"A Bad Day" (ent.i.tled in Russian "Obida," the lexical meaning of which is "offense," "mortification," etc.) was written in Berlin in the summer of 1931. It appeared in the emigre daily Poslednie Novosti (Paris, July 12, 1931) and was included in my collection Soglyadatay (Paris, 1938), with a dedication to Ivan Bunin. The little boy of the story, though living in much the same surroundings as those of my own childhood, differs in several ways from my remembered self, which is really split here among three lads, Peter, Vladimir, and Vasiliy.
V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976
THE VISIT TO THE MUSEUM.
"The Visit to the Museum" (Poseshchenie muzeya) appeared in the emigre review Sovremennyya Zapiski, LXVIII, Paris, 1939, and in my collection Vesna v Fialte, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1959. The present English translation came out in Esquire, March 1963, and was included in Nabokov"s Quartet, Phaedra, New York, 1966.
One explanatory note may be welcomed by non-Russian readers. At one point the unfortunate narrator notices a shop sign and realizes he is not in the Russia of his past, but in the Russia of the Soviets. What gives that shop sign away is the absence of the letter that used to decorate the end of a word after a consonant in old Russia but is omitted in the reformed orthography adopted by the Soviets today.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
A BUSY MAN.
The Russian original ("Zanyatoy chelovek"), written in Berlin between September 17 and 26, 1931, appeared on October 20 in the emigre daily Poslednie Novosti, Paris, and was included in the collection Soglyadatay, Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938.
V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976
TERRA INCOGNITA.
The Russian original of "Terra Incognita" appeared under the same t.i.tle in Poslednie Novosti, Paris, November 22, 1931, and was reprinted in my collection Soglyadatay, Paris, 1938. The present English translation was published in The New Yorker, May 18, 1963.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
THE REUNION.
Written in Berlin in December 1931, published in January 1932 under the t.i.tle "Vstrecha" (Meeting) in the emigre daily Poslednie Novosti, Paris, and collected in Soglyadatay, Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938.
V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976
LIPS TO LIPS.
Mark Aldanov, who was closer than I to the Poslednie Novosti (with which I conducted a lively feud throughout the 1930s), informed me, sometime in 1931 or 1932, that at the last moment, this story, "Lips to Lips" (Usta k ustam), which finally had been accepted for publication, would not be printed after all. "Razbili nabor" ("They broke up the type"), my friend muttered gloomily. It was published only in 1956, by the Chekhov Publishing House, New York, in my collection Vesna v Fialte, by which time everybody who might have been suspected of remotely resembling the characters in the story was safely and heirlessly dead. Esquire published the present translation in its September 1971 issue.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
ORACHE.
"Lebeda" was first published in Poslednie Novosti, Paris, January 31, 1932; collected in Soglyadatay, Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938. Lebeda is the plant Atriplex. Its English name, orache, by a miraculous coincidence, renders in its written form the "ili beda," "or ache," suggested by the Russian t.i.tle. Through the rearranged patterns of the story, readers of my Speak, Memory will recognize many details of the final section of chapter 9, Speak, Memory, Putnam"s, New York, 1966. Amid the mosaic of fiction there are some real memories not represented in Speak, Memory, such as the pa.s.sages about the teacher "Berezovski" (Berezin, a popular geographer of the day), including the fight with the school bully. The place is St. Petersburg, the time around 1910.
V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976
MUSIC.
"Muzyka," a trifle singularly popular with translators, was written at the beginning of 1932, in Berlin. It appeared in the Paris emigre daily Poslednie Novosti (March 27, 1932) and in the collection of my stories Soglyadatay, published by the Russkiya Zapiski firm, in Paris, 1938.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
PERFECTION.
"Sovershenstvo" was written in Berlin in June 1932. It appeared in the Paris daily Poslednie Novosti (July 3, 1932) and was included in my collection Soglyadatay, Paris, 1938. Although I did tutor boys in my years of expatriation, I disclaim any other resemblance between myself and Ivanov.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
THE ADMIRALTY SPIRE.
Although various details of the narrator"s love affair match in one way or another those found in my autobiographical works, it should be firmly borne in mind that the "Katya" of the present story is an invented girl. The "Admiralteyskaya igla" was written in May 1933, in Berlin, and serialized in Poslednie Novosti, Paris, in the issues of June 4 and 5 of that year. It was collected in Vesna v Fialte, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1956.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
THE LEONARDO.
"The Leonardo" (Korolyok) was composed in Berlin, on the piney Links of the Grunewald Lake, in the summer of 1933. First published in Poslednie rouvosti, Paris, July 23 and 24, 1933. Collected in Vesna v Fialte, New York, 1956.
Korolyok (literally: kinglet) is, or is supposed to be, a Russian cant term for "counterfeiter." I am deeply indebted to Professor Stephen Jan Parker for suggesting a corresponding American underground slang word which delightfully glitters with the kingly gold dust of the Old Master"s name. Hitler"s grotesque and ferocious shadow was falling on Germany at the time I imagined those two brutes and my poor Romantovski.
The English translation appeared in Vogue, April, 1973.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
IN MEMORY OF L. I. SHIGAEV.
Andrew Field in his bibliography of my works says he has not been able to ascertain the exact date for "Pamyati L. I. Shigaeva," written in the early 1930s in Berlin, and published probably in Poslednie Novosti. I am practically sure that I wrote it in the beginning of 1934. My wife and I were sharing with her cousin, Anna Feigin, the latter"s charming flat in a corner house (Number 22) of Nestorstra.s.se, Berlin, Grunewald (where Invitation to a Beheading and most of The Gift were composed). The rather attractive, small devils in the story belong to a subspecies described there for the first time.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
THE CIRCLE.
By the middle of 1936, not long before leaving Berlin forever and finishing Dar (The Gift) in France, I must have completed at least four-fifths of its last chapter when at some point a small satellite separated itself from the main body of the novel and started to revolve around it. Psychologically, the separation may have been sparked either by the mention of Tanya"s baby in her brother"s letter or by his recalling the village schoolmaster in a doomful dream. Technically, the circle which the present corollary describes (its last sentence existing implicitly before its first one) belongs to the same serpent-biting-its-tail type as the circular structure of the fourth chapter in Dar (or, for that matter, Finnegans Wake, which it preceded). A knowledge of the novel is not required for the enjoyment of the corollary which has its own orbit and colored fire, but some practical help may be derived from the reader"s knowing that the action of The Gift starts on April 1, 1926, and ends on June 29, 1929 (spanning three years in the life of Fyodor G.o.dunov-Cherdyntsev, a young emigre in Berlin); that his sister"s marriage takes place in Paris at the end of 1926; and that her daughter is born three years later, and is only seven in June 1936, and not "around ten," as Innokentiy, the schoolmaster"s son, is permitted to a.s.sume (behind the author"s back) when he visits Paris in "The Circle." It may be added that the story will produce upon readers who are familiar with the novel a delightful effect of oblique recognition, of shifting shades enriched with new sense, owing to the world"s being seen not through the eyes of Fyodor, but through those of an outsider less close to him than to old Russia"s idealistic radicals (who, let it be said in pa.s.sing, were to loathe Bolshevist tyranny as much as liberal aristocrats did).
"Krug" was published in 1936, in Paris, but the exact date and periodical (presumably, Poslednie Novosti) have not yet been established in bibliographic retrospect. It was reprinted twenty years later in the collection of my short stories Vesna v Fialte, Chekhov Publishing House, New York, 1956.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
A RUSSIAN BEAUTY.
"A Russian Beauty" (Krasavitsa) is an amusing miniature, with an unexpected solution. The original text appeared in the emigre daily Poslednie Novosti, Paris, August 18, 1934, and was included in Soglyadatay, the collection of the author"s stories published by Russkiya Zapiski, Paris, 1938. The English translation appeared in Esquire in April, 1973.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
BREAKING THE NEWS.