Dear Adaphiles,

The notes to Ada 1.43 have been added to the Annotations section of the website, which also means the notes to Ada 1.41 are now available (with hyperlinks to motifs and illustrations) on AdaOnline. Thanks once again to Steve Blackwell for acting as editor of the new annotations, kindly continuing the momentum of his role as the last editor of the print Nabokovian.

Dear Readers of The Nabokovian:

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society, the Société française Vladimir Nabokov and the Nabokov Society of Japan make a joint appeal to Russia's Ministry of Culture in three open letters. 

These urgent letters, published at the bottom of this message, were published in an article by Maria Bashmakova in Kommersant. The Ministry's reply to the last letter sent to it by the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation is embedded in this same article. 

On behalf of the organizers of the annual "Nabokov Readings 2019 International Conference /

Набоковские чтения – 2019 Международнaя конференция,"

it is my great pleasure to announce the conference program. The conference takes place from

3-5 July / 3-5 июля 2019.

The Société Française Vladimir Nabokov has hosted yet another magnificent conference, this time at Université Cergy-Pontoise, the Sorbonne, and Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. Plenary speakers, Isabelle Poulin and Will Norman, delivered fascinating talks on the first two days of the conference and were accompanied by speakers from several generations of Nabokovians. At the Musée National, we listened to a seminal talk on Russian immigration, which disclosed unpublished documents from the Nina Berberova Archives (including letters and notes from Nabokov).

The Societé française de Vladimir Nabokov is pleased to announce its Fourth International Symposium, "Vladimir Nabokov: Histoire et géographie." The Symposium takes place from June 6-8, 2019, at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise, Sorbonne Université, and National Museum of Immigration (Porte Dorée Palace).

Dear Friends of Nabokov:

On behalf of Nabokovians worldwide, happy birthday dear Vladimir Nabokov! 

With Zoran Kuzmanovich's permission, I post these birthday greetings for everyone to enjoy, including perhaps Nabokov himself (wherever he might be perched himself):

Happy Birthday to the man whose work makes us attend to  the stained glass windows of life while we wait for the right word not only to perch itself on our keyboards but to do so without  echoing one of his too obviously.  This grateful well-wisher already knows that he did not wait long enough. 

Zoran Kuzmanovich

Saluting the good reader,

Dana

Dear Nabokovians:

The spring issue of The Nabokovian is now posted! A big thank you to Priscilla Meyer, editor of The Nabokovian, and this issue's four contributors: Gerard de Vries, Mary Ross, Frances Peltz Assa and J.B. Geen.

Happy reading,

Dana

JJ Heckenhauer is a rare bookseller with a tradition for Russian books for more than 50 years. The bookseller has recently acquired a collection with more than 100 titles about Nabokov. The list is attached. If anyone is interested in this collection or thinks their institution might be interested in purchasing it, please contact Roger Sonnewald at ant@heckenhauer.de

The finding aid for the Nabokov family papers and other materials (in Dmitri Nabokov's possession when he died, and donated to Harvard, his alma mater, by the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation) is now complete. The material is open for researchers. There is also an online finding aid.

Brian Boyd

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society is soliciting abstracts for two Nabokov panels at the 2020 MLA Convention in Seattle:

CFP - The International Vladimir Nabokov Society MLA 2020, Seattle: Nabokov and Contemporary Writing

Dear Nabokovians:

Thank you to the 56 of you who have renewed your IVNS memberships for 2019.            

Professor Barabtarlo.

On the first day of class, one of several with Professor Barabtarlo, he announced that we must read each book twice: The Defense, Master and Margarita, Doctor Zhivago, The First Circle. Once in order to get the gist of the matter, a second time to truly appreciate the artistry. If this would not be feasible for any of us, then it would be perfectly all right to not continue further in the course. One student seated in the back row politely excused himself. And we proceeded.

In my long friendship with Gene we shared various Nabokovian pleasures, the most spine-tingling of which occurred on the Connecticut shore in the 1980s. Gene had come to speak to my seminar at Wesleyan in early March. The next day we went for a long walk along the deserted beach--my husband was leading us to a distant promontory. Along the way Gene picked up one half of a conch shell and I the other; he said: this is the Greek etymology of “symbol” (to throw together), leading me to ask if he’d traced the shell motif through Nabokov’s novels. He hadn’t. I started my catalogue with Speak Memory, where Colette injures her foot on a mussel shell.

There was no one else like Professor Gennady Barabtarlo. I met him in person long after reading his books and profiting by them. The first time I spoke with him was at a dinner party hosted by Brian Boyd and Bronwen Nicolson to celebrate the conclusion of the Nabokov Upside Down Conference in Auckland in 2012. That first conversation took place on a warm and sunny terrace in the very middle of summer. 

A literary gift, like the gift of life, is given from above. Gennady Barabtarlo, who has just completed his life journey, was deeply appreciative of both – and of the One who sent them. He dedicated himself to Russian literature, especially to its two summits, Pushkin and Nabokov, in full awareness of the responsibility this commitment entailed. For him, language and letters were the vital force that kept the Russian mind and spirit alive.

Gene Barabtarlo was a gentleman, a conscientious and highly learned 
scholar, a great Nabokovian, an excellent linguist… and a friend. I 
first met him in June 1992. I had invited him to the first Nice 
Conference on Nabokov where he gave a paper entitled “Nabokov in the 
Wilson Archive.” I seem to remember that it was his first visit to this 
part of the world, one of Nabokov’s favorite haunts. He was constantly 
taking pictures, as he did again at the third Nice conference in 2006; 
after it, he went to Soliès-Pont and sent me pictures he had taken 
there. There was something of a Sherlock Holmes in him; he liked solving 

The news of Gennady Aleksandrovich Barabtarlo’s passing should not have caught me off-guard, but I must confess to finding myself lost for words at a moment that I knew would be coming. If I were to try to find a reason to my being at a loss today, I would have to attribute it to my irrational sense that Gennady Aleksandrovich’s rectitude, his convictions, and indeed faith would prove a bulwark against even the most potent and cunning of afflictions. No such luck, of course, but even in the haze of this sad, impossible day it is already becoming clear that this is not where this story ends.

Nabokov scholar Gennady Alexandrovich (“Gene”) Barabtarlo died on February 24, aged 70.