Exhibition Themes > Literature > 214. Vladimir Nabokov
214. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). Untitled Poem, Album. Paris, February 1937. RBML, Bakhmeteff Archive, Sergei Viktorovich Potresov Papers
This autograph album covers the years 1906-1913 and 1917-1948, respectively, and has entries by Konstantin Balmont, Ivan Bilibin, Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov, and Maximilian Voloshin among others. It has been assumed that the initiator and keeper of the album was Sergei Potresov, Russian émigré writer and critic who used the pseudonym of Sergei Iablonovskii. Most of the epigrams, poems, drawings, and designs in the album are on white standard pages. Some drawings and other entries have been glued onto the pages of the album.
Nabokov's untitled poem was written in 1935 in Berlin and was first published in Paris in 1952. Right above his entry Nabokov wrote "My dear Sergei Viktorovich, I can't recall any of my poems about Blok, so I decided to include my favorite poem."
Purchased from Maria A. Berman, 1960
