Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! I made the mistake of reading the headlines this morning before writing this, so my mood is a bit gloomy. How did we get here?
Luckily, we have our upcoming meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson to look forward to—a much-needed balm in anxious times. We will be meeting at Carol's beautifully perched home on Villard Avenue at noon for what I imagine will be a full-out lunch. (Itʼs time to just call it, right?) Our intrepid president, Joanna, will not be able to join us this week since she will either be hosting some important event at the Federal Bar Councilʼs annual retreat somewhere in Mexico, or lying on the beach, so Laura will be ringing the bell at 1PM to begin our meeting, after which Frances will present on A Feud and a Friendship: The Letters of Vladimir Nabokov & Edmund Wilson. Now THESE are some feuding white men I can get behind!
That's all I have in me to report. Iʼm looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday. x Jacquie
Laura Rice, vice-president, presided in the absence of the president and secretary. After non-minutes and treasurer’s report—a familiar $248—we shared book/culture likes which included: Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything, the film A Real Pain, the book Orbited, the Japanese Netflix series Asuna, Ina Garten’s memoir, the book Couplets by Maggie Millan, The Rest is Memory by Lily Tuck, as well as Tana French’s The Searcher (the author’s father is NOT The NY Times op-ed writer). Then we were ready for Frances Greenberg’s presentation on the feud & friendship of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson.
If the Hatfields and McCoys had possessed brains and not bullets, intellect not ire, writing rather than fighting words, respect not rancor, there might have been a feud like that of Nabokov and Wilson. Both were born in the late 1800’s, grew up in wealthy homes: Wilson in Red Bank, New Jersey; Nabokov in St. Petersburg, Russia. Both had fathers who were jurists, though Nabokov’s father had other government roles as well. Both Wilson and Nabokov were towering intellects, egotists, men of the pen. As Frances said, both had a “high level of self-esteem,” i.e., arrogance. Their testiness, their need to dominate, their ultimate conflict, reminded her of the horsemen's saying that two stallions should never be kept in the same barn.
Nabokov had grown up speaking French and English as well as Russian. He attended Cambridge after his family fled the Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia. Wilson was educated at Princeton. Nabokov’s university years were lonely; although he had no sympathy for White Russian Monarchists, he was perceived as a reactionary by fellow Cantabrigians fascinated by the Russian experiment. He first studied zoology, then switched French and English Literature. (Ultimately, he became an outstanding lepidopterist as well as a renowned writer.) Physically, the men were opposites—Nabokov was tall, slim and handsome. Wilson was short and rotund. His mother had given him the unfortunate nickname Bunny, which stuck with him over the years.
Their relationship began cordially in 1940, when Nabokov emigrated to the U.S. He left England after Cambridge, joining his family in Berlin, where he struggled financially, supporting himself by tutoring and teaching tennis. During his time in Germany, he published 9 novels, in Russian. The Russian diaspora was a lively literate society, there were more than a handful of publishers in western Europe, keeping Russian literature alive. The Bolsheviks exercised iron control over culture; only novels following the Communist party line could be published in Russia. Nabokov’s work never appeared in the country of his birth.
Living in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power, Nabokov understood his family’s vulnerability. His wife, Vera, was Jewish. They moved first to Paris but were aware of the possibility of a German invasion. In 1940, he was able to get a visa for a teaching position in the U.S. a position which never materialized. He was without financial resources. Nabokov’s cousin, Nikolai Nabokov, had already established himself as a composer and a music critic in the U.S. He was a friend of Edmund Wilson’s, then at the height of his power in the New York literary world. Nikolai Nabokov introduced the two. Wilson helped Vladimir find work writing book reviews for publications like The New Yorker and The New Republic. Both men were important members of their respective literary circles in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but Nabokov’s was a small and limited group of Russian émigrés, scattered from New York to Peking, living precariously, both economically and politically.
Wilson came to New York after graduating from Princeton and serving as a hospital orderly in the army during World War I. He had quick success as an editor, a writer and critic. He wrote for Vanity Fair and The New Republic. He had met, and became friends, with F. Scott Fitzgerald while they were both at Princeton. We read Wilson’s comments, many critical, on Fitzgearld’s first published novel, The Far Side of Paradise. Even so, Wilson’s final words were “I really liked the book.” Wilson could drink all night and be up the next morning ready to work He held his liquor remarkably well, unlike many of his contemporaries. As for his love life, Edna St. Vincent Millay was his first affair. He was madly in love with her but she feared the entanglement of marriage, and no doubt Wilson's domineering character. The two remained friends. Wilson married Mary Blair, an actress, soon after Millay's refusal, Blair was the first of his four marriages. His work—plays and fiction—had progressive sympathies and he believed communism held the answer to many social ills.
Nabokov got a position teaching English literature at Cornell University in the late 40’s. He believed that novels should be “pure invention.” Their only purpose was to enchant. This contrasted strongly with Wilson’s progressive philosophy. In Wilson’s 1940 book, To the Finland Station, he ignored the excesses of Bolshevism. But Wilson’s and Nabokov’s mutual admiration society continued until ...Pushkin changed everything. Their feud began. It had to do with a translation of Eugene Onegin and their differing interpretation of Russian poetic meter. Russians venerate Pushkin in the same way English speakers venerate Shakespeare.
Wilson had learned Russian but was hardly a match for Nabokov’s fluency and the subtleties of translating. An explosive and harshly critical exchange appeared in letters published in The New York Review of Books, in 1965, following Wilson's harsh review of Nabokov's 1200 page translation of Eugene Onegin. Their vitriol was extreme. An example of Wilson’s words of war in this exchange refers to Nabokov’s translation. “Mr. Nabokov is in the habit of introducing any job of this kind which he undertakes by an announcement that he is unique and incomparable and that everyone else who has attempted it is an oaf and ignoramus, incompetent as a linguist and scholar, usually with the implication that he is a low-class person and a ridiculous personality. Nabokov ought not complain if the reviewer, though trying not to imitate his bad literary manners, does not hesitate of underline his weaknesses.” In his reply letter, Nabokov says “... we are indeed old friends. I fully share the warm affection sometimes chilled by exasperation that he says he feels for me. We have had many exhilarating talks, have exchanged many frank letters. A patient confidant of his long and hopeless infatuation with the Russian language, I have always done my best to explain to him his mistakes of pronunciation, grammar and interpretation. ... In the present case, however, things have gone a little too far. I greatly regret Mr. Wilson did not consult me about his perplexities (as he used to do in the past) instead of lurching into print in such a state of glossological disarray.”
The swords were unsheathed—actually even before then with Nabokov’s publication of Lolita, in 1955 in France, and in 1957 in the U.S. One suspects that Nabokov’s financial and literary success was envied by Wilson. Wilson's reputation was in decline by the 1950's. He was no longer the power in the literary circle he had been in his earlier years, in the 1920’s through the 1940’s.
During Wilson’s final illness, Nabokov wrote to him, recalling the pleasures of their former affectionate friendship. Wilson died in 1972 at 77; Nabokov in 1978 at 78.
Respectfully submitted,
Carla Potash
Secretary for the day
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