A little story about the nutritional value of books. The Russian-Jewish writer Lyudmila Ulitzkaja told the packed hall of the Munich Literature House: Moscow, the Soviet Union, probably the early 1970s, everything is in short supply, and everyone is a procurement artist. Student Lyudmila wants to buy a pullover. In the bootlegger’s apartment there is a book next to the coveted clothes. “The Gift”, Vladimir Nabokov’s last novel written in Russian, was first published in a Russian émigré magazine in Paris in the late 1930s. Not strictly forbidden literature, but out of Lyudmila’s reach. She wants this book, absolutely. But demand raises the price even in the anti-capitalist Soviet empire. Absolutely not for sale, says the dealer. Lyudmila remains stubborn, eventually she pulls her grandmother’s diamond ring off her finger – making the book the most expensive Nabokov edition in the world.
It was worth the high stakes, says Ulitzkaja. Nabokov’s novel, which takes place in the Russian migrant milieu in Berlin in the 1920s, opened up a whole new world for her. Irony of fate: Today, the 80-year-old lives in exile in Berlin, which has once again become a refuge for many Russians, not just like members of the intelligentsia who publicly condemned Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
The censorship in Russia has now also included the books of the author, who is also enormously popular there. Ulitzkaja’s new memoir volume “Don’t forget the memory”, which she presented in the Literaturhaus, has so far only been published in German (Munich Hanser Verlag). Does she believe that publishers in exile will be established abroad again to satisfy the oppressed Russians’ thirst for reading? Ulitzkaja, who once attested to her compatriots’ increasingly aggressive lack of education, sees it realistically. Anyone who wants to read her books has it much easier today, they can get everything on the Internet at the push of a button.
Does she have any hope of ever seeing her apartment again? On this evening in the House of Literature, Lyudmila Ulitzkaja left this question unanswered, saying she didn’t want to spoil the mood of her audience. Silent tears in the hall. But the idea that the tattered Nabokov is waiting for her at home in Moscow is comforting and beautiful.