Subject: Review of Thomas Urban's NABOKOV IN BERLIN

Tomas Urban. NABOKOV  v BERLINE [Nabokov in Berlin]. Moscow: Agraf, 2004.

        This a Russian translation of  the 1999 “VLADIMIR NABOKOV – Blaue Abende in
Berlin.”  Urban, a German journalist who spent several years as a correspondent
in Warsaw and Moscow, has written extensively about the interwar Russian exile
community in Berlin. When I bought the1999 German edition I flipped through it
and noticed little that was not well known from Boyd and other sources. Having
very limited German, I set it aside. When the Russian edition recently
appeared, I sat down and read it through.  Although  the author concedes his
work contains nothing new about  VN’s works or biography, the volume does have
its merits. The major theme, Urban says, is “Nabokov and Politics.”
Fortunately, that  theme is not about VN’s political activity, but about the
political scene in Germany and the émigré community. The book describes the
politicking within the Russian exile literary community, the situation of the
exiles vis-à-vis the Soviet regime, and their relationship to the volatile
political situation in Germany.

     The highpoint of Berlin as the “Stepmother of Russian Cities” was during
1921-1923 when Germany’s run-away inflation helped to stretch out the mostly
modest hard currency assets of the  600,000 Russian emigres. Beginning with
the stabilization of the German economy in 1923,  the emigres moved on, mostly
to Paris and Belgrad. By 1928 only 180,000 remained and by 1938 – only 40, 000.
Urban presents a good picture of the Russian scene in Berlin, especially the
vigorous literary community in all its variety. He then traces the Nabokov
family history in Berlin through the death of  Nabokov senior and the departure
of family to Prague. Perhaps the greatest virtue of Urban’s work is in setting
out the context of Nabokov’s life in Berlin. Chapters are devoted Nabokov’s
attitude to Germany as revealed in his fiction and its increasingly negative
tone, especially from the late Thirties onward. Only toward the end of
Nabokov’s life is that hostility mitigated as he realizes that a new generation
has come to the fore. The Russian theater and cabaret scene and Nabokov’s place
in it is the subject of  special attention. Much of the information may be
found  in Boyd but the latter’s but  much broader range of subject matter makes
its a less convenient guide to this period in VN’s biography.

     Urban’s book is a useful guidebook to Nabokov’s Berlin and indeed makes a
convenient vade mecum for the Nabokovian sightseer. Its three appendices
(running 40 pages) provide an informative  list of  Nabokov’s Berlin
residences, periods of residence, and events that took place in each. A second
appendix locates places that figure in VN’s Berlin life and ficition---cafes,
dentists’ offices, butterfly sellers, libraries, etc. Last is a chronological
biography in tabular form.  These aids are supplemented by excellent photos,
documents, and a city plan  identifying sites in Nabokov’s Berlin. Useful as
these are, Urban’s volume, while convenient as a hand-held guide, is inferior
to Dieter Zimmer’s lavish Nabokovs Berlin (Berlin: Nicolai, 2001) that is more
oriented toward Berlin in VN’s fiction.  The contents of the Russian version of
 Nabokov in Berlin  is identical to the German, although the latter contains a
useful index.

        Perhaps the highpoint of the Urban volume is the chapter devoted to a bookl
that Nabokov did not write-- Novel with Cocaine which was published in Paris in
1936 under the pseudonym “M. Ageev.” The work was quickly forgotten until a 1983
French version  became a best-seller and was translated into several other
languages. Two years later Nikita Struve (Sorbonne) published the first of two
articles arguing that  Nabokov was the real author—a claim that was hotly
rejected by the Nabokov family. It was soon determined that “Ageev” was  one
Mark Levi, a Russian émigré from Moscow who lived for some years in Berlin
before moving  on to Istanbul. Lidiia Chervinskaya, a young woman on the
fringes of  Russian literary circles in Paris claimed that she had become
Levi’s mistress on a visit to her parents who lived in Istanbul. She also
asserted that Levi had later sent her his Paraguayan(!!) passport so that she
could renew it at the Consulate in Paris.  She lost both the document  and
contact with Levi but was later told that he had returned to the USSR. Another
report surfaced that Levi had  not returned to Russia but had died and was
buried in an Istanbul graveyard. Eventually two  Russian researchers, G.G.
Superfin and M. Yu. Sorokina found Levi’s name in the records of a Moscow
gymnasium  and  eventually determined that Levi had indeed returned to Russia
after being expelled by Turkey for suspected complicity in an assasination
attempt to Franz von Pappen, Hitler’s Ambassador to Turkey during WWII.. It was
also determined that the novel Romance with Cocaine contained the names of two
of Levi’s fellow student in his 1916 Moscow gymnasium class-- as well as other
verified autobiographical details. The available information  suggests that
Levi was (inter alia) a Soviet agent. After his return to Russia, he settled in
Armenia where he taught German at the Institute of Foreigh Languages in Erevan.
He died in 1973.

        There is no evidence that Levi and Nabokov were acquainted in Berlin, but it
has also been (unconvincingly) suggested that Romance with Cocaine might have
been a collaboration with Levi supplying the characters and plot and VN doing
the rather hallucenogenic prose. The grounds for this implausible scenario lie
in certain  perceived similarities between Nabokov’s 1934 novel Glory. There
is, by the way, an excellent English translation of  “Ageev’s” novel by Michail
Heim.

        The background sketched above emerged in scattered bits and pieces  between
1983 and the 1994. Urban is, so far as I know, the first to put the whole
bizarre story together.


D. Barton Johnson

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