Biography of Vera Nabokova

She liked to be Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, he liked to be in a convenient mask - and in the end, many did not even know where she was from. There were rumors that Vera was a Frenchwoman, an Englishwoman, a German ... She in every possible way sought to delete herself from history, and she partially succeeded. But not completely. She destroyed all her letters to her husband of his letters preserved her, she talked little with the press - until the death of Nabokov, journalists almost without exception communicated with him, and after a year she became less and less forces, and the desire to communicate.

Vera Slonim was born in St. Petersburg on January 5, her father Evsey Lazarevich was a wealthy lawyer. He died in the year in Berlin, in the same year and the city as mother - Glory to Borisovna. The parents of Vera were from the present Belarus - from Shklov and Mogilev; They got married a few days after the birth of their future son -in -law - on April 16, Nabokov was born on April 10; Everything is according to the old style.

By the time of the forced departure from Russia, Vera had not worked anywhere - she only studied. They had to go through a lot, including because of Jewry. The Nabokov followed a different route and overcame completely different circumstances. Vera in Berlin at first worked with her father in the office, he was engaged in trade, and then in the publishing house.

It seems that this happened on a spring evening on a bridge in Berlin. According to legend, Vera was in a carnival mask - which gave the mystery to their meeting. Vera was a young slender beauty with shining eyes and curly hair, who already knew Nabokov’s poems and admired them. How to resist? And why? She knew how to speak just as beautifully. However, Vladimir answered her no less magnificent.

Well, a well -known fact: Nabokov dedicated almost all his novels to Vera - although it was much later. Exclusively due to the generosity and wisdom of faith, their union survived his infidelity - when Vladimir was carried away by Irina Guadanini, Vera solved the problem, simply ignoring it. But they had to survive much more difficult things: poverty, anti-Semitism and related problems in society and with the search for work and dismissal, uncertainty in tomorrow, Nazi times, wanderings in Europe and America, while they were not able to gain at least some stability.

And although the Nabokovs really hated a cliche, they were a living embodiment of one of them: behind every outstanding man there is an outstanding woman. Nabokov himself said that without his wife he would not have written a single novel. Probably, he would still write something, but in the end he would be confused in life and would end his days very ingloriously. From the very beginning, Vera took upon herself all practical issues in which her husband was very weak: from negotiations with the owners of apartments to work by a secretary.

She managed to find time for recruiting Nabokov's manuscripts. When Vladimir began to teach in the United States, Vera helped him draw up plans for lectures, tests, and she even conducted classes herself when Nabokov was ill. As the number of publications of Nabokov increased, and, in particular, after the success of Lolita, Vera ruled all the affairs of her husband - she concluded contracts, convinced the publishers to increase the fees, she still remembered that life could destroy at any moment, and she had to be ready, controlled payments, carefully monitored tax affairs, wrote on his behalf of them below, and even drove the car himself - he himself drove himself.

Nabokov never did this; He also said that he did not know how to open an umbrella and use the phone, Vera did it-probably this is still his own exaggeration. Some of the researchers even wrote that Vera as a Jewish partially followed the Jewish tradition, according to which the main duty of his wife was to assist her husband in the study of the Torah ...

Naturally, Vera was always the first reader of Nabokov, she edited his texts when he only finished them in every possible way denied her participation in this process, and, perhaps, the most important thing: she persuaded Vladimir not to abandon Lolita, whose casm At least twice touched to destroy. Vera also took a great part in the publication of the book. Before the publication of Lolita, Nabokov chronically lacked money, and they moved from one rented apartment to another.

For the same reason as in Europe, Vera used her knowledge of languages-in German she spoke perfectly, in French-almost perfectly. With English, she had to be more complicated - for the first time, unlike her husband, she seriously encountered this language already in the USA, at the turn of the fifth decade. Vera gave French lessons, and also worked as a secretary for several teachers of foreign languages.

It is unnecessary to say that her Russian language was perfect - she knew hundreds of poems by heart, including her husband’s poems, the perfection of her Russian was not in this, but this perfectly complemented him. Many people know that throughout his life Vera and Vladimir did not have their own home. In such circumstances, and understanding them well, perhaps Vera decided to focus on a joint project with her husband: the writer “Vladimir Nabokov”.About the university work of Nabokov.

His lectures have been published for quite some time, but there are no phrases that are well described in the audiences: “Now my assistant is suitable for the board ...”, “Perhaps my assistant will find the right page for me ...” Vera was present at his lectures, as they say, constantly. Admiring her appearance, a slender, thin -sized, with a young face, albeit gray lush hair, “the most beautiful middle -aged woman I saw” - according to one of the students, they treated her role with some perplexity.

They were once asked the question: what did she do in the classroom could not be noticed: she sat either in the front row, or, more often, on an elevation to the left of her husband? In the circle of Nabokov lovers, these answers are widely known, here they are in translation:-Ms. Nabokov here to remind us that we are in the presence of a genius and should not abuse this privilege through our inattention.

In addition, several former students admitted that they smiled at Ms. Nabokova, believing that such goodwill would affect their final assessments. The crack in a benevolent picture, many noted that the topic of duality, doubles, alter ego, eternal pseudonym-anagrams of Adam von Libikov, Vivian Calmbrood and many others found the embodiment not only in books, but also in the genuine life of Vladimir Nabokov-at least in relations with his wife.

Their brains were interconnected, sobbed, they were almost Siamese twins. Once, when asked why they did not start pets, Nabokov replied that he could not share his wife even with a cat or dog. Perhaps, for the same reason, their son - whom they, of course, loved very much, whom they cared about in every possible way - did not give special importance to their marriage.

About letters. Vera wrote for Vladimir, but sometimes Vladimir wrote for faith giving “her” letters to her for the signature. This was the standard postscript: “Vladimir began this letter, but he had to hurry to switch to something else, and he asked me to continue.” Vera regularly had to explain to the relatives whose letters she answered, and whose - Vladimir.

Since the correspondence was carried out not by Nabokov, in the end, a completely different creature arose in the letters, unlike who Vladimir actually was. For more than half a century, Vera followed Vladimir like a shadow, fulfilling all his desires and whims, including, as they say, replacing wheels by car, campaigns in the store and carrying bags. But do not think that she was deprived of her own personality, desires or opinions.

A benevolent picture, of course, is careful for a careful examination. For outsiders, not “their own”, faith was wayward, arrogant, self -confident and demanding.

As they said, she had neither a sense of humor, nor a sense of proportion, nor a sense of tact - more precisely, to feel all this, it was necessary to become “my own”. Faith was not shy about making minced meat from those who did not please Vladimir, which means to her. Edmund Wilson wrote that faith is always on the side of Vladimir and begins to “bristle” when someone simply enters into an innocent-not fierce-dispute.

She did not hesitate to tell reporters a lie, if she considered it necessary, and once even to a simple question - “how did you meet” - replied that she did not remember, and to clarify herbidly attempting to the journalist: “Are you from the KGB? The first translation of Nabokov’s novel “Pale Fire” into Russian was made by our contemporary, an outstanding poet Alexei Tsvetkov, but a translation was released by the signature of Vera Nabokova.

When the publisher approved the work, I contacted Nabokov’s widow faithfully. During this correspondence, the editing reached such a size that I refused to sign the translation with my name. As a result, all the work was transferred to another person, and in the end the book came out as a translation of Vera Nabokova. ” Perhaps she did not suspect her reputation in the eyes of others, but even if she knew, she definitely did not care.

Whose life did she live? Vera devoted a lot of time to work on Vladimir. She was exhausted by countless epistolary. In addition, she said that Nabokov himself was not interested in his affairs, she had to make decisions and it was the most difficult, and she mentioned that when their son was very small, she did not receive any help - and still, back in Berlin times, she had much easier.

Sometimes she did some literary work-for example, translated poems for her husband. But this did not bring pleasure, because she did it not directly at her request, but because her husband needed so. Once, once in X, a certain critic, knowing about her working position, gave her advice: to declare a strike to improve working conditions. According to his idea, Vera should have passed with a picket in front of the Montreyo Palace hotel, where they lived for the past 17 years, carrying a poster: “V.

But, of course, Vera did not. She brilliantly learned to live not her life, and no one really asked what she was thinking about all this.Although, after the death of her husband, she wrote that work on his huge heritage - which did not stop even after a year, or maybe only intensified - she made her, lonely, unhealthy and, frankly, rather advanced years, happy and necessary.

It came to the point that the wives of other writers were asked why they did not correspond to the “standard of faith” - with her self -denial, she, it seems, created a lot of problems for them. On the one hand, on the third or fourth, she was the main, indispensable and full -fledged creative partner of one of the most outstanding writers of the 20th century, and she understood this well, and adhered to this opinion and held on to him all six and a half decades from the moment of their acquaintance and before she was departed.

This made sense to everything that she experienced - both herself, and with him. She, as one of the journalists wrote, was not in her husband’s shadow - she was in his light. Was the faith in the texts of Nabokov - with the exception of initiations and some romantic poems? The question is literary, complex and ambiguous. Many studies are devoted to this topic. Rather, we can talk about its influence on entire texts, and not about its display in any of the characters.

Probably, this can be called the "work" of the Muse in the literal sense of the word. Vera clearly appears in the story “Sounds”: “You had sharp elbows and pale, as if pollinated, eyes. When she spoke - she cut the air with a roar of her hand, the brilliance of the bracelet on a thin brush. Your hair passed, melting into the sunny air, trembling around them.

" But this is a year, the very beginning. There was Zina in the novel “Gift”, but Vera categorically denied the resemblance, either in a joke, or seriously arguing that Zina was half a Jewish, and she was “whole”. In this, she also followed her husband who refuted his resemblance to one or another character, indicating that he incorrectly identified the butterfly or speaks better than French in German.

There were small episodic characters and parallels with their life and relationships and in other texts. Gradually, the forces left faith. She died in Switzerland in the year, and this, of course, in a certain sense was a relief for her: there were few forces, their relatives around - their son Dmitry also did not have their children. The New York Times was entitled by the necrologist “Wife, Muse, Agent”.

Perhaps, referring to the nuance with driving by the faith of the car, the obituary could be called the “Nabokov’s steering wheel”-which would simultaneously give a reference to its status in marriage and the newspaper “The steering wheel”, which was founded by V. Nabokov in Berlin, her Svoror, Father V. Vera was an ideal assistant, but not Nabokov-writer, but a person who hated vulgarity, but his whole essence, he hated vulgarity, banality and cliche.

Their marriage, their relationship, their duet became a unique work of art.