Nabokov’s Poetic Letters

The TLS review of Vladimir Nabokov’s letters to his wife during her stay in an asylum (Letters to Vera) has some stunning passages. Nabokov can’t keep himself from writing poetry, even in ephemeral letters (or, was he writing in anticipation of future publication?).

He describes a “charming borzoi” who has “ash-blue specks on her forehead (like yesterday’s evening sky).” It’s sporting with “a russet dachshund . . . two long tender snouts prodding each other.”

Here’s Nabokov taking a walk: “I watched the windy cubist reflections of the chestnut shuttlecocks in water. And at Schillstrasse, in an antique shop, I saw an ancient little book, opened on the first page—a journey of some Spaniard to Brazil in 1553. The drawing is charming: the author in knight’s armour—chainmail, cuirass, helmet—all fit and proper—he is riding a llama, and behind him there are natives, palmtrees, a snake around a treetrunk. I can imagine how hot he was. . . . I am wearing my new dovegrey trousers today and the Norfolk jacket.”

Here’s Nabokov talking about weather: “The weather this morning was soso: dullish, but warm, a boiled milk sky, with skin—but if you pushed it aside with a teaspoon, the sun was really nice, so I wore my white trousers.”

Here’s Nabokov looking out the window: “I looked out of the window and saw: a red haired house painter caught a mouse in his wheelbarrow and killed it with the stroke of a brush, then he tossed it in a puddle. The puddle reflected the dark-blue sky, quick black upsilons (reflections of swallows flying high) and the knees of a squatting child, who was attentively studying the little grey round corpse.” That inverted perspective, look at the world from the puddle, and the sudden appearance of knees—that is exquisite.

We wince a little when the author of Lolita watches schoolgirls at play, but, as the editor points out, there’s nothing Humbert about it: “The teacher was clapping her hands, and the schoolgirls—really tiny—were running around and jumping in time. One girl, the littlest one, was always left behind, getting muddled and coughing thinly.”

The Eiffel Tower is “standing in lacy bloomers, with lit-up goosebumps running up her spine.” He tells jokes at the expense of right-wingers: “The zeros realized that in order to become something they had to stand on the right.”

He describes one acquaintance as looking “like a eunuch and also like a chess figure already captured (do you see my point: it stands barely askew on the edge of a little table, immobile and sharply outlined).” Another is “a wasted old tortoise, stretching its old sinewy grey neck with a fold of skin instead of an Adam’s apple and chewing something and waving its dull-eyed ancient head.”

The TLS reviewer reveals that Nabokov was having an affair while Vera was away, and speculates cynically that Nabokov exaggerated the seriousness of his psoriasis to put her off the scent. 

In one letter Nabokov confesses that “art is the only thing that matters in life.” His commitment shows—both in the uncontested beauty of his occasional writings, and in his apparent indifference to everything else, including the wife to whom he writes.