http://www.observer.com/homepage.asp

Ron Rosenbaum

Dear Dmitri Nabokov: Don’t Burn Laura! Let Draft Gather Dust
Ron Rosenbaum
2258 words
28 November 2005
New York Observer
1

Oh my God, I’ve stumbled upon what seems to be a terrible literary tragedy 
in the making. Or perhaps we’re getting what we deserve.
But I feel I would be remiss not to alert the world of letters to the dire 
new twist in the fate of The Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov’s last 
unpublished manuscript. It exists now in a safe-deposit box whose location 
is known to only two people. If what I’ve just learned is true, it’s likely 
never to see the light of day—indeed, it may well be destroyed.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I didn’t know of the existence of The Original 
of Laura until very recently, when I learned about its peril. I only came 
upon reference to it as I was thinking of writing about a surprising new 
disclosure in the German scholar Michael Maar’s new book, The Two Lolitas. I’d 
written about Maar’s “cryptomnesia” theory—which attempts to connect a 1916 
German story called “Lolita” with Nabokov’s 1955 Lolita—in the April 19, 
2004, issue of The Observer, when his essay was initially published in 
English in London’s TLS. But the new book takes a new turn. And as I was 
Googling to see whether anyone had seen the significance of Maar’s “Atomite”* 
discovery, I came across an essay by Harvard professor Leland de la 
Durantaye on Lolita in The Village Voice, in which he mentions the existence 
of The Original of Laura:
“When Nabokov died in 1977, he left behind an unfinished novel entitled The 
Original of Laura. His express wish was that it be destroyed upon his death. 
Before him, Virgil and Kafka had left similar instructions [to destroy their 
work]; neither was obeyed. Nor was Nabokov. His wife, Véra, found herself 
unable to carry out her late husband’s wishes, and when she passed away in 
1991 she bequeathed the decision to their son. The manuscript’s location is 
kept secret.”
NOT ENTIRELY SECRET ANY MORE; I learned something about its location 
directly from the author’s son, translator and fierce custodian of the VN 
legacy, Dmitri Nabokov, in a recent e-mail exchange—in which he also 
disclosed something shocking, which I’ll get to.
But first, what do we know about The Original of Laura? Yes, it is mentioned 
in Brian Boyd’s biography, but I was relieved to discover I was not alone in 
my cryptomnesia (O.K., amnesia). At a recent, incredibly appealing—and 
packed—“Evening of Catullus,” a Bookforum reading from Peter Green’s new 
translation of the brilliant and imaginatively obscene Roman poet (I 
translated all the nasty bits in college! Along with the epic beauty of poem 
64, of course), the only person I found who’d heard of Nabokov’s Laura among 
the erudite attendees was the critic Geoffrey O’Brien, also editor in chief 
of the Library of America (which published three volumes of Nabokov works).
No surprise, really: We have had only sporadic mentions over the years, 
which have produced conflicting impressions. Most say the incomplete 
manuscript of Laura was a part (a third? a half?) of what was to be a short 
novel. It is said to take the form of index cards, on which Nabokov wrote 
his first drafts. Some say, confusingly, it was 30 to 40 “pages”; some say 
more.
The only reference I could find by the author himself certainly makes it 
seem enticing. It’s from the Selected Letters, 1940-1977 (edited by Dmitri 
Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli), dated October 30, 1976. In it, VN 
describes “The Original of Laura, the not quite finished manuscript of a 
novel which I had begun writing and reworking before my illness and which 
was completed in my mind: I must have gone through it some fifty times and 
in my diurnal delirium kept reading it aloud to a small dream audience in a 
walled garden. My audience consisted of peacocks, pigeons, my long dead 
parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family 
doctor so old as to be almost invisible.”
Just a hundred words or so about Laura, and you can see how its creator was 
enchanted by it. Fifty times! Peacocks and pigeons! Diurnal delirium, dream 
audience, walled garden …. And VN reading it, feeling that his “stumblings 
and fits of coughing” made it less a success than he hoped the finished 
version “will have … with intelligent reviewers when properly published.”
It was not to be, and perhaps in that last clause, there’s a hint of the 
origin of his wish for it to be burned. Even in his dream, he was upset by 
an audience hearing an impaired, “stumbling” version of something he 
cherished. An anticipation of what, in his illness, he intuited the 
situation might become? It’s beautiful but heartbreaking, considering what 
happened.
He died eight months later, leaving behind the burning imperative. So many 
writers have expressed similar inflammatory wishes and designs. Gogol—VN’s 
biographical study of whom is one of his most underrated works—actually did 
it. (The second part of Dead Souls—unbearable!)
But what about an incomplete first draft—would it tell us anything? Why had 
he ordered it burned? I was thinking of the controversy over “Hand D” in 
Shakespeare studies. A chapter in my forthcoming book deals with the 
controversy over the alleged Shakespearean handwritten contribution, a 
147-line scene, in the never-published play Sir Thomas More—an unfinished 
scene, a first draft with cross-outs, cuts, changes. It’s impossible to know 
for certain, despite thematic suggestiveness, if this is the only example of 
Shakespeare’s handwritten playwriting in existence, but are we interested?
We are interested—it could, if authentic, tell us something about his 
creative process, his thematic preoccupations. And in this case, we know it’s 
VN, and, what’s more, we have the testimony of Dmitri Nabokov, who has read 
it all and on one occasion quoted passages.
In The Literary Encyclopedia, Dmitri, an accomplished opera singer, now 71, 
is quoted saying that Laura “would have been Father’s most brilliant novel, 
the most concentrated distillation of his creativity, but whose release in 
incomplete form he expressly forbade.”
The Times’ Mel Gussow quotes Dmitri in 1998 saying it would have been “a 
brilliant, original and potentially totally radical book, in the literary 
sense, very different from the rest of his oeuvre [but] my father gave the 
order to destroy it.”
And then Professor Zoran Kuzmanovich, editor of Nabokov Studies, told Salon 
that Laura seemed to be about “aging but holding onto the original love of 
one’s life.”
At this point, I think we need to pause for a little speculative title 
analysis. I once—rather successfully, according to some noted 
Pynchonians—speculated upon the unreleased Mason & Dixon just on the basis 
of the title, linking it to “the transit of Venus,” as indeed Pynchon did.
But The Original of Laura? If we take Professor Kuzmanovich’s word for it, 
it sounds like a tribute of some kind to VN’s wife, Véra. But then Lolita is 
a return to a lost love as well, the Annabel of Humbert’s childhood. And, 
needless to say, VN’s finest work, Pale Fire, concerns the disposition of a 
dead author’s index-card draft.
Part of me wants to believe it was at least half-inspired by Laura, the 
movie about a detective haunted by a woman whose murder he’s trying to 
solve. An obsession derived from, fixated on a painting of Laura. Portraits 
are often said to be taken “from the original.” But what if The Original of 
Laura were somehow related not to a woman or a painting, but to a literary 
work? What if it were inspired by the original Lolita, the 1939 Russian 
novella Nabokov called The ­Enchanter, the manuscript of which he thought he 
had destroyed, but which was rediscovered in 1959 and translated and 
published in English after VN’s death.
Already haunting The Original of Laura are ghost afterimages: a 
parody/homage in McSweeney’s three years ago authored, it appears, under an 
apparent pseudonym by Penn State Library cataloging specialist Jeff Edmunds.
Then there was the controversy over whether samples of the original of The 
Original of Laura were entered into a Nabokov “prose-alike” contest 
sponsored by The Nabokovian magazine—or were they fake originals of The 
Original?
THERE WAS A READING OF BRIED PASSAGES FROM LAURA by Dmitri at Cornell some 
years ago that led Professor Kuzmanovich to conclude it was about “the 
original love of one’s life.” And I’ve heard there’s an “explanation” of 
some sort of Laura in the Nabokov-Edmund Wilson letters. I only found a copy 
at the last minute, but riffling though it, there certainly don’t seem to be 
any excerpts, and I’ve yet to find a clue to the nature or genesis of Laura. 
(Professor de la Durantaye points out the Wilson correspondence came to an 
end long before Nabokov spoke of writing Laura.)
I don’t think I’m going to get anywhere productive with this, so let us now 
turn to its fate.
Through a mutual friend, I was able to get an e-mail to Dmitri Nabokov, who 
had, I’d been told, some kind words for my thoughts on Pale Fire in a 
previous Observer piece (July 18, 2005). He was gracious enough to reply to 
an e-mail I sent asking him for comment on Laura and its disposition. He 
said two things.
First, that the safe-deposit box containing The Original of Laura was 
located in Switzerland, in a bank vault, and only Dmitri—and one other 
person (unidentified)—knew where.
And second, that he will probably destroy it before he dies! Destroy it 
because of his father’s wishes and what he described as the repellent (he 
used another word) atmosphere of what he called “Lolitology” these days.
I had known there was trouble in Lolita-land even on the much-celebrated 
50th anniversary of that novel. I subscribe to a Nabokov e-mail list serve; 
I’d witnessed the entire list implode and cease posting for some time due to 
an explosive controversy between Dmitri and some members of the list over a 
remark in a new VN biographical study—a blow-up I did not follow as 
carefully as I’m sure I should have.
And there was the European press’ thick-witted reaction to the Michael Maar 
thesis about the 1916 “Lolita,” claiming it involved “plagiarism”—which Maar 
made abundantly clear he did not think was involved at all.
I think you have to understand the difficulty of Dmitri’s position. Whatever 
we may think VN really meant, his instructions were extremely clear: Destroy 
it. His wife Véra died before destroying it. It’s Dmitri’s responsibility, 
and it’s easy for you to say he has a responsibility to the literary world 
to give us this last fragment of his father’s genius.
On the other hand … VN’s dream of reading Laura aloud in the “walled 
garden” … It was a nightmare: VN trying to read the story, but stumbling and 
regretting it. Hoping against hope it would be “properly published.” 
Clearly, he did not wish a version that “stumbled” in any respect to see the 
light of day.
Until very recently, the reports were that Dmitri was considering placing 
the manuscript in the trust of a university, a museum or a foundation, whose 
trustees would decide upon limited access for scholars.
But if what he says in his e-mail to me holds true, it’s for the flames. I 
just hope he didn’t make up his previously undecided mind in response to my 
e-mail. How would I live with that? That’s really the fear that has driven 
me to alert the world to the imminent possibility of a safe-deposit-box 
withdrawal and a fire to follow.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I UNDERSTAND DMITRI'S IMPATIENCE with the biographical 
fetishism that has invaded literature—a product of celebrity culture, I’d 
argue. I certainly see it in the cultural capital of Shakespeare biographies 
as compared to studies of Shakespeare’s work.
If the destruction of The Original of Laura is inevitable (and I think it 
isn’t, and would like to add my voice to what I’m sure will be those of 
others pleading with Dmitri not to burn it), it’s the reductive 
biographizing—pathographizing—of literature that is responsible.
Read the works! Life is too short to care more deeply about the life of the 
one who wrote them, whose secrets are usually irretrievable anyway.
Meanwhile—this is urgent—won’t some foundation or university library (I’d 
vote for my alma mater’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) step 
forward with a detailed plan for funding the preservation of The Original of 
Laura, this irreplaceable literary treasure? And present the plan to Dmitri 
and the Nabokov estate. That way, he won’t have to choose between 
destruction and vague statements of good intentions. Time is running out. 
What if the safe-deposit box’s location gets lost?
And if something is worked out and The Original of Laura is saved from the 
flames, they’d better let me read it.