I, X Does Not Equal Nabokov*
by Maurice Couturier

The relation between autobiography and fiction is especially difficult to assess in the case of Nabokov, first because he wrote an autobiography that possesses the characteristics of a poetic novel (some of the chapters were first published as short stories), and second because he caricatured his own biography in his last published novel, Look at the Harlequins! (1974).

In the foreword of Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (a revised edition of his autobiography Conclusive Evidence), as well as in the bibliographical note inserted at the end of Nabokov's Dozen1 a collection of thirteen short stories, Nabokov chronicles the publishing history of texts that were alternately presented as autobiographical and fictional. Perhaps the most interesting case is "Mademoiselle O," which Nabokov originally composed in French and read to French-speaking audiences in Brussels and Paris in 1936. Jean Paulhan, who attended the second reading, decided to publish it in Mesures. The text's status was specified, as far as I know, neither at the first reading nor in the published version. When, in 1964, Véra Nabokov undertook to compile a bibliography of her husband's works for the issue of L'Arc devoted to him, she labeled "Mademoiselle O": "Nouvelle écrite en français" [short story written in French]; one can therefore assume that Nabokov had presented it to his French-speaking audiences as a short story. Later, it was translated into English by Hilda Ward and significantly revised by the author; the manuscript deposited at the Library of Congress suggests, in fact, that the translation was completed by Nabokov himself. The English text was published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1943. It is this version, with slight modifications, that was included in Nabokov's autobiography, Conclusive Evidence, published in 1951, and reappeared in two collections of short stories, Nine Stories (1947) and Nabokov's Dozen (1958).

The overlap between fiction and autobiography is mentioned in the very first lines of the French text:

Dans un livre, j'ai prêté à l'enfance de mon héros l'institutrice à qui je dois le plaisir d'entendre le français. Je dis "'ai prêté," mais il serait plus juste de dire: "Mon héros me l'a prise." Car c'est vraiment pitoyable de voir comme ces personnages falots sortis du noir clair de lune de l'encrier abusent des belles choses et des chers visages qu'on leur fournit, jusqu'à dépeupler peu à peu notre propre passé.2

In a book, I lent to my hero's childhood the governess to whom I owe the pleasure of understanding French. I say "lent," but it would be more accurate to say: "My hero took her from me," because it is really pitiable to see how those colorless characters extracted from the black moonlight of the inkstand abuse the beautiful things and dear faces with which we supply them, to the point of depopulating bit by bit our own past.3

In the original French text of "Mademoiselle O," Nabokov circumstantially deals with the problems encountered by the narrator-author while writing his novels, as well as with the difficulties specific to having to compose this particular text in French. In the English version, he omits a long passage in which had spoken of fictional characters' vampirism upon real people, of the French language, and finally of his governess's name. The English version begins: "I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it."6 The governess appears a few lines later without any further preamble; the paragraph about her name has vanished, and the text begins with a physical description of her. Many other alterations were made by Nabokov, but it would be pointless to tabulate them here since none contributes to boosting the fictional or, for that matter, the autobiographical effect of the text. The French text is considerably longer and stages the narrator-author more insistently, often evoking his writing difficulties, but this alone is insufficient to prove that the text is more autobiographical than its English version, the reading contract being the same in both cases.

In the bibliographical note at the end of Nabokov's Dozen, the author presents the autobiographical version in the following way: "A final, slightly different version, with stricter adherence to autobiographical truth, appeared as 'Chapter Five' in my memoir, Conclusive Evidence."7 Later he adds that: "Only 'Mademoiselle O' and 'First Love' are (except for a change of names) true to every detail to the author's remembered life."8 The heroine of "First Love" was not Colette but Claude Deprès, and his governess's name was not Mademoiselle O but Cécile Miauton, which did not prevent Nabokov from including a long passage about the fictitious name in the French text:

Je viens de l'appeler par son vrai nom, car "Mademoiselle O" n'est nullement l'abréviation d'un nom en O. Cet O, ouvert à tous les vents de l'hiatus, n'est pas la majuscule d'Olivier ni d'Orose ou encore d'Oudinet, mais bien le nom intégral; un nom rond et nu qui, écrit, semble en déséquilibre sans un point pour le soutenir; une roue qui s'est détachée et qui reste toute seule debout, prête à chavirer; une bouche en rond; un monde; une pomme; un lac.9

I have just called her by her real name, for "Mademoiselle O" is not at all the abbreviation of a name beginning with an O. This O, open unto the winds of the hiatus, is not the capital letter of Oliver or Orosius or even Oudinet, but indeed her full name; a round and naked name which, once written, seems lopsided without a full stop to prop it up; a wheel which has come out of its axle and remains standing, alone, about to topple; a rounded mouth; a world; an apple; a lake.10

This essay is drawn from Chapter 5 of the author's La figure de l'auteur (Paris: Seuil, 1995). Translation from the French by Maurice Couturier, revised by Jeff Edmunds. © Copyright 1995 Maurice Couturier. All rights reserved. This text may not be reprinted or used in any way without prior permission.

1. Nabokov's Dozen (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1958), pp. 213-4.

2. Mademoiselle O, translated by Maurice and Yvonne Couturier (Paris: Julliard, 1982) p. 7.

3. My translation.

4. The Defense (New York: Capricorn Books, 1970), p. 16.

5. Ibid., p. 11.

6. Nabokov's Dozen, p. 177.

7. Ibid., pp. 213-4.

8. Ibid., p. 214.

9. Mademoiselle O, p. 9.

10. My translation.

11. Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990), p. 112.