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Nabokov and McCarthyism (and cousin Nicolas Nabokov)
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[EDNOTE. Jansy Mello responds to Stan Kelly-Bootle on Nabokov and
McCarthyism. * SES]
SKB,
Thank you for your comments on Nabokov and McCarthyism. What made me
question this kind of " oth protest too much" reference to VN's "American
Lolita" ( such as the recent French posting) was stimulated by a book which
I ve been reading on the "Congress for Cultural Freedom" and composer
Nicolas Nabokov's participation in it.
1. In Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov there are several references to
this musician cousin Nicolas:
Brian Boyd Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1940 Les Annees Russes ( Bibliotheque
Gallimard)
Index:
Nabokov, Ivan ( fils du cousin Nicolas) 450,512
Nabokov,Nathalie |( femme du cousin Nicolas) 450,455,458,512
Nabokov, Nicolas Dmitrievitch ( cousin) 28,54n., 188, 221,450,512
Notes on Nicolas Nabokov & Vladimir Nabokov:
28: musicality common to both Dmitri and Nicolas.
54n: Nicolas attended concerts in Berlin with V.D.Nabokov.
188: his cousin, the composer Nicolas Nabokov set to music a poem ...
221: a vague comment
450: Vladimir Nabokov stays at his cousin's in Kolbsheim...
512: VN at Menton is visited by his cousin Nicolas...
Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton University
Press, 1991)
12: "Nathalie Nabokoff, the ex-wife of Vladimir's cousin cousin Nicolas, was
to have met them with Nabokov's old Cambridge friend Robert de Calry...there
was no one waiting ( first arrival in NY,1940)
16:While he enjoyed Vermont, his cousin Nicolas was spending the summer at
Wellfleet on Cape Cod, just across the street from Edmund Wilson. Aware of
Wilson's keen interest in Russian literature, Nicolas Nabokov, by then a
well-known composer, asked his neighbor to assist with the libretto of an
opera to be made from Pushkin's "Negro of Peter the Great". He also
recalled that cousin Vladimir needed help, and wrote to him in Vermont. At
Nicolas's prompting, Vladimir then wrote to Wilson, who suggested they meet
in New York".
19: Wilson championing "unfashionable American writers: Henry James,
Fitzgerald, Hemingway" and having become "the interpreter of modern European
literature - Yeats,Joyce, Eliot, Valery, Proust - to a generation of
American"..."Convinced, like so many members of the American intelligentsia
in the early 1930s, that the depression proved the unworkability of
capitalism... /He discovered Pushkin... He seems to have relied on the
excellence of Nabokov s English and the judgement of friends who could vouch
for the importance of his Russian oeuvre: Nicolas Nabokov, Harry Levin's
wife, Elena...Roman Grynberg...
25: Early in February, Nabokov delivered his first American college lecture,
a guest lecture - a great success - at Wells College, near Cornell, where
his cousin Nicolas was teaching music...
113: With a resounding letter of reference from Edmund Wilson in his
support, he came close to being appointed head of the Russian section of the
new Voice of America. But the opening closed when Nicolas Nabokov, whom he
had also approached for a reference, secured the job for himself instead.
139: Describing VN s attack on Sartre, and a declaration that he wanted for
a long time "to take a crack at such big fakes as Mr.T.S.Eliot and Mr.
Thomas Mann"... he called on their Russian friends (including Nathalie
Nabokoff, Nicolas Nabokov) and the comment: " The bizarre claim advanced
more than once in print that Nabokov severed his connections with other
Russians once he was settled in America has no basis in fact." ( 1949)
394: "Publisher Ivan Nabokoff, son of Nabokov's cousin Nicolas, recalls the
guest of honor as helpless, ill at ease with the hubbub and crush"...
395: "Zinaida Shakhovskoy, the sister of Nathalie Nabokoff, cousin Nicolas's
first wife, had helped Nabokov public readings of his works in Brussels in
the early 1930s and had become a warm friend during the couse of the decade.
Now settled in Paris, she came up to Nabokov at the party, ready to embrace
him. "Bonjour, madame," he said coldly, as if to a stranger"... ( 1959)
397:... he called on his cousin Nicolas...( after reference to a book
written by Zinaida Shakhovskoy, "In Search of Nabokov") (1959)
421: first month at Champex...copyedited typescript of his Eugene Onegin
commentary...writing on Kinbote s commentary to Pale Fire... High summer
brought visitors: Dmitri..Elena; cousin Nicolas and his friend the composer
Igor Markevitch (1961).
661: Nabokov's body was cremated at a simple nonreligious funeral service in
Vevey on July 7, 1977 with only a dozen family members and friends
present...cousins Nicolas and Sergey...
2. The book detailing Nicolas Nabokov's role in the Cultural Cold War is:
Saunders, Frances Stonor. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of
Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press, 2000. 509 pages. First published
in 1999 by Granta (UK) as Who Paid the Piper?
In a review, Phil Freeman says: "She details the efforts the CIA made
through its front group, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and various
shadow-funded foundations, to influence the artistic, literary and
philosophical environments of postwar Europe towards the American ideal and
away from the beckonings of Communism. In so doing, she manages to make the
US government look thoroughly foolish and ham-fisted, and while that may not
be any astonishing achievement, it provides entertaining reading.
Much of this material, while factually unfamiliar (though the list of
folks who took government checks is pretty astonishing: Jackson Pollock,
Irving Kristol, Andre Malraux, Reinhold Neibuhr, George Orwell, Bertrand
Russell, Stephen Spender, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and many, many others), is
nevertheless ideologically unsurprising, and will dovetail nicely with the
previously existing assumptions of the book's intended audience."
Here's a link to Freeman's entire review of Saunders's book:
http://www.culturevulture.net/Books/CulturalColdWar.htm
Here is additional commentary on the book:
http://www.namebase.org/sources/dO.html
The two references to Vladimir Nabokov in The Cultural Cold War appear:
on page 10: "At much the same time, the young composer Nicolas Nabokov,
cousin of the novelist Vladimir, was throwing away a cigarette butt in the
Soviet sector of Berlin..."
on page 165: " Encounter magazine, which ran from 1953 to 1990, held a
central position in post-war intellectual history. It could be as lively and
bitchy as a literary cocktail party. It was here Nancy Mitford published
her famous article 'The English Aristocracy' (...). It printed Isaiah Berlin's ' A Marvelous Decade', four memorable essays on Russian literature,
Vladimir Nabokov on Pushkin, Irving Howe on Edith Wharton, David Marquand on
'The Liberal Revival', stories by Jorge Luis Borges, critical essays by
Richard Ellmann, Jayaprakash Narayan, W.H.Auden, Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand
Russell, Herbert Read, Hugh Trevor-Roper - some of the best minds of those
decades".
A Google search led to another source on the "Congress for Cultural
Freedom": Stephen J. Whitfield's review of Giles Scott-Smith's recent book
"The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the
CIA and Post-War American Hegemony" (London: Routledge, 2002).
Here's a link to Whitfield's review in the Journal of Cold War Studies:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/toc/cws5.2.html
3. These sources led me to consider a new edge to "apolitical Nabokov"
because it is clear that he did not strive to receive any kind of help from
the American initiative through his cousin while, at the same time,
remaining loyal to the basic American democratic principles and grateful to
his new country. It also made me wonder about the geographical intricacies
in "Ada, or Ardor" (for example, the "Severniya Territorii" as quite
distinct from the fusion of his childhood Russia and adult America).
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
McCarthyism. * SES]
SKB,
Thank you for your comments on Nabokov and McCarthyism. What made me
question this kind of " oth protest too much" reference to VN's "American
Lolita" ( such as the recent French posting) was stimulated by a book which
I ve been reading on the "Congress for Cultural Freedom" and composer
Nicolas Nabokov's participation in it.
1. In Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov there are several references to
this musician cousin Nicolas:
Brian Boyd Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1940 Les Annees Russes ( Bibliotheque
Gallimard)
Index:
Nabokov, Ivan ( fils du cousin Nicolas) 450,512
Nabokov,Nathalie |( femme du cousin Nicolas) 450,455,458,512
Nabokov, Nicolas Dmitrievitch ( cousin) 28,54n., 188, 221,450,512
Notes on Nicolas Nabokov & Vladimir Nabokov:
28: musicality common to both Dmitri and Nicolas.
54n: Nicolas attended concerts in Berlin with V.D.Nabokov.
188: his cousin, the composer Nicolas Nabokov set to music a poem ...
221: a vague comment
450: Vladimir Nabokov stays at his cousin's in Kolbsheim...
512: VN at Menton is visited by his cousin Nicolas...
Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton University
Press, 1991)
12: "Nathalie Nabokoff, the ex-wife of Vladimir's cousin cousin Nicolas, was
to have met them with Nabokov's old Cambridge friend Robert de Calry...there
was no one waiting ( first arrival in NY,1940)
16:While he enjoyed Vermont, his cousin Nicolas was spending the summer at
Wellfleet on Cape Cod, just across the street from Edmund Wilson. Aware of
Wilson's keen interest in Russian literature, Nicolas Nabokov, by then a
well-known composer, asked his neighbor to assist with the libretto of an
opera to be made from Pushkin's "Negro of Peter the Great". He also
recalled that cousin Vladimir needed help, and wrote to him in Vermont. At
Nicolas's prompting, Vladimir then wrote to Wilson, who suggested they meet
in New York".
19: Wilson championing "unfashionable American writers: Henry James,
Fitzgerald, Hemingway" and having become "the interpreter of modern European
literature - Yeats,Joyce, Eliot, Valery, Proust - to a generation of
American"..."Convinced, like so many members of the American intelligentsia
in the early 1930s, that the depression proved the unworkability of
capitalism... /He discovered Pushkin... He seems to have relied on the
excellence of Nabokov s English and the judgement of friends who could vouch
for the importance of his Russian oeuvre: Nicolas Nabokov, Harry Levin's
wife, Elena...Roman Grynberg...
25: Early in February, Nabokov delivered his first American college lecture,
a guest lecture - a great success - at Wells College, near Cornell, where
his cousin Nicolas was teaching music...
113: With a resounding letter of reference from Edmund Wilson in his
support, he came close to being appointed head of the Russian section of the
new Voice of America. But the opening closed when Nicolas Nabokov, whom he
had also approached for a reference, secured the job for himself instead.
139: Describing VN s attack on Sartre, and a declaration that he wanted for
a long time "to take a crack at such big fakes as Mr.T.S.Eliot and Mr.
Thomas Mann"... he called on their Russian friends (including Nathalie
Nabokoff, Nicolas Nabokov) and the comment: " The bizarre claim advanced
more than once in print that Nabokov severed his connections with other
Russians once he was settled in America has no basis in fact." ( 1949)
394: "Publisher Ivan Nabokoff, son of Nabokov's cousin Nicolas, recalls the
guest of honor as helpless, ill at ease with the hubbub and crush"...
395: "Zinaida Shakhovskoy, the sister of Nathalie Nabokoff, cousin Nicolas's
first wife, had helped Nabokov public readings of his works in Brussels in
the early 1930s and had become a warm friend during the couse of the decade.
Now settled in Paris, she came up to Nabokov at the party, ready to embrace
him. "Bonjour, madame," he said coldly, as if to a stranger"... ( 1959)
397:... he called on his cousin Nicolas...( after reference to a book
written by Zinaida Shakhovskoy, "In Search of Nabokov") (1959)
421: first month at Champex...copyedited typescript of his Eugene Onegin
commentary...writing on Kinbote s commentary to Pale Fire... High summer
brought visitors: Dmitri..Elena; cousin Nicolas and his friend the composer
Igor Markevitch (1961).
661: Nabokov's body was cremated at a simple nonreligious funeral service in
Vevey on July 7, 1977 with only a dozen family members and friends
present...cousins Nicolas and Sergey...
2. The book detailing Nicolas Nabokov's role in the Cultural Cold War is:
Saunders, Frances Stonor. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of
Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press, 2000. 509 pages. First published
in 1999 by Granta (UK) as Who Paid the Piper?
In a review, Phil Freeman says: "She details the efforts the CIA made
through its front group, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and various
shadow-funded foundations, to influence the artistic, literary and
philosophical environments of postwar Europe towards the American ideal and
away from the beckonings of Communism. In so doing, she manages to make the
US government look thoroughly foolish and ham-fisted, and while that may not
be any astonishing achievement, it provides entertaining reading.
Much of this material, while factually unfamiliar (though the list of
folks who took government checks is pretty astonishing: Jackson Pollock,
Irving Kristol, Andre Malraux, Reinhold Neibuhr, George Orwell, Bertrand
Russell, Stephen Spender, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and many, many others), is
nevertheless ideologically unsurprising, and will dovetail nicely with the
previously existing assumptions of the book's intended audience."
Here's a link to Freeman's entire review of Saunders's book:
http://www.culturevulture.net/Books/CulturalColdWar.htm
Here is additional commentary on the book:
http://www.namebase.org/sources/dO.html
The two references to Vladimir Nabokov in The Cultural Cold War appear:
on page 10: "At much the same time, the young composer Nicolas Nabokov,
cousin of the novelist Vladimir, was throwing away a cigarette butt in the
Soviet sector of Berlin..."
on page 165: " Encounter magazine, which ran from 1953 to 1990, held a
central position in post-war intellectual history. It could be as lively and
bitchy as a literary cocktail party. It was here Nancy Mitford published
her famous article 'The English Aristocracy' (...). It printed Isaiah Berlin's ' A Marvelous Decade', four memorable essays on Russian literature,
Vladimir Nabokov on Pushkin, Irving Howe on Edith Wharton, David Marquand on
'The Liberal Revival', stories by Jorge Luis Borges, critical essays by
Richard Ellmann, Jayaprakash Narayan, W.H.Auden, Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand
Russell, Herbert Read, Hugh Trevor-Roper - some of the best minds of those
decades".
A Google search led to another source on the "Congress for Cultural
Freedom": Stephen J. Whitfield's review of Giles Scott-Smith's recent book
"The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the
CIA and Post-War American Hegemony" (London: Routledge, 2002).
Here's a link to Whitfield's review in the Journal of Cold War Studies:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/toc/cws5.2.html
3. These sources led me to consider a new edge to "apolitical Nabokov"
because it is clear that he did not strive to receive any kind of help from
the American initiative through his cousin while, at the same time,
remaining loyal to the basic American democratic principles and grateful to
his new country. It also made me wonder about the geographical intricacies
in "Ada, or Ardor" (for example, the "Severniya Territorii" as quite
distinct from the fusion of his childhood Russia and adult America).
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm