NPPF - From the N-list

David Morris fqmorris at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 4 08:50:37 CDT 2003


Dear Nabokovians,

Vladimir Nabokov suffered from the skin disease psoriasis. I really do not know
how severe his complaints were. In February 1937 Nabokov suffered a bad attack
(Boyd, The Russian Years). On May 15 of that year, he wrote to Véra: `I
continue with the radiation treatments every day and am pretty much cured. You
know - now I can tell you frankly - the indescribable torments I endured in
February, before these treatments, drove me to the border of suicide - a border
I was not authorized to cross because I had you in my luggage.'  He went
sunbathing a lot as did `radiation therapies' (Selected Letters).  Boyd
mentions one more exacerbation of psoriasis, which occurred in the late sixties
when the strain of writing ‘Ada’ fell from Nabokov's shoulders. (Boyd, The
American Years).

How about his fiction? Nabokov devotes one page, all‑in‑all, to the
disease, in ‘Ada’. He mentions `a spectacular skin disease that had been
portrayed recently by a famous American novelist in his Chiron and described in
side-splitting style by a co-sufferer who wrote essays for a London weekly'.
With this famous writer Nabokov refers to Updike and his novel The centaur; the
essayist of the a London weekly is hitherto unknown (as far as I know). The two
psoriasis patients in Ada exchange notes with tips: `Mercury!' or `Höhensonne
works wonders'. Other pieces of advice are found in a one‑volume
encyclopedia, and involve taking hot baths at least twice a month and avoiding
spices. A doctor describes these patients as `Crimson-blotched, silver-scaled,
yellow-crusted wretches, harmless psoriatics'. The narrator is less pathetic
and speaks of `meek martyrs'.

And in ‘Pale Fire’ psoriasis is attributed to Shade’s daughter who has
‘psoriatic fingernails’ (Pale Fire, 355).

My question is: are there other references to psoriasis in Nabokov’s fiction or
non-fiction? The reason why I ask this is a keen interest in the disease. Some
years ago I published an article on ‘Literature and psoriasis’ (British Medical
Journal 1997:1709-1711), including the above Nabokov references. Now I am
reworking this material for a booklet on the same theme. Therefore I am very
eager to know whether I missed certain phrases on the disease by Nabokov.

Thanks in advance.

 
Frans Meulenberg
Erasmus University / Medical Center
Department of Philosophy, medical ethics and history
frans.meulenberg at woordenwinkel.nl


 

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