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Nabokov’s Love Affair

The greatest English-language novelist of the 20th century was also an outstanding Russian philosemite

by
Shalom Goldman
July 25, 2024

Gertrude Fehr/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Gertrude Fehr/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Vladimir Nabokov, born in 1899, began life in an upper-class home in St. Petersburg, and it was in that city and on the nearby Rozhestveno estate that he and his family lived until they were dispossessed by the Russian Revolution. The family then moved to Berlin. The young Vladimir, who had learned English as a child, attended Cambridge University from 1919 to 1922. When Vladimir was in his last year at Cambridge, White Russian terrorists assassinated his father, V.D. Nabokov, in Berlin. The effects of this trauma are reflected in many of Nabokov’s novels and stories.

From 1922 to 1937, Nabokov lived in Berlin, where he met and married Vera Slonim, daughter of an upper-class Russian Jewish family. During his fifteen years in the German capital, Nabokov wrote six novels, and it was there that Vera gave birth to their son Dmitri. With the Nazi rise to power and enforcement of the Nuremberg Laws, the Nabokovs moved to Paris, where they lived until the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940. From 1940 to 1960 the Nabokovs lived in the United States. They spent most of that time at Cornell University, where Nabokov taught Russian and world literature. When, in the late 1950s, the financial success of Lolita freed Nabokov from having to earn his living as a professor, he and Vera moved in 1960 to Switzerland, where they spent the rest of their lives ensconced in an elegant hotel in Montreux.

In Switzerland, Nabokov was free to pursue his literary work without teaching responsibilities. He could also indulge his other career as a lepidopterist, or butterfly scientist—a field in which he made major contributions. There are several species of butterfly named after Nabokov, and two books on his butterfly research have been published. Nabokov also continued to write novels and stories while translating his earlier German and Russian novels into English, often assisted by his son Dmitri. During this second European period of their lives, the Nabokovs began to reestablish connections with old European and Russian friends, among them, many Jews and Israelis. Toward the end of his life, Nabokov expressed a strong wish to pay an extended visit to Israel, a state he had long supported.

Nabokov’s wife, Vera Slonim, was the child of a distinguished Russian Jewish family (she traced her lineage to a renowned rabbinical dynasty). Critic Maxim Shrayer has noted that, “Following his marriage to Vera Slonim, opposition to anti-Semitism became a leitmotif of Nabokov’s life.” In fact, the 26-year-old Nabokov had recorded his contempt for antisemites before he met Vera in Berlin in 1925—and, according to Vera Nabokov’s biographer, Stacy Schiff, “his previous conquests included a disproportionate number of Jewish girlfriends.”

While Vera Nabokov was assertively proud of her heritage, she did not think of herself as religious. She “remained as areligious all her life as her family appeared to be in Russia, but knew well that her existence was predicated on a hard-won—and flimsy—right.” Throughout Vera Nabokov’s life she continually reminded her interlocutors that she was Jewish. This honesty and moral courage were qualities that both Nabokovs shared, and endeavored to pass on to their son.

There was an amusing and fascinating dynamic in the Nabokov marriage: Vladimir was more sensitive than Vera to anti-Jewish comments. Nabokov’s visceral disgust against antisemitism did not begin with his marriage. Rather, it had a long family history. Nabokov’s parents and grandparents were prominent liberals and advocates for Jewish rights in czarist Russia.

With the rise of Nazism, Nabokov realized that his fate was linked to the fate of European Jewry—as an anti-fascist, and as the husband of a Jew.

The story of Vladimir Nabokov’s interest in Jews and Israel cannot be told without the stories of his father’s and grandfather’s engagement with liberal politics and Jewish issues. Both men were Russian liberal jurists, academicians, and politicians. The fight against antisemitism, a persistent struggle in Russian public and intellectual life, was a powerful element in both men’s lives.

Vladimir’s grandfather Dmitri Nabokov (1826-1904) served as minister of justice under Czar Alexander II. With the accession of Alexander III, who became czar following the assassination of his father in 1881, reaction set in backed by virulently antisemitic legislation intended to destroy the Jewish communities of Russia. Nabokov’s grandfather became an advocate for Jewish rights and an outspoken opponent of Konstantin Pobedonostev, Alexander III’s reactionary adviser who famously declared of Russian Jews that “one third will be baptized, one third will starve, and one third will emigrate ... then we shall be rid of them.” Pobedonostev vilified Dmitri Nabokov for his objections to the persecution of Russian Jews.

Dmitri’s son, Nabokov’s father Vladimir, condemned the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious pamphlet first circulated in 1903. The pamphlet soon became the manifesto of the proto-fascist Black Hundreds. V.D. Nabokov understood the power of antisemitism as a tool of political reactionaries. When he condemned the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 and pointed the finger of blame at the politicians and policemen who enabled the attacks, he suffered the consequences of taking a principled stand.

In the spring of 1903, V.D. Nabokov wrote “The Bloodbath of Kishinev,” a powerful newspaper article condemning the Kishinev pogrom. According to Vladimir Nabokov’s biographer Brian Boyd, “this unrhetorical, coolly analytical article, considered one of the most dazzling productions of Russian public debate under censorship, set the whole capital buzzing.” The major point of the article was that antisemitism was a “disease” that was harmful not only to its immediate victims, the Jews, but equally harmful to the Russian body politic. According to the elder V.D. Nabokov, the actual responsibility for the pogroms rested with the police and the czarist government, not with the mobs who perpetrated them.

In his memoir Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov relates that with the publication of “The Bloodbath of Kishinev” the Russian government deprived his father of his court title, and his father became known as “the most outspoken defender of Jewish rights among all Russian gentiles trained in the law.”

A decade later, when he was working as a journalist, V.D. Nabokov condemned the 1913 show trial of Mendel Beylis, a Russian Jew accused of kidnapping a Christian child and using his blood for ritual purposes. The Beylis case aroused indignation in the Western world. Out of sympathy for Beylis, Nabokov attended the trial as a reporter for a liberal newspaper. Though Beylis was eventually acquitted, liberal reporters who questioned the Russian government’s motives in prosecuting the case were punished. Some journalists were given prison sentences, others, V.D. Nabokov among them, were heavily fined. Thus, from his parents and grandparents the young Vladimir absorbed a tradition of philosemitic liberalism. Between them, his father and grandfather represented a century of principled opposition to Russian antisemitism and its blood brother, reactionary politics.

Young Vladimir attended St. Petersburg’s Tenishev School, “one of the best Russian secondary institutions of the time ... emphatically liberal, democratic, and nondiscriminatory in terms of rank, race, and creed.” According to research published in The Nabokovian by Prof. Yuri Leving, who holds an original scholarship on Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov’s closest friend at school was Samuel Rosov, one of the many Jewish students in the school. Tenishev, liberal and privately run, was not bound by the Russian state quota system, which limited Jewish enrollment in Russian schools to 5%. At this remarkable institution, Vladimir first learned of Zionism, the ideology then making powerful inroads among Russian Jewish youth. Rosov, in early adolescence, declared himself a Zionist and eventually moved to Palestine. Writing to Nabokov decades later, Rosov reminisced about their years together at school: “Classifications did not exist for you—Armenian, Jew, or German. You distinguished people only by their individual characteristics and not by labels of any kind.”

Samuel Rosov would cross paths with Nabokov again a decade later. When Vladimir was enrolled as a student at Cambridge University (1919-22), Samuel Rosov was studying at University College London. The two school friends sought each other’s company in their new English environment. From Rosov, Nabokov learned about the various forms of emergent Jewish nationalism. Rosov, who was to spend the last years of his life in Haifa, would renew his friendship with Nabokov many years later. Nabokov, in his final years, hoped to visit Rosov in his Haifa home.

Vladimir Nabokov’s lifelong liberalism and anti-racist philosemitism were shaped by the great trauma of his life: A White Russian terrorist shot his father while he was giving a speech in Berlin in 1922. Chapter 9 of Speak, Memory is devoted to his father’s life and death. At the time of the assassination in March of 1922, Vladimir, a student at Cambridge, was spending Easter vacation at his parents’ apartment in Berlin. In Berlin, Vladimir’s father was active in émigré politics, working to establish a united political front against the Bolshevik regime. At a mass meeting in support of this cause, V.D. Nabokov was shot when he tried to protect Pavel Milyukov, a former Kerensky government minister, from an assassin’s bullet. Nabokov died; Milyukov survived. In his diary Vladimir recorded his reactions to the news of his father’s murder: “‘Father is no more.’ These four words hammered in my brain and I tried to imagine his face, his movements. The night before he had been so happy, so kind.” Vladimir’s response to this tragedy was to immerse himself in his work—studying for his Cambridge exams and writing fiction and poetry.

With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, Nabokov realized that his fate was linked to the fate of European Jewry—as an anti-fascist, and as the husband of a Jew. When France fell to the Germans, the Nabokovs were able to gain passage to the United States through the offices of the Union of Russian Jews, a Jewish refugee organization in Paris. “In gratitude for his father’s resolute attacks almost four decades before on Russia’s officially sanctioned anti-Semitism,” the organization provided the Nabokovs with first-class tickets from France to New York in mid-May, 1940.

The Nabokovs’ concern for the fate of European Jewry was part and parcel of their liberalism. Vladimir’s son Dmitri spoke of his father’s “utter freedom from anything cruel, cheap, or mean ... (he had) a menacing tone he used only when defending the weak and blameless.” This serves to remind us that Nabokov’s concern for the underdog was not limited to Jews. The persecution of minorities anywhere aroused his interest and indignation. As critic L.L Lee noted in the mid-1970s, “Racism, in life or in fiction, is abhorrent to Nabokov.”

In his fiction, Nabokov links the persistence of antisemitism to the rise of totalitarian regimes. Two short stories written in the 1930s, “Cloud, Castle, Lake” and “Tyrants Destroyed,” express the writer’s contempt for the Nazi and Stalinist regimes. In “Tyrants Destroyed,” the narrator imagines the successful assassination of a dictator who has ruled and ruined a country for decades. The protagonist is obsessed with the tyrant; his hatred for “the leader of the people” is mixed with a twisted love. Brian Boyd notes that in this story, “Nabokov exposes with devastating accuracy the inanity of hero worship, and statist planning.” Just as Vladimir’s father fought antisemitism as an aspect of state oppression and tyranny, his son Vladimir condemned antisemitism as a persistent aspect of totalitarianism.

The persistence of antisemitism, even after the Nazi crimes against the Jews had been revealed, is the theme of another Nabokov short story, “Conversation Piece.” The protagonist, a thinly disguised young Nabokov, arriving in Boston after fleeing Europe in 1938, finds himself confused with another Russian émigré of the same name. As it turns out, this is not the first time that the protagonist has been confused with his unwanted “double.” Ten years earlier, while living in Prague, a right-wing organization demanded that he return their copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As Vladimir Nabokov describes it in this story, “this book, which in the old days had been wistfully appreciated by the czar, was a fake memorandum the secret police had paid a semiliterate crook to compile.” The library, of course, sees it differently; it demands the return of a “popular and valuable work.” “Conversation Piece” was the first Nabokov story to appear in The New Yorker. Nabokov’s biographer Brian Boyd notes, “What seems to me most striking about the story is its immense shadowy background of pain and frightening possibility; not its secret but its silence.”

Nabokov’s sensitivity to antisemitism is evident in his Lectures on Literature, distilled from his lectures at Cornell University from 1948 to 1958. His set of lectures on Joyce’s Ulysses ended the series. In the introductory lecture on that novel, Nabokov notes that both Leopold and Molly Bloom are of Jewish origin: “Bloom is of Hungarian Jewish origin. ... Molly is Irish on her father’s side and Spanish-Jewish on her mother’s side.” Leopold Bloom is an outsider, “the wandering Jew, the type of the exile.” With his usual attention to detail, Nabokov points out that Virag, Bloom’s father’s Hungarian family name, means “flower.” And “Henry Flower” is the secret name Bloom uses in his correspondence with his lover. Yes, Nabokov notes, Leopold Bloom’s mother is Irish Protestant and his father Jewish. Thus, he remains an outsider in a Catholic country. “Despite these complications,” comments Nabokov, “Bloom considers himself a Jew, and anti-Semitism is the constant shadow hanging over him throughout the book.”

His American friends told many stories in which Nabokov stood up to antisemitism in the United States. In the early 1950s, during a vacation in New England, Nabokov, with his son Dmitri and Dmitri’s school friend, stopped in a local inn for lunch. The menu had a “Gentiles only” notice on its cover. “He called over the waitress and asked her what the management would do if there appeared at the door that very moment a bearded and be-robed man, leading a mule bearing his pregnant wife, all of them dusty and tired from a long journey. ‘What … what are you talking about?’ the waitress stammered. ‘I am talking about Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Nabokov, as he pointed to the phrase in question, rose from the table, and led his party from the restaurant.”

Nabokov’s lifelong advocacy for and identification with the Jewish people has been little recognized.

When Nabokov immigrated to the United States in 1940, he became acutely aware of American racial discrimination. In 1942, he was invited to lecture at Spelman College in Atlanta. He spent five days at the historically Black women’s college. The students and faculty applauded “with wild enthusiasm” his lectures on Pushkin, in which he stressed Pushkin’s Ethiopian heritage (Pushkin’s grandfather was a freed Ethiopian slave who had been brought to the royal court in St. Petersburg). Each day of his visit, Nabokov met with Florence Read, Spelman’s president, and with other African American intellectuals. As a result of this visit, Florence Read became a lifelong friend of the Nabokovs.

Upon the establishment of the State of Israel, Nabokov became an ardent Zionist, and remained so until his death in 1977. Like his onetime friend Edmund Wilson, he often found himself defending Israeli policies when many in the American literary world, Jews among them, insisted on denouncing them. Like Wilson, what Nabokov denounced was antisemitism. They both objected to the campaign for clemency for Ezra Pound and in 1950 argued against awarding Pound the prestigious Bollingen Prize for Poetry. As Nabokov’s Cornell colleague Alfred Appel noted, “Doubtless Nabokov’s detestation of Ezra Pound—‘that total fake’—was based on the poet’s fascist and anti-Semitic opinions, as well as on the artistic clutter and confusion of the Cantos.”

Per “Phantom in Jerusalem, or the History of an Unrealized Visit” by Prof. Yuri Leving, Nabokov responded positively to Israeli Ambassador to Switzerland Arye Levavi’s invitation to visit Israel in a letter dated Dec. 31, 1970: “I wish to thank you and your Government very warmly for inviting my wife and me to visit Israel. We shall be delighted to do so. Would April 1972 be an acceptable time? The reason we must wait till 1972 is that we have to go this spring on a business trip to New York for the opening of a musical made of one of my novels. I would be happy to give one or two readings of my works, I would enjoy visiting museums, libraries and universities, and I would like to take advantage of this wonderful occasion to do some butterfly hunting.”

Three years later, in a letter dated Feb. 12, 1973, Nabokov congratulated Yitzhak Livni on the 25th anniversary of Israel: “I don’t have to tell you what ardent sympathy marks my feelings toward Israel and her twenty fifth anniversary. ... I can only extend my heartfelt congratulations to your young ancient great little country.” In a letter to Ambassador Levavi, dated Oct. 9, 1973, and written on the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Nabokov offers “a small contribution to Israel’s defense against the ‘Arabolshevist’ aggression. May I beg you to forward the enclosed check. I am leaving the name blank because I don’t know to what organization exactly it should go.”

In 1974, Nabokov’s wish to visit Israel was rekindled when he received a letter of invitation from Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem. Nabokov replied politely but firmly that “a man seventy-five years old really couldn’t embark on a Middle Eastern adventure.” He said that he needed the tranquility of Switzerland to continue working steadily. Kollek persisted and sent Nabokov another invitation in late 1974, assuring the writer that he would be guaranteed tranquility and privacy in Israel. He could stay at the municipality’s guesthouse at Mishkanot Shaananim. In a January 1975 response to Kollek, Nabokov decided that he and Vera would accept the invitation but could not say precisely when they would arrive. Nabokov, assisted by his son Dmitri, was then working on translating and writing and could not free himself for a trip.

Over the following two years (1975-77), many friends of the Nabokovs, including English publisher George Weidenfeld, urged the couple to make more definite plans to stay at Mishkanot Shaananim. Weidenfeld was Nabokov’s English publisher, a loyal fan and friend. In the spring of 1976 Nabokov wrote to the director of Mishkanot, Peter Halban, and accepted the invitation: He and Vera would spend the spring of 1977 in Jerusalem. In his letter, Nabokov wrote, “Few things could tempt me more than a trip to Israel, especially in the conditions that you so kindly offer.” Among the pleasures that Nabokov looked forward to in Israel was a reunion with his childhood friend Samuel Rosov, who was living in Haifa and had corresponded with Nabokov through the years. Nabokov also wanted to collect and study the butterflies of the Holy Land.

Unfortunately, the visit was never to take place. Nabokov fell ill in late 1976. From his sickbed, he persisted in planning his visit to Israel. He wrote Teddy Kollek, describing the pneumonia that had put him in the hospital and expressing disappointment that “a trip to which we had long looked forward to” would again have to be postponed. A few months later, in a March 1977 letter to Teddy Kollek, Nabokov apologized for having “again to forgo a trip to which we had long looked forward.” In April, Kollek replied, wishing Nabokov a speedy recovery, and expressing the hope that he would soon be able to visit Jerusalem. This wish was not to be fulfilled: Nabokov died on July 2, 1977.

Though Vladimir and Vera Nabokov never made it to Israel, their son Dmitri did. Trained as an opera singer, Dmitri was invited to sing with the Tel Aviv Opera during the 1970s. But for various reasons, including his father’s illness, the arrangements with the opera company were postponed. It was not until 1987 that Dmitri performed in Israel; he sang as a bass soloist in the Dvořák “Requiem.” “Some years ago,” Dmitri wrote, “my parents and I were invited by Mayor Teddy Kollek to visit at an artist’s colony here, but Father’s illness made that trip impossible. Now I am finally in Israel, to sing with Aronovitch, the most brilliantly original conductor I have ever encountered, in the Dvořák ‘Requiem.’”

Vladimir Nabokov was the ultimate cosmopolitan, but his lifelong advocacy for and identification with the Jewish people has been little recognized. Nabokov never reached Israel, but one could see why the drama of Israel’s “restoration” would appeal to him. As Alfred Kazin put it, “Nabokov stands out just now because he has no country but himself. He is the only refugee who could have turned statelessness into absolute strength.” Israel offered a solution to one case of statelessness, that of the Jews. The establishment of Israel, facilitated by a resurgence of Jewish culture, brought about a Hebrew literary and cultural renaissance. This cultural rebirth caught Nabokov’s attention and fired his imagination, just as the targeting of Jews by the czarist state had attracted the strong sympathies of his father and his grandfather.

Shalom Goldman is Professor of Religion at Middlebury College. His most recent book is From Jews to Muslims: Twentieth Century Converts to Islam.