Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002257, Sat, 2 Aug 1997 09:53:31 -0700

Subject
Audiberti & Wallace Stevens (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. AS a footnote to Mary Bellino's posting below, I see that
Boyd I (437) mentions that on a Paris visit in 1937 VN lunched with Henry
Church & Sylvia Beach. Boyd II mentions that VN participated in a Harvard
poetry-reading series with a number of others including Stevens.
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 12:50:45 +0000
To: NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.ucsb.edu
Subject: Audiberti & Wallace Stevens

From: Mary Bellino <iambe@javanet.com>

The well-known photograph of Jacques Audiberti, obscure lepdopterist
and litterateur, taken at Villa d'Avray in 1937, raises the interesting
question of whether VN and Wallace Stevens may have heard of each other
through Henry and Barbara Church. When the Churches left France for the
States in 1939 they took up Stevens in a big way, and Stevens
occasionally visited their Park Avenue apartment, center of a small
literary circle. Did VN renew his friendship with the Churches when
they all found themselves in America? If so, he must have been told at
length about Stevens, the star of Mrs. Church's salon and the only
guest permitted to sit in Henry Church's chair.
Further information and some reminiscences of the Churches and their
circle can be found in Peter Brazeau's _Parts of a World: Wallace
Stevens Remembered_, which also includes the Audiberti photograph; the
caption identifies VN as "Nabokoff-Sirin."
Mary Bellino
iambe@javanet.com