Nabokov's Reliquary Poem

Abstract

D uring his first reading tour in the fall of 1932, in Paris, Vladimir Nabokov renewed his friendship with a Tenishev School classmate, Savelii Kiandzhuntsev (who lent him his frock-coat for the first public recital). Writing to his wife a few days later, Nabokov mentions that he was pleasantly surprised to discover that his old school fellow knew to the last line all I have written .... Sava went to his room, rooted around and returned with a long poem I sent him from Petrograd to Kislovodsk, October 25, 1917, first day of the Soviet era.' The manuscript of this poem, here published for the first time, had been preserved in the Kiandzhuntsev family at least through the 1960s and eventually given to Princess Zinaida Shakhovskoy by Kiandzhuntsev's sister, Mme. Irina Komarov. It is now at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture.2