Subject
Natalya Ivanovna Tolstoy
From
Date
Body
LIST
The news of Natalya Tolstoy's death is indeed sad. She was a remarkable person even aside from her formidable role in bringing Nabokov's writings back to Russia and encouraging a new generation of Russian scholars to turn to the study of his work. She was also of immense help to scholars from abroad.
I had the good fortune to meet her only once or twice in St. Petersburg circa 1990 at the time of the first Russian International Nabokov Conference.
I knew little about her but soon had occasion to realize the range of her knowledge (and not only about Nabokov). She and I were walking down a street when we were approached by an obviously foreign tourist who asked for directions. Without batting an eye she gave him the needed instructions in a language completely unfamiliar to me---Hindi, perhaps. She then returned to our conversation in English. Only later did I learn that her major field of study was Indic languages and literatures. Her work includes a Panjabi Grammar which has been translated into English and collections of works by Indian writers. She also published two books of verse. For lovers of Nabokov, however, her greatest achievement is the Symposium centennial edition of Nabokov's writings. Personally, the volume that I hold in greatest affection is none of these but rather the small elegant collection of Nabokov's verse "Stixotvoreniia" that she signed for me during our conversation.
It is good to know that we shall have the opportunity to hear Natalya Tolstoy's voice once again in the forthcoming collection of her long correspondence with Vladimir Nabokov's sister Elena Sikorsky.
Editor, NABOKV-L
The news of Natalya Tolstoy's death is indeed sad. She was a remarkable person even aside from her formidable role in bringing Nabokov's writings back to Russia and encouraging a new generation of Russian scholars to turn to the study of his work. She was also of immense help to scholars from abroad.
I had the good fortune to meet her only once or twice in St. Petersburg circa 1990 at the time of the first Russian International Nabokov Conference.
I knew little about her but soon had occasion to realize the range of her knowledge (and not only about Nabokov). She and I were walking down a street when we were approached by an obviously foreign tourist who asked for directions. Without batting an eye she gave him the needed instructions in a language completely unfamiliar to me---Hindi, perhaps. She then returned to our conversation in English. Only later did I learn that her major field of study was Indic languages and literatures. Her work includes a Panjabi Grammar which has been translated into English and collections of works by Indian writers. She also published two books of verse. For lovers of Nabokov, however, her greatest achievement is the Symposium centennial edition of Nabokov's writings. Personally, the volume that I hold in greatest affection is none of these but rather the small elegant collection of Nabokov's verse "Stixotvoreniia" that she signed for me during our conversation.
It is good to know that we shall have the opportunity to hear Natalya Tolstoy's voice once again in the forthcoming collection of her long correspondence with Vladimir Nabokov's sister Elena Sikorsky.
Editor, NABOKV-L