First-edition Nabokov poems up for sale
Before he wrote Lolita, before he came to America, before he met his wife Véra, Vladimir Nabokov was first and foremost a poet. And now the poetic at heart with four-figure pocket change might just be able to acquire a first edition of Gornii put (The Empyrean Path), a collection of Nabokov’s early poetry published in 1923 under the pseudonym Sirin.
Gornii put appeared less than a year after the death of Nabokov’s father, who helped prepare it for publication. (V.D. Nabokov was shot in March 1922 attempting to foil a political assassination in Berlin.)
Third in a four-volume publishing watershed during as many months, the book was followed by Nabokov’s Russian translation of Alice in Wonderland. The collection includes “Peter in Holland,” which also appears in 2012’s Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Poems, edited by Thomas Karshan.
Gornii put goes on the auction block in San Francisco on February 17. Better start saving those pennies.
[The above image of Gornii put is not of the volume for sale in February, but is the cover of an edition sold in December for $4,750 by the same auction house.]
