"Lips to Lips" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov in Berlin in or about 1931. It was first published in 1956 as part of the collection '' Vesna v Fialte''. After its translation into English by the author and his

son A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative. Social issues In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...

it was first published in ''Esquire'' in 1971 and then in the collection '' A Russian Beauty and Other Stories'' in 1971.

Plot summary

The Russian émigré writer Ilya Borisovich Tal is struggling with his love story ''Lips to Lips'' about an elderly man and a young woman. He gets advice from his friend Euphratski who suggests to send "your thing" as a serial to ''Arion'', an

émigré An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French ''émigrer'', "to emigrate". French Huguenots Many French Huguenots fled France followi ...

magazine. The editor lavishes Tal with praise and indicates they "would have been" happy to publish it. Euphratski explains that some money needs to be supplied to support further publications of the magazine, and Tal obliges. The first chapter gets published as a "prologue to a novel" under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

"A. Ilyin" although Tal had requested the pen name "I(lya) Annenski" (not being aware that Annensky was a famous Russian writer). Nevertheless, he is extremely proud and happy about his success, although behind his back, people snicker. When he has a chance to meet the editor, he overhears a conversation where the editor defends accepting the article; it is of "hopeless mediocrity" and was only accepted because of the money. Tal is shattered at first, but recovers in the hope that he might publish more, and will be "fully recognized after his death".

Comments

"Lips to Lips" was written in 1931 and accepted for publication in ''Posledniye Novosti'' but its scheduled publication in 1932 was cancelled when the editors realized the story was based on the real literary scandal of the writer Aleksandr Burov and the journal '' Chisla'', which regularly had disparaged Nabokov and boycotted the writer

Vladislav Khodasevich Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (russian: Владисла́в Фелициа́нович Ходасе́вич; 16 May 1886 – 14 June 1939) was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian e ...

. Like ''Arion'', the strategy of ''Chisla'' to stay financially solvent was to entice a would-be writer to support the journal in exchange for publishing his novel in installments. Thus, it had to wait a quarter century for its appearance. Nabokov remarked that by then everybody who might have resembled anybody in the story was "safely and heirlessly dead".

References

External links

Lips to Lips
from ''Esquire'' Short stories by Vladimir Nabokov 1930 short stories {{1930s-story-stub