Part 43 (2/2)
THE DOORBELL.
The reader will be sorry to learn that the exact date of the publication of this story [”The Doorbell” (Zvonok)] has not been established. It certainly appeared in Rul', Berlin, probably in 1927, and was republished in the Vozvrashchenie Chorba collection, Slovo, Berlin, 1930.
V.N., Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, 1976
AN AFFAIR OF HONOR.
”An Affair of Honor” appeared under the t.i.tle ”Podlets” (The Cur), in the emigre daily Rul', Berlin, around 1927, and was included in my first collection, Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930. The present translation was published in The New Yorker, September 3, 1966, and was included in Nabokov's Quartet, Phaedra, New York, 1966.
The story renders in a drab expatriate setting a belated variation on the romantic theme whose decline started with Chekhov's magnificent novella Single Combat (1891).
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
THE CHRISTMAS STORY.
”The Christmas Story” (Rozhdestvenskiy ra.s.skaz) appeared in Rul', December 25, 1928, and now in the current collections. In September 1928 Nabokov had published Korol', dama, valet (King, Queen, Knave).
The story mentions several writers: the peasant-born Neverov (the pseudonym of Aleksandr Skobelev, 18861923); the ”social realist” Maksim Gorky (18681936); the ”populist” Vladimir Korolenko (18531921); the ”decadent” Leonid Andreyev (18711919); and the ”neo-realist” Evgeniy Chirikov (18641923).
D.N.
THE POTATO ELF.
This is the first faithful translation of ”Kartofel'nyy el'f,” written in 1929 in Berlin, published there in the emigre daily Rul' (December 15, 17, 18, and 19, 1929) and included in Vozvrashchenie Chorba, Slovo, Berlin, 1930, a collection of my stories. A very different English version (by Serge Bertenson and Irene Kosinska), full of mistakes and omissions, appeared in Esquire, December 1939, and has been reprinted in an anthology (The Single Voice, Collier, London, 1969).
Although I never intended the story to suggest a screenplay or to fire a scriptwriter's fancy, its structure and recurrent pictorial details do have a cinematic slant. Its deliberate introduction results in certain conventional rhythms-or in a pastiche of such rhythms. I do not believe, however, that my little man can move even the most lachrymose human-interest fiend, and this redeems the matter.
Another aspect separating ”The Potato Elf” from the rest of my short stories is its British setting. One cannot rule out thematic automatism in such cases, yet on the other hand this curious exoticism (as being different from the more familiar Berlin background of my other stories) gives the thing an artificial brightness which is none too displeasing; but all in all it is not my favorite piece, and if I include it in this collection it is only because the act of retranslating it properly is a precious personal victory that seldom falls to a betrayed author's lot.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973 The story was actually first published in Russkoye Ekho in April, 1924. It was reprinted in Rul' in 1929.
D.N.
THE AURELIAN.
”The Aurelian” (1930) is from Nabokov's Dozen, 1958 (see Appendix).
A DAs.h.i.+NG FELLOW.
”A Das.h.i.+ng Fellow,” ”Khvat” in Russian, was first published in the early 1930s. The two leading emigre papers, Rul' (Berlin) and Poslednie Novosti (Paris), rejected it as improper and brutal. It appeared in SeG.o.dnya (Riga), exact date to be settled, and in 1938 was included in my collection of short stories Soglyadatay (Russkiya Zapiski, Paris). The present translation appeared in Playboy for December 1971.
V.N., A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, 1973
A BAD DAY.
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