The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Part 43

"The Fight" (Draka) appeared in Rul' on September 26, 1925; in the current collections; in a French translation by Gilles Barbedette; and in my English translation in The New Yorker on February 18, 1985.

D.N.

THE RETURN OF CHORB.

First published in two issues of the Russian emigre Rul' (Berlin), November 12 and 13, 1925. Reprinted in the collection Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

An English version by Gleb Struve ("The Return of Tchorb" by Vladimir Sirin) appeared in the anthology This Quarter (vol. 4, no. 4, June 1932), published in Paris by Edw. W. t.i.tus. After rereading that version forty years later I was sorry to find it too tame in style and too inaccurate in sense for my present purpose. I have retranslated the story completely in collaboration with my son.

It was written not long after my novel Mashen'ka (Mary) was finished and is a good example of my early constructions. The place is a small town in Germany half a century ago. I notice that the road from Nice to Gra.s.se where I imagined poor Mrs. Chorb walking was still unpaved and chalky with dust around 1920. I have skipped her mother's ponderous name and patronymic "Varvara Klimovna," which would have meant nothing to my Anglo-American readers.

V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976

A GUIDE TO BERLIN.

Written in December 1925 in Berlin, Putevoditel' po Berlinu was published in Rul', December 24, 1925, and collected in Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

Despite its simple appearance, this "Guide" is one of my trickiest pieces. Its translation has caused my son and me a tremendous amount of healthy trouble. Two or three scattered phrases have been added for the sake of factual clarity.

V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976

A NURSERY TALE.

"A Nursery Tale" (Skazka) was written in Berlin in late May or early June 1926, and serialized in the emigre daily Rul' (Berlin), in the issues of June 27 and 29 of that year. It was reprinted in my Vozvrashchenie Chorba collection, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

A rather artificial affair, composed a little hastily, with more concern for the tricky plot than for imagery and good taste, it required some revamping here and there in the English version. Young Erwin's harem, however, has remained intact. I had not reread my "Skazka" since 1930 and, when working now at its translation, was eerily startled to meet a somewhat decrepit but unmistakable Humbert escorting his nymphet in the story I wrote almost half a century ago.

V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975

TERROR.

"Uzhas" was written in Berlin, around 1926, one of the happiest years of my life. The Sovremennya Zapiski, the Paris emigre magazine, published it in 1927 and it was included in the first of my three collections of Russian stories, Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. It preceded Sartre's La Nausee, with which it shares certain shades of thought, and none of that novel's fatal defects, by at least a dozen years.

V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975

RAZOR.

"Razor" (Britva) first appeared in Rul' on September 16, 1926. Mashen'ka (Mary), Nabokov's first novel, would be published approximately one month later. It was printed, in a French translation by Laurence Doll, in the introductory volume of the Dutch "Nabokov Library" (De Bezige Bij, 1991), and now in the current collections.

D.N.

THE Pa.s.sENGER.

"Pa.s.sazhir" was written in early 1927 in Berlin, published in Rul', Berlin, March 6, 1927, and included in the collection Vozvrashchenie Chorba, by V. Sirin, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. An English translation by Gleb Struve appeared in Lovat d.i.c.kson's Magazine, edited by P. Gilchrist Thompson (with my name on the cover reading V. n.o.bokov [sic]-Sirin), vol. 2, no. 6, London, June 1934. It was reprinted in A Century of Russian Prose and Verse from Pushkin to Nabokov, edited by O. R. and R. P. Hughes and G. Struve, with the original en regard, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1967. I was unable to use Struve's version in this volume for the same reasons that made me forgo his "Tchorb's Return" (see Introduction to it).

The "writer" in the story is not a self-portrait but the generalized image of a middlebrow author. The "critic," however, is a friendly sketch of a fellow emigre, Yuliy Ayhenvald, the well-known literary critic (18721928). Readers of the time recognized his precise, delicate little gestures and his fondness for playing with euphonically twinned phrases in his literary comments. By the end of the story everybody seems to have forgotten about the burnt match in the winegla.s.s-something I would not have allowed to happen today.

V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976

THE DOORBELL.

The reader will be sorry to learn that the exact date of the publication of this story ["The Doorbell" (Zvonok)] has not been established. It certainly appeared in Rul', Berlin, probably in 1927, and was republished in the Vozvrashchenie Chorba collection, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.

V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976

AN AFFAIR OF HONOR.

"An Affair of Honor" appeared under the t.i.tle "Podlets" (The Cur), in the emigre daily Rul', Berlin, around 1927, and was included in my first collection, Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. The present translation was published in The New Yorker, September 3, 1966, and was included in Nabokov's Quartet, Phaedra, New York, 1966.

The story renders in a drab expatriate setting a belated variation on the romantic theme whose decline started with Chekhov's magnificent novella Single Combat (1891).

V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973

THE CHRISTMAS STORY.

"The Christmas Story" (Rozhdestvenskiy ra.s.skaz) appeared in Rul', December 25, 1928, and now in the current collections. In September 1928 Nabokov had published Korol', dama, valet (King, Queen, Knave).

The story mentions several writers: the peasant-born Neverov (the pseudonym of Aleksandr Skobelev, 18861923); the "social realist" Maksim Gorky (18681936); the "populist" Vladimir Korolenko (18531921); the "decadent" Leonid Andreyev (18711919); and the "neo-realist" Evgeniy Chirikov (18641923).

D.N.

THE POTATO ELF.

This is the first faithful translation of "Kartofel'nyy el'f," written in 1929 in Berlin, published there in the emigre daily Rul' (December 15, 17, 18, and 19, 1929) and included in Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930, a collection of my stories. A very different English version (by Serge Bertenson and Irene Kosinska), full of mistakes and omissions, appeared in Esquire, December 1939, and has been reprinted in an anthology (The Single Voice, Collier, London, 1969).

Although I never intended the story to suggest a screenplay or to fire a scriptwriter's fancy, its structure and recurrent pictorial details do have a cinematic slant. Its deliberate introduction results in certain conventional rhythms-or in a pastiche of such rhythms. I do not believe, however, that my little man can move even the most lachrymose human-interest fiend, and this redeems the matter.

Another aspect separating "The Potato Elf" from the rest of my short stories is its British setting. One cannot rule out thematic automatism in such cases, yet on the other hand this curious exoticism (as being different from the more familiar Berlin background of my other stories) gives the thing an artificial brightness which is none too displeasing; but all in all it is not my favorite piece, and if I include it in this collection it is only because the act of retranslating it properly is a precious personal victory that seldom falls to a betrayed author's lot.

V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973 The story was actually first published in Russkoye Ekho in April, 1924. It was reprinted in Rul' in 1929.

D.N.

THE AURELIAN.

"The Aurelian" (1930) is from Nabokov's Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).

A DAs.h.i.+NG FELLOW.

"A Das.h.i.+ng Fellow," "Khvat" in Russian, was first published in the early 1930s. The two leading emigre papers, Rul' (Berlin) and Poslednie Novosti (Paris), rejected it as improper and brutal. It appeared in SeG.o.dnya (Riga), exact date to be settled, and in 1938 was included in my collection of short stories Soglyadatay (Russkiya Zapiski, Paris). The present translation appeared in Playboy for December 1971.

V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973

A BAD DAY.