So recounted Stacy Schiff, whose 1999 biography "Vèra (Mrs. Not for the first time, Vèra Nabokov had saved one of her husband's books, but this time it was one of the 20th century's great novels: "Lolita." Suddenly the professor's wife ran out of the house and extracted pages of a manuscript from the flames.
(Apr.Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff gives a Reunion Weekend talk to alumni in Goldwin Smith Hall.Ī Cornell student, arriving at Vladimir Nabokov's house in the 1950s, saw a fire blazing in the backyard. When her 1991 New York Times obit called V ra ""Wife, Muse, and Agent"" it only hinted at her role, which is rescued from obscurity in Schiff's graceful prose. This book offers more than a peek at the famous author through his wife's eyes.
Often described as ""hovering"" over her husband by his Cornell colleagues, V ra was always close by-even working as his teaching assistant-because, according to Schiff, he simply could not function without her. Schiff's best pages evoke the years of adversity, as when the Jewish V ra, regal even in penury, perilously remained in Nazi Germany until May 1937 (after non-Jewish Vladimir exited) because it was the only country where either one could legally work. (A film advance gave Nabokov 17 times his annual salary at Cornell, a post that had taken years to secure.) Suddenly flush, the Nabokovs, by choice, again became migr s, wealthy residents of a Swiss luxury hotel. Only the runaway international success of Lolita when they were in their later 50s freed the couple from scraping together a living. After hours she also edited and translated his writings, conducted his professional affairs and maintained their marriage. With no market for his writing, he needed his wife to work as a translator so they could survive. Russian migr s in Germany, France and then the U.S., they eked out a bare existence despite Nabokov's reputation as a stellar Russian novelist. Schiff (Saint-Exup ry) contends that Nabokov's public image was V ra's doing: ""we are used to husbands silencing wives, but here was a wife silencing, editing, speaking for, creating, her husband."" For almost all their married lives, the Nabokovs were inseparable. V ra Nabokov was not only devoted to her husband's literary career she was crucial to it.
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