Literay Fact Literay Fact 2541-8297 2542-2421 IWL RAS images/2020-16/LF-2020-2-16_8-67_Babikov.pdf Articles Ada’s Penmanship. To the publication of an excerpt from the Russian translation of Nabokov’s novel 2020 Vladimir Nabokov creative biography Russian translation of English works by Nabokov Ada’s conception historical and literary commentary. Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 The material offered to the readers is a translation into Russian, with extensive notes, of an excerpt from the First Part of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969). The published material consists of a translator’s Preface, five chapters from the novel, notes by V.V. Nabokov and the translator’s annotations. The Preface to the publication describes the creative and biographical circumstances of the creation of one of the most significant and controversial novels of the twentieth century, and indicates the sources of its conception, which goes back to the English short story of Nabokov Time and Ebb (1944), and considers its formal peculiarities. The Preface outlines the basic principles of Ada’s poetics, which distinguish it from the number of other works of the outstanding master and innovator of prose and affect it’s readers perception, such as: deliberate complexity of the narrative technique and an unprecedented variety of language tools used by Nabokov. The author of the Preface draws attention to the fact that the subtitle of the novel, indicating that it belongs to the genre of family chronicles, serves as one of the elements of Nabokov’s game poetics, since the classical tradition becomes the subject of parody in Ada. The novel is considered by the author of the Preface and translator of Ada as a grand compendium of European literature of Modern period, as an experiment in combining many varieties of the novel, from pastoral and Enlightenment utopian fiction of the 16– 17 centuries to the Nouveau roman of the 1950s and 1960s. The new Russian version of Nabokov’s most untranslatable novel took into account detailed annotations (in progress) by B. Boyd, works by A. Appel, Jr., and other researches, observations by one of the German translators of Ada, D. Zimmer, and the text of the French translation of the novel, which was prepared under Nabokov’s supervision. The Preface to the publication and the translator’s annotations involve archival material, in particular the draft of several chapters of the Russian translation of Ada, prepared by Véra Nabokov. 1. 2. Babikov А. Prochtenie Nabokova. Izyskania i materialy [Perusing Nabokov. Studies and materials]. St. Petersburg, Ivan Limbakh Publ., 2019. 816 p. (In Russ.) 3. Blackwell S.H. The Quill and the Scalpel. Nabokov’s Art and the Worlds of Science. Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 2009. 276 p. 4. 5. Boyd B. “Ada” Nabokova: mesto soznania [Nabokov’s Ada: The place of consciousness], transl. G. Kreimer. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2012. 480 p. (In Russ.) 6. Boyd B. Vladimir Nabokov. Amerikanskie gody. Biografia [Vladimir Nabokov. The American years. A biography]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2010. 950 p. (In Russ.) 7. 8. 9. Nabokov V. Novels 1969– 1974, ed. B. Boyd. New York, The Library of America, 1996. 825 p. 10. Nabokov V. Pis’ma k Vere [Letters to Véra], comment. O. Voronina and B. Boyd. Moscow, Kolibri Publ., 2018. 704 p. (In Russ.) 11. Nabokov V. Polnoe sobranie rasskazov [Collected stories], ed., comment. A. Babikov. St. Petersburg, Azbuka Publ., 2016. 752 p. (In Russ.) 12. Nabokov V. Selected Letters. 1940– 1977, ed. D. Nabokov and M.J. Bruccoli. San Diego et al., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. 582 p. 13. Nabokov V. Sobranie sochinenii russkogo perioda: v 5 t. T. 5 [Collected Russian works: in 5 vols. Vol. 5], ed. N.I. Artemenko-Tolstoi. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2000. 832 p. (In Russ.) 14. Nabokov V. Vzgliani na arlekinov! [Look at the Harlequins!], transl., comment. 15. A. Babikov. St. Petersburg, Azbuka Publ., 2016. 352 p. (In Russ.) 16. Nabokov Véra. [A Letter to the Editor] New items and work in progress. The Vladimir Nabokov Research Newsletter, ed. S.J. Parker, 1984, no. 12, pp. 12– 13. 17. Rivers J.E., Walker W. Nabokov’s “Ada”. The Explicator, 1978, vol. 36 (issue 2), pp. 7–8. 18. Think, Write, Speak. Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor by Vladimir Nabokov, ed. B. Boyd and A. Tolstoy. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. 532 p.