Otchaianie. Berlin, 1936 (Despair, 1966)

Nabokov visited Paris in October 1936 for his first reading there, and to assess the feasibility of moving from Berlin. A public triumph, the reading included the first two chapters of Otchaianie [Despair], then still titled "Zapiski mistifikatora" ["Notes of a Hoaxer"]. Sovremennye zapiski ran it from February to October 1934, after excerpts had appeared in the Parisian Poslednie novosti. The plot revolves around a man who tries to fake his own death by murdering a vagrant he believes can pass for his double. The only clearly autobiographical element of the novel is the setting for the murder, which takes place on the German property about an hour out of Berlin that Nabokov and Véra had purchased jointly with Véra's cousin, Anna Feigin, with the intention of building on it one day. Ultimately, the only useful purpose the land at Kolberg, on the Wolziger See, would serve for Nabokov was this fictional one. When their payments lapsed, ownership devolved to the seller.

Nabokov had learned his lesson from the botched English translation of Kamera obskura the year before, and decided to translate Otchaianie himself. To his chagrin, Despair fared no better than Camera Obscura had, and Nabokov blamed his English publisher, Hutchinson, for releasing his sophisticated works under its pulp fiction imprint, John Long. He later referred to the novel as "something more than an essay on the psychology of crime" but admitted: "[it] turns out to be a half-baked thriller - even when I translate it myself!" In 1965, he overhauled this version, rewriting much of the original text. This revamped version was serialized in Playboy at the end of that year, and won the magazine's annual Best Fiction award, which included a $1,000 cash prize.

The items listed below pertain to Nabokov's life and career and are the contents of the exhibition at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, on view from April 23 through August 21, 1999. This checklist, primarily of items from the Library's Nabokov Archive, is included here to provide a sense of the rich holdings in this special collection.

Vladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
Despair
Translated from the Russian by the author
London: John Long, 1937
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Despair
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1966
General Research Division