that the numbers derive
from the finished draft, in December 1929, and the December 1963 English
foreword, mentioning a 35 years lapse of time (which then would have
had to be 34). However, his.wording dimissing these
limits is clear. We read that Nabokov is counting the interval
that separates the Paris and Berlin editions (1930) and the English
Foreword (but then, we'd get 33 years???). Or else, the limits start
with its definite publication in English, in 1964 (original manuscript,1929
- final edition in English, 1964 - 35 years) and his forweword
inserting a prophetic vision of the planned
19464 edition.
For me there's never any "safety in numbers," (I try my best...)
and this is why these conundrums could be examined
by mathematical-minded readers who want to discover what kind of
"unseriousness" Nabokov's foreword is alluding to..