Today's Classic: Quartet- four stories by Vladimir Nabokov

Friday, April 10 is the 116th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Nabokov, a writer who published his first eight books in his native tongue, then- forced to seek refuge in America by the upheavals in Europe- became one of the greatest writers of fiction in English. Raised from childhood in those tongues and French as well, Nabokov often translated his own work, and his linguistic facility lent itself to his love of wordplay and descriptions of synesthetic experiences (synesthesia has come into vogue in this century with artists contending numbers have colors, and the like).

He wrote damned good love letters, too.

Here, from a 1950s French television program (subtitles added), is Nabokov at the height of his powers, among other things, reading- in English and Russian, the opening lines of Lolita: and showing us the a lyrical experience reading aloud can be:




On the side, Nabokov was a world-renowned expert on butterflies; in 2011, The New Yorker reported:

[I]n a speculative moment in 1945, [Nabokov] came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves. Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.

Henry Bemis Books is pleased to offer a first edition of four stories by this remarkable man and artist:

Nabokov, Vladimir, Nabokov’s Quartet (Phaedra Publications, 1st ed., August 15, 1966).  LOC 66-28101. 

In a long, January 1966 review in The New Republic, John Appel, Jr. noted, 

Now in his sixty-seventh year, Vladimir Nabokov is suddenly upon us. Of course, he was here all along, but his oeuvre was like an iceberg, the massive body of his Russian novels, stories, plays, and poems remaining untranslated and out of sight, lurking beneath the visible peaks of Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962). In the last eight years, however, six of his books in Russian have been translated and three out of print novels reissued. Nabokov's own translation of Lolita into Russian and a collation of stories known as Nabokov's Quartet appeared quietly this autumn…

These four stories, two published in the U.S. for the first time, show the master in top form. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, white end papers, boards covered in a rough printed cloth pattern with the author’s signature printed on the lower right front cover. 8.75” x 5.5”, 104 pp. Very good condition. 

HBB price: $100. Order by the end of Nabokov's birthday, and take a ten percent discount. As always, shipping is free.