Vera by Stacy Schiff - Modern Library (1999)
Stacy Schiff is probably my favorite biographer. Attentive readers might remember her fantastic profile of Cleopatra from my very first blog post, but it is really her 1999 treatment of Vera Nabokov that solidifies her place in the pantheon of scribes. Vera lives up to every bit of critical gushing. This snappy, meticulous book earned Schiff a well-deserved Pulitzer, along with a slew of additional honors. From a reader’s perspective, Vera is evidence of Schiff’s impressive ability to characterize a real woman without rendering her two-dimensional. This task is especially difficult when the woman in question happens to be the elusive wife of one of the most controversial writers in modern history. Biographers have spent decades combing through Lolita, along with lesser known works by Vladimir Nabokov, hoping to unearth evidence of his mysterious wife—so cryptic and refined compared to his most notorious female creation. Stacy Schiff refuses to pin Vera Nabokov to the pages of her husband’s texts. As in Cleopatra, it is Schiff’s remarkable knack for embodying her subjects—while at the same time acknowledging the futility of this aim—that elevates her above her peers. There is a part of Vera Nabokov that will never be recovered, however closely we examine the words and sentences she lurks behind. The entire life of Mrs. Nabokov cannot be distilled from crafted pieces of fiction. Coming to terms with the limitations of recorded history is the demoralizing fate of every biographer. How each chooses to treat the inevitable gaps in the narrative is really what distinguishes the adequate writers, from the exceptional ones.
Schiff’s talent for stirring the imagination without dehumanizing her subject makes for a whimsical, jaunty read. More so than most scholarly writers, Schiff has fun with her text and makes no effort to sanitize her own narrative voice in order to sound more ‘serious.’ She knows she does not need to do so. Schiff’s methodical research stands on its own and does not need to be bolstered by twelve-letter words and convoluted syntax. Vera is not a journey through a clapboard funhouse of smoke and mirrors—it is a thorough investigation presented with style and panache. Right from the introduction, Schiff draws in readers with her playful tone and masterful command of imagery and vocabulary. Describing the peculiar relationship between Vladimir and Vera, she writes:
To one person she remained always hugely visible. Nabokov was supremely conscious of her presence. He lit up around his wife; he played off her. The two comported themselves as if they shared a secret. With visitors later in life they resembled nothing so much as two children plotting, in code, about how much they dared tell the adults…Nabokov reveled in being a figment of Vera’s imagination, which is no wonder, given who she thought he was. When she met him she felt that he was the greatest writer of his generation; to that single truth she held strong for sixty-eight years, as if to compensate for all the loss and the turmoil, the accidents of history. She did all in her power to see to it that he existed not in time, only in art, thus sparing him the fate of so many of his characters, imprisoned by their various passions.
If the Humbert-Dolores relationship is a bit too icky for your tastes, the Vera-Vladimir one might be more palatable. Schiff writes about this flighty pair of Russian agoraphobes as if their marriage counts among the greatest love stories of all time. And she makes a convincing argument. Cold and hostile as she comes across in her correspondence with demanding publishers and nosy journalists, Vera Nabokov was loyal to an almost pathological degree. She believed in her husband’s innate talent absolutely—to such an extent that she bypassed fanatical hysteria to exist solely within the realm of confident certainty. Her favorable opinion of her husband’s genius was held so strongly that it became fact. No amount of slander could soil her image of Vladimir because she was in love with his mind, as expressed in his beautiful words, and cared primarily for the preservation of his intellect. Her farsightedness proved to be uncanny. Despite the fact that Lolita struggled to find an American publisher and almost landed several British ones in jail, it slowly inched its way into the literary canon and is now something of a classic. If Vera felt confident in her husband’s posthumous ascension, it is easy to see how she could brush aside insults and insinuations inflicted during his life. Schiff presents the Nabokovs rather like a pair of determined, tireless stokers, working together to ensure that their shared imaginative furnace was never extinguished. At times they seemed to nurture a single creative spirit. Writes Schiff,
Vera knew where she sat in her husband’s private pantheon. She showed no sign of having felt oppressed, eclipsed—or, for that matter, central, indispensable, a full creative partner. At all times she appears to have believed that she stood not in her husband’s shadow but in his light. The tacit participation worked two rather paradoxical effects. It established her as everywhere present in a life from which she sought—and fought—to absent herself.
Part of the mystery of Vera Nabokov—and, unfortunately, part of her attraction as well—is the extent to which she sought to annihilate herself. She wished to exist solely as the protector and defender of her husband’s artistic nucleus, although she refused to accept the role of muse or inspiration. It is a curious psychological phenomena that has stumped critics and biographers for decades. Vera was so confident in her abilities as a reader and advisor that she believed no one else could encourage Vladimir in his efforts. She understood his needs, his desires, and his neuroses. If the world were to benefit from the beauty of his prose, she needed to abandon her individuality and live only to support her husband’s pursuits. It was anonymous subjugation to be certain, but complicated by the fact that Vera believed wholeheartedly that her role as accomplice was just as vital to the final product as Vladimir’s creative mind. She believed so strongly in the ideals her husband represented that assuming the role of his wife was by no means a demotion. Writes Schiff,
Vera assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies of the life that—born at a time and place where women could and did lay claim to all kinds of ambitions—she should elevate the role of wife to high art…Traditionally a man changes his name and braces himself for fame; a woman changes hers and passes into oblivion. This was not to be Vera’s case, although she did gather her married name around her like a cloak, which she occasionally opened to startling effect.
One of Stacy Schiff’s greatest challenges in Vera is writing about a woman who rarely talked about herself, yet was the subject of relentless gossip and scrutiny. She was the wife of a man known for writing a ‘pornographic’ novel about a middle-aged professor with pedophilic inclinations. As Nabokov was himself a middle-aged professor at the time of publication, the ensuing controversy was inevitable. Much was said about Vera over the years—that she had written the book herself, that she approved of her husband’s ‘nymphets,’ that she enjoyed an open marriage—none of which she deigned to refute. There has always been a strange contrast between Vera’s visibility, and her silence. Schiff captures the enigmatic personality of Mrs. Nabokov when she writes,
She did not seem to care; the perfect magician’s assistant, she could be sawed in half with no loss of dignity or composure. She refused only to concede that the magician had an assistant. To admit that he did so was to admit that some kind of sleight of hand was being worked. She was not going to reveal her husband’s tricks. Every artist is a great deceiver, Nabokov reminds us. And Nabokov was a very great artist.
Frustrating and inexplicable as the Nabokovs may have been, there can be little doubt as to their compatibility. Vera and Vladimir worked in tandem, as evidenced by their merging into the singular entity of ‘V. Nabokov.’ Publishers rarely knew whether letters were sent by the author or his wife, and it never seemed to make much of a difference. They constituted a single being. The outside world understood little of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov, but they understood each other perfectly. And Stacy Schiff, in her incredible biography, Vera, understands that the shadows and whispers of Mrs. Nabokov are all the evidence we need to recognize her greatness.
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