The students were in awe and somewhat afraid of this elegant, slender, prematurely gray-haired woman who appeared aloof, devoid of humor and who carried a gun in her purse (apparently as a defense against snakes on butterfly collecting trips).
She sat in the front row, helped him locate his notes, erased the blackboard, corrected his students’ tests and papers, and later, actually taught his classes. The “V and V” partnership went further when Vera attended all of her husband’s lectures. Witnesses to the October Revolution and the ensuing chaotic civil war, the Slonims escaped the newly formed Soviet Union, eventually settling in Berlin in 1921, a haven then for Russian exiles. Vera Evseevna Slonim was born in 1902 to a middle-class Jewish family in St.
Stacy Schiff’s voluminous biography attempts to dissect the enigmatic persona of Vera Nabokov – the same Vera to whom all of Nabokov’s books are dedicated to the self-effacing woman who was his wife, assistant and Lolita’s savior. But without Vera, Nabokov’s literary legacy would not have been as spectacular. Much is known of Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the notorious novel Lolita, particularly during this centennial year of his birth. Their marriage evolved into a symbiotic relationship, a puzzling Gordian knot that generated some of the century’s best literature. He was right – Vera Nabokov was perhaps the largest, most fundamental component of the celebrated author’s life. But the last isn’t a small thing at all.” In a prophetic letter to his future wife, writer Vladimir Nabokov declares, “Oh my joy, when will we live together, in a beautiful place, with a mountain view, with a dog yapping outside the window? I need so little: A bottle of ink, and a spot of sunshine on the floor – oh, and you.
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