A. Sklyarenko: [ ]
"I suspect it was something about A. P. Chekhov's
(not Vengerov's) death that made Nabokov give Vengerov that almost improbably
long life.
In a letter of January 20, 1899, to his brother Ivan Pavlovich
Chekhov speaks of his negotiations with the publisher Adolf Marx and mentions a
telegram he sent Marx promising him to live not more than eighty
years[ ] According to Sergeenko, Marx took Chekhov's words in his
telegram at face value and the deal nearly collapsed"
Jansy Mello: The informations you
bring up are always fascinating. There's a little item, related to
Chekhov's promise to his publisher, that might be worthwhile to remember.
It concerns an author who is often mentioned in ADA and who "mortgaged his tomb"
(his autobiography) to earn his living. I mean François-René Chateaubriand.
There's not a lot about his original publisher's
qualms to be found on Wikipedia.* [ His memoirs not
only encompassed 42 volumes but they also took him more than
thirty years to complete - and he collected advance payments on them at
different occasions] A more detailed, albeit informal,
report can be read in "The Love Affair as a Work of Art" by Dan
Hofstadter (already mentioned in the VN-L sometime in the past). This
story might help one to understand why Marx could take Chekhov's
words to the letter...
..............................................................
*- extracted from Wikipedia: François-René de Chateaubriand
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia): François-René, vicomte de
Chateaubriand (4 September 1768 – 4 July 1848) was a French writer,
politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism
in French literature. Descended from an old aristocratic family from Brittany
[ ] It is his autobiography Mémoires d'outre-tombe ("Memoirs from
Beyond the Grave'", published posthumously 1848–1850), however, that is nowadays
generally considered his most accomplished work.[ ]Born in Saint-Malo, the
last of ten children, Chateaubriand grew up in his family's castle in Combourg,
Brittany. His father, René de Chateaubriand (1718–86), was a former sea captain
turned ship owner and slave trader [ ] Chateaubriand grew up in an
atmosphere of gloomy solitude, only broken by long walks in the Breton
countryside and an intense friendship with his sister Lucile.
Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe - literally "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave"
- is an autobiography in 42 volumes by François-René de Chateaubriand, published
posthumously in 1848 [ ] The work abounds in instances of the poetic prose
at which Chateaubriand excelled. On the other hand, the melancholy of the
autobiography helped establish Chateaubriand as the idol of the young French
Romantics[ ] Chateaubriand made the decision to write his memoirs in
Rome at the close of 1803; nevertheless, he did not begin writing them until
1809, and even then found his progress slowed by numerous other projects. In
1817 he returned to the memoirs[ ]did not reach completion until
1826. At this point, he intended to entitle the book Memories of My
Life.In 1830, however, Chateaubriand decided to change the scope of the
work, revising the title to Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe, making a thorough
revision of the original text, and writing several new volumes. He divided his
life before 1830 into three periods: soldier and traveler, novelist, and
statesman [ ] After fragmented public readings of his work in
salons, in 1836 Chateaubriand yielded the rights to his work to a society that
published it until his death, paying him accordingly. Having obtained this
economic stability, he completed the work with a fourth set of volumes. In 1841
he wrote an ample conclusion. Chateaubriand had originally intended to have the
work published at least fifty years after his death, but his financial troubles
forced him, in his words, "to mortgage his tomb."