"Why didn't they ask Evans?" (that's
for Agatha Christie lovers) or.... Why didn't I search directly in the
Wikipedia?
The answer and bibliographical
and historical data are there...
Jansy Mello
Carrousel is a
booklet published in 1987 containing three short texts written by Vladimir
Nabokov in 1923 for "Karussel", a Russian cabaret...The three texts
are:
"Laughter and Dreams" (by Vladimir V. Nabokoff), a short and
impressionistic essay on the arts, toys, and the cabaret.;"Painted Wood" (by
V. Cantaboff), an essay in the same vein on wooden toys and the cabaret; "The
Russian Song" (by Vladimir Sirine), a short and nostalgic
poem.
"Cantaboff" of course refers to
"Cantab." and the author's recent graduation from Trinity College, Cambridge;
"Sirine" was Nabokov's occasional French spelling for "Sirin", his early
Russian pseudonym.Brian Boyd regards the poem as "banal", the prose as
"masterly".[1]
The only known previous appearance of these three texts
had been within the second issue of a trilingual (German, French, English)
brochure, Karussel — Carousal — Carrousel, published in Berlin in 1923 as the
prospectus for "Karussel", a Russian theatre travelling to Berlin.
Stella
de Does-Kohnhorst discovered a copy of this rare prospectus, gave it to the
Nabokov family, and asked for and obtained their permission to publish the
contributions by Nabokov.
There have been two editions, both designed by
Bram de Does and published in 1987 by Spectatorpers in Aartswoud (the
Netherlands). Both claim to be
"limited" (to 100 copies of the first, and 150 of the second), but copies of
both with "HC" in place of the number are known, suggesting larger numbers.
The publisher's note to the first edition explains the reason for the two
editions: a detailed "Introductory Note" by Dmitri Nabokov, the author's son,
had arrived too late for inclusion in the first. Thus the first edition lacks
this note; the second, which is in a larger format, includes it. The first
edition — of which Michael Juliar stated (without explanation) in 1991 that
"Thirty or so copies survive" [2] — is a paperback that was not offered for
sale; the second was made available in hardbound and paperback
versions.
[1] Boyd, p. 218.
[2] Juliar, pp.
43–4.
.............................
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The
Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Juliar,
Michael. "Updates to Vladimir Nabokov: A Descriptive Bibliography."
Typescript, 1 April 1991.
Nabokov, Vladimir.
Carrousel. Aartswoud: Spectatorpers, 1987.