![]() ![]() Schiff's best pages evoke the years of adversity, as when the Jewish V ra, regal even in penury, perilously remained in Nazi Germany until May 1937 (after non-Jewish Vladimir exited) because it was the only country where either one could legally work. (A film advance gave Nabokov 17 times his annual salary at Cornell, a post that had taken years to secure.) Suddenly flush, the Nabokovs, by choice, again became migr s, wealthy residents of a Swiss luxury hotel. ![]() Only the runaway international success of Lolita when they were in their later 50s freed the couple from scraping together a living. After hours she also edited and translated his writings, conducted his professional affairs and maintained their marriage. With no market for his writing, he needed his wife to work as a translator so they could survive. Russian migr s in Germany, France and then the U.S., they eked out a bare existence despite Nabokov's reputation as a stellar Russian novelist. ![]() Schiff (Saint-Exup ry) contends that Nabokov's public image was V ra's doing: ""we are used to husbands silencing wives, but here was a wife silencing, editing, speaking for, creating, her husband."" For almost all their married lives, the Nabokovs were inseparable. ![]() V ra Nabokov was not only devoted to her husband's literary career she was crucial to it. ![]()
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