At His Futile Preoccupations, Guy Savage, reviewing The Ladies of St. Petersburg, by Russian émigré Nina Berberova, writes:
I read a few articles that stated that while Nabokov is considered the greatest Russian emigre writer, Nina Berberova is also one of the greats.
From Brian Boyd's Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, page 392:
In anticipation of Sirin's visit Khodasevich had invited Nina Berberova, along with other young writers, Yuri Terapiano, Vladimir Smolensky, and Vladimir Weidle. In her memoirs Berberova recalled the conversation that day between host and guest of honor as the prototype of Fyodor's imaginary talks with his fellow writer Koncheyev in The Gift. Nabokov denied the identification, and undoubtedly he was right. Two days later he called at Berberova's, where he met Yuri Felzen, a young prose-writer and Sirin admirer. Although he liked Berberova, he found her conversation tiresome: "the talk was exclusively literary, and soon I began to feel sick of it. I haven't had such conversations since high-school days. 'Do you know this? Do you like this? Have you read this?' In a word, awful."
A snippet of the conversation between Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev and Koncheyev, from The Gift:
Certainly if you open Goncharov or –"
"Stop right there! Don't tell me you have a kind word for Oblomov – that first 'Ilyich' who was the ruin of Russia – and the joy of social critics? Or you want to discuss the miserable hygienic conditions of Victorian seductions? Crinoline and damp garden bench? Or perhaps the style? What about his 'Precipice' where Rayski at moments of pensiveness is shown with 'rosy moisture shimmering between his lips'? – which reminds me somehow of Pisemski's protagonists, each of whom under the stress of violent emotion 'massages his chest with his hand!'"
"Here I shall trap you. Aren't there some good things in the same Pisenski? For example, those footmen in the vestibule, during a ball, who play catch with a lady's velveteen boot, horribly muddy and worn. Aha! And since we are speaking of second-rank authors, what do you think of Leskov?"
Whoa. Nabokov.
Site looks good. Get it on.
Vic
Berberova
Nabokov was--and is--an amazing writer, but I am sometimes frustrated by his elitism. How old was Berberova at the time--somewhere in her 20s?
Here's a quote about Nabokov from Berberova's autobiography: "The Italics Are Mine":
"I stand at the 'dusty crossroads' and look at his 'royal procession' with thanks and awareness that my generation (including of course myself) will live in him, and it did not disappear, did not dissolve itself between the Billancourt cemetery, Shanghai, New York, and Prague. All of us, with our entire weight, be we successful (if there are such) or unsuccessful (a round dozen), rest on him."
She admired him very much.
Nabokov and Berberova, through Boyd.
'Years ago I asked Nina Berberova about Nabokov, and she exclaimed: "I'm so tired of that sacred childhood of his!"'
Nabokov was perversely obscure about influence and inspiration. I have read that as a defense against the distortions of journalism. Here, I think Boyd has gotten himself wrapped up in the tablecloth that Nabokov has yanked from under the stemware. It may be impossible to prove that Berberova is correct -- I believe not only that she is, but that it may have been her conversations with Nabokov, not Khodasevitch's, that ended up in The Gift -- but Boyd's "undoubtedly" is absurd. Undoubtedly Nabokov gloried in misdirection.
Another quote from Berberova's The Italics Are Mine.
"I never told Nabokov my thoughts about him. I knew him well in the 1930s when he began to visit Paris (from Berlin) and when finally, before the war, he settled there with his wife and son. I gradually got used to his manner (nor acquired in the U.S.A. but always there) of not recognising people, of addressing Ivan Ivanovich, after knowing him for many years, as 'Ivan Petrovich', of calling Nina Nikolaevna 'Nina Aleksandrovna', the book of verse In The West 'In One's Ass', of washing someone from the face of the earth who had been kind to him, of mocking in print a man well disposed to him (as in his review of Aldanov's The Cave), of taking something from a great author and then saying he had never heard of him."
Another quote that feeds into your observation about Nakobov's 'perversely obscure' tendencies. Berberova is a great literary figure. She lived through the Russian Revolution and was in France for the WWII meltdown. Like Nabokov, she too arrived in America.
Anyway, these are interesting insights on Nabokov from a fellow Russian whose conversation he once deemed boring.
I don't want to slip too far
I don't want to slip too far into biography -- Berberova and Nabokov had a long and complicated friendship; at one time it was rumored (probably falsely) the two were having an affair. I thought Nabokov's scorn suspicious, Boyd's certainty unfounded and the passage in The Gift similar to the conversation he supposedly thought insufferable -- and all to Berberova's advantage.
Just curious
Which Nabokov novel is your favourite and which do you consider his best? I've read some--not all, and would welcome a recommendation.
A favourite
I can't say I have a favourite, but the one I've been thinking of the most lately is The Gift.
suggestion
One I haven't read. I'll have to remedy that.
is there some kind of
is there some kind of relationship poems between them? I have read his "THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA" and looks like a pretty good writer. About Berberova I don't know what to say,I haven't read anything. I`ll get back with a new post after I`ll read her.