Mike Stauss: I would like some help locating a V.N. quote which I wrote down a year ago but now cannot find. I had thought the quote was in the forward to The Defence and referred to the novel as having been "written under the best possible conditions of life." I vaguely recall that this was either preceded or followed by a brief description of the Nabokov's home life in Berlin in the 30's, shortly after Dmitri was born (which, I now realize, rules out The Defence). I have searched as many of the forwards to the Russian novels as I can but can't seem to find it and would love to know that I didn't simply imagine or misattribute it.

JM: I remember Nabokov's enthusiastic commentary in his introduction to  "Bend Sinister" because it seems to be at variance with what he wrote in his letters to Edmund Wilson (I never really checked that...perhaps that's why I still remember it)

 

Although Nabokov's words in it share the same optimism as those in the quote you are looking for, the match is not right ( & it's not a Russian novel) 
"Bend Sinister was the first novel I wrote in America, and that was half a dozen years after she and I had adopted each other. The greater part of the book was composed in the winter and spring of 1945-1946, at a particularly cloudless and vigorous period of life. My health was excellent. My daily consumption of cigarettes had reached the four-package mark." 9 September 1963, Montreux