Berlin and Early Translations In August 1920, the Nabokov family moved to Berlin, where Vladimir would compose all eight of his Russian novels. London had proved much too expensive, and the Berlin economy was attracting Russian émigrés by the tens of thousands. V. D. Nabokov helped to negotiate the birth of a formidable émigré publishing house, Slovo, with the assistance of Ullstein, one of Berlin's largest German presses. He also co-edited Rul', a popular Russian-language daily with a worldwide circulation. From Cambridge, Vladimir began to publish poems, chess problems, even crossword puzzles, in Rul', usually under the pen name "Sirin" to distinguish his work from his father's. By the fall of 1921, the Nabokov home had become a cultural center, hosting evening gatherings frequented by well-known émigré artists, writers, and musicians. By 1920, when he completed his first year at Trinity, Nabokov had been translating into and out of Russian for years: when he was eleven, he reincarnated Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman as French poetry; at seventeen, he brought Alfred de Musset's La Nuit de décembre into Russian; and at Cambridge, translations among his languages of choice were required. When, in June 1920, he and his father discussed the challenges Romain Rolland's novel Colas Breugnon would pose for a translator, he took up the gauntlet himself; Nikolka Persic [Nikolka the Peach] was published by Slovo in November 1922. The same service for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, published four months later as Ania v strane chudes, required substantially less effort, and the result is still considered one of the best versions extant in any language. Though V. D. Nabokov read parts of the Rolland translation, he did not live to see it published. He was shot and killed on March 28, 1922, while shielding Paul Miliukov, the target of a right-wing assassin. On May 8, 1923, Nabokov met Véra Evseevna Slonim at a masquerade ball in Berlin. Working in her father's small publishing concern, with literary aspirations of her own, Véra was already familiar with some of Nabokov's writing. He spent that summer on a farm in the South of France, in an attempt to work through his grief at the loss of both his father and his fiancée (he had composed many poems to Svetlana Siewert, whose parents had broken off the young couple's engagement that January). That summer Véra would read "The Encounter," a poem Nabokov composed about their meeting and submitted to Rul' from France. When he returned to Berlin in the fall, he began to court Véra. Inflation in Berlin had begun to drive the émigré community to other centers of activity, primarily Paris, and that fall Nabokov's mother moved to Prague with his favorite sister, Elena. He visited them twice during the following year, which he spent writing - stories, scenarios, and sketches - although this did not prove lucrative enough to allow him to support himself, his mother and sister, and his new wife-to-be. On April 15, 1925, he married Véra, and the need for money became even more pressing and persistent. Nabokov managed to spare enough time from his writing to make a living as a tutor - in French, English, Russian, prosody, tennis, and boxing - and regularly published reviews in Rul', while Véra did secretarial work.
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov Elena Ivanovna Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov Romain Rolland V. Sirin [Vladimir Nabokov] Rev. Charles Dodgson, writing as Lewis Carroll Véra Slonim and Vladimir Nabokov, Berlin, 1923 |
Russia
1899-1919 | Europe 1919-1939
| U.S. 1940-1960 | Switzerland
1960-1977
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