1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Telephone: 020 7782 5000 Fax: 020 7782 4966 [email protected] LETTERS 3 Eric Naiman Vladimir Nabokov Letters to Véra; Translated by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIRS 5 A. N. Wilson Jean Findlay Chasing Lost Time – The life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, spy and translator Rachel Cohen Bernard Berenson – A life in the picture trade. Joseph Connors and Louis A. Waldman, editors Bernard Berenson – Formation and heritage Helen Macdonald H is for Hawk Bruce Boucher Janette Currie LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 6 LITERARY CRITICISM & HISTORY 9 Shakespeare’s Sonnets, James Joyce’s realism, Fiction in translation, etc Lesley McDowell James McNamara V ladimir and Véra Nabokov had only been married a year when she went to stay in a sanatorium in the Black Forest to recover from depression and anxiety. The letters the young novelist wrote to her during their separation have now been published and, according to Eric Naiman, they contain “some of the most moving passages he would ever write”; in them he sees his task as “talking his fragile reader down from an upper-storey ledge by showing her the luminosity of a world that has somehow ceased to delight”. The letters from 1937, when the Nabokovs were separated again, are “particularly fraught” – but this time the cause may have been his affair with a younger émigrée. There are very few letters from the couple’s life in America, not least because they were rarely apart. By 1964 they were settled in Montreux. “I am lying on a couch and dictating to V. Apparently I have been dictating from written cards in my hand, but this I dictate in the act of composing it . . .”: thus Nabokov recorded his dream on November 11 that year, a month after he and Vera undertook an experiment, inspired by the hugely popular work of J. W. Dunne (pictured), that in turn set in motion his last series of novels, beginning with Ada. A selection from Nabokov’s “dream cards”, transcribed and introduced by Gennady Barabtarlo, is published here for the first time. Caryl Phillips POEMS 12 19 Robyn Sarah John Mole Fall Arrives The Chord COMMENTARY 13 Vladimir Nabokov Textures of time – A dream experiment; Introduced by Gennady Barabtarlo Freelance July 4, 1980 – A new authority Holly Case Then & Now ARTS 17 John Barrell Jonathan Barnes 19 Paul Griffiths Harrison Birtwistle and Fiona Maddocks Harrison Birtwistle – Wild Tracks: A conversation diary with Fiona Maddocks FICTION 20 Lidija Haas Sophie Devlin Ian McEwan The Children Act Darryl Jones, editor Horror Stories – Classic tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson Hanne Ørstavik The Blue Room; Translated by Deborah Dawkin Laura Profumo LEARNED JOURNALS 22 Jonathan Keates Barbara J. King Elizabeth Scott-Baumann Ian Pindar Tanya Harrod 28 Robert Irwin John Ure AJ Constable – The making of a master (Victoria and Albert Museum). Mark Evans John Constable – The making of a master Bram Stoker Bram Stoker’s Notes for ‘Dracula’ A facsimile edition; Annotated and transcribed by Robert EighteenBisang and Elizabeth Miller. Dracula Untold (Various cinemas) MUSIC HISTORY The loss of his mother tongue was a tragedy for Nabokov, but it was a stroke of luck for anglophone readers everywhere. Those with little or no French (and plenty who are fluent in it) have owed an enormous debt to C. K. Scott Moncrieff for his translation of Proust’s masterpiece, which Joseph Conrad – and with him A. N. Wilson – regarded as superior to the original. Among many remarkable revelations in a new biography, Wilson writes, are Scott Moncrieff’s heroism in war and prolific activity after it. John Constable was much admired by his French contemporaries such as Eugène Delacroix, a compliment he conspicuously declined to return. John Barrell sees an exhibition of Constable’s works and interests “that will not be quickly forgotten”. Barbara Johnson A Life with Mary Shelley; Edited by Judith Butler and Shoshana Felman. The Barbara Johnson Reader – The surprise of otherness; Edited by Melissa Feuerstein et al Richard Sugg The Smoke of the Soul – Medicine, physiology and religion in early modern England. David Colclough, editor The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne – Volume Three: Sermons Preached at the Court of Charles I J. Dillon Brown Migrant Modernism – Postwar London and the West Indian novel The Iris Murdoch Review Anthrozoös – A multidisciplinary journal of the interactions of people and animals Early Modern Women – An interdisciplinary journal Wasafiri – International contemporary writing Textile – The journal of cloth and culture Doris Behrens-Abouseif Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate – Gifts and material culture in the medieval Islamic world Helen McCarthy Women of the World – The rise of the female diplomat ART & SCIENCE 29 IN BRIEF 30 SPORT 32 Ian Talbot Peter Oborne Wounded Tiger – A history of cricket in Pakistan CLASSICS 33 Nick Romeo Marcus Sidonius Falx How To Manage Your Slaves SOCIAL HISTORY 34 Seamus Perry William Atkins The Moor – Lives, landscape, literature Keith Miller Tom Hartley Milltown Cemetery. Amy Licence Cecily Neville. Janet Clare Shakespeare’s Stage Traffic. G. R. Evans First Light. Sam Kean The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons. Neel Burton and James Flewellen The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting. Edmund Blunden Fall In, Ghosts – Selected war prose. Bess Lovejoy Rest in Pieces This week’s contributors, Crossword 35 NB 36 Arthur I. Miller Colliding Worlds – How cutting-edge science is redefining contemporary art J. C. King Terry Eagleton, Bookshops worldwide, All the Prizes Prize Cover image: Vladimir Nabokov dictating to his wife, 1958 © Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; p3 © Charles Platiau/Reuters; p4 © Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; p7 © Moviestore Collection/Rex Features; p11 © Haywood Magee/Getty Images; p12 © George Douglas/Getty Images; p17 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; p19 © Toby Melville/Reuters; p20 © Edd Griffin/Rex Features; p22 © Steve Brodie; p26 © Mileta Prodanović; p29 © Tobias Rehberger. Courtesy neugerriemschneider Berlin; p32 © David Munden/Popperfoto/Getty Images; p34 © James Glossop The Times Literary Supplement (ISSN 0307661, USPS 021-626) is published weekly except a double issue in August and December by The Times Literary Supplement Limited, London UK, and distributed in the USA by OCS America Inc., 195 Anderson Avenue, Moonachie, NJ 07074-1621. Periodical postage paid at Moonachie NJ and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: please send address corrections to TLS, P0 Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834, USA. USA and Canadian retail newsstand copies distributed by Kable Distribution Services, 14 Wall Street, Suite 4C New York, New York 10005 TLS OCTOBER 31 2014