[This post is from Carolyn Kunin, whose connection to the Forum interface is for some reason malfunctioning; I'm posting on her behalf. -SB]
To the Forum,
I just recently read the famous Henry James tale the Aspern Papers, and at some point recognized an uncanny resemblance to Pushkin's Pikovaia Dama. It turns out I was not the first to see it––a certain Briggs published in 1972, and since then the relationship has been fodder for Slavists (see Neil Cornwell's Pushkin's 'Queen of Spades'). Our VN knew Pikovaia well of course and in a footnote in his magnum opus EO translation, he claims to have discovered a Swedish ur-Pikovaia (actually it was Véra Nabokov who found this tidbit and along with Gennady Barabtarlo published a short article on her trouvaille in Russian Literary Triquarterly, 24). We do know that VN read Aspern because he wrote Edmund Wilson about his displeasure with James's description of the shape of the tip of a cigar glowing in the dark in the story (I kid you not) but I could not find any evidence that he saw the resemblance between Aspern and Pikovaia. Is it possible he didn't see it? and if he did see it, why not mention it to Wilson, who would have relished such a tasty literary morsel?
Any ideas?
Carolyn Kunin