1. 8, rue de Saïgon (16ème)

The Nabokovs' first address in Paris. They rented here a large one-room flat between late October of 1938 and late April of the following year.

"...A huge handsome room (which served as parlor, bedroom, and nursery) with a small kitchen on one side and a large sunny bathroom on the other. Evening guests had to be entertained in the kitchen so as not to interfere with my future translator's sleep." (Strong Opinions, 89)

VN wrote here "The Visit to the Museum" (incidentally, I could never quite grasp why he insisted on rendering his Russian title in this oddly definite way) and "Lik," both started earlier in the Riviera, and his first English novel.

The gentle viewer will recognize here a combination of nasty conditions: the wild angle is not a cheap expressionist flair but a sad necessity, and the heap of cobblestone is not a fancy monument. The day was April 23rd.

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1: THE GRAVEYARDS | 2: PARIS | 3: CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
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