The Nabokov family moved from London to Berlin in early August 1920, as the writer’s father, the well-known political and public figure Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, decided to establish a Russian-language newspaper, Rul’, in Berlin. He rented an apartment in the expensive Grunewald district (Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough) on the first floor of a fashionable building on Egerstrasse from the widow of Dr. Raphael Levenfeld, a philologist, founder of the “Schiller Theatre Society,” and translator of L.N. Tolstoy and I.S. Turgenev, who contributed greatly to the dissemination of Leo Tolstoy’s works in Germany. Along with the apartment, the translator’s widow provided the Nabokovs with a large Russian library. The street runs from Teplitzer Strasse and Taunusstrasse through Plener Strasse. It was named in 1904 after the town located in the upper reaches of the Eger River in the Czech Republic. According to the German Nabokov researcher Dieter Zimmer, the Nabokovs rented this apartment until September 5, 1921.

In early December 1920, V.V. Nabokov came from Cambridge to Berlin for the holidays and returned to Cambridge in mid-January 1921. It was planned that he would work on translating R. Rolland’s novella Colas Breugnon into Russian (in Nabokov’s translation titled Nikolka Persik), as he had agreed with his father. However, as B. Boyd established, Nabokov left Berlin “without admitting that he had translated only 110 pages” of this book. The reason for this, not mentioned by Nabokov’s biographer, was that besides the translation, he was occupied until December 21 with composing his first Berlin poem, In the Wild North, consisting of three parts and 171 lines. The poem, imbued with émigré moods and set on a rocky northern island, was apparently inspired by a visit to the picturesque island of Schwanenwerder on the Havel River in the neighboring Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. The poem’s place of composition is noted as Grunewald, which would later become Nabokov’s favorite retreat in Berlin. The following lines from the beginning of the poem convey its mood and the gloomy island atmosphere:

My gloomy island stands like a silent grave in the wilderness.

A dreadful spring night. Fire bursts. A storm rages.

Sometimes rushing joyfully, sometimes bowing to the cliffs,

sinful waves.

In the morning, to the quiet and overcast shore

I descended the rocky path. There I loved

to dream of a fairy-tale meeting. My soul to cloud

with the evil breath of the hunchback fate had not yet managed

(Nabokov V. Poems 1918–1947. The Lament of Superman. Moscow, 2023. p. 66).

The poem was first published from the archival manuscript by Nabokov’s researcher and translator A.A. Babikov in 2023.

Sources:

https://www.domrz.ru/map/berlin/adres-semi-nabokovykh/

Boyd B. Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian Years. Biography / Translated from English by G. Lapina. St. Petersburg: Symposium, 2010.

Nabokov V. Poems 1918–1947. The Lament of Superman / Compiled, commented, translated by A. Babikov. Moscow: AST: Corpus (series “Nabokov Corpus”), 2023.

Zimmer Dieter E. Nabokov’s Whereabouts.