Why, when you’re in Europe, do you live in Montreux in particular?
I’ve known it well from long ago. You know, Russians like to travel—my wife, too, was in Montreux as a child—and we have now voted it, as it were, our family meeting place. My son lives in Milan, which isn’t far, and we can see each other often. He graduated from Harvard and is now studying singing in Milan. He has a wonderful bass voice. I myself am completely unmusical, I have no ear for music.
What are you working on now?
A few very pleasant and interesting months past, I read from my own work at Harvard and in New York. Now I’m writing here for my book on European butterflies; in spring I’ll go to London, to work more on this in the British Museum; the book will come out in England.1
How do you write? Before you start a new novel, what comes first: a character, out of whose personality the plot arises, or the story?
Neither. Never. Rather, colors, pictures, visions. That’s also the reason I don’t begin with the beginning or end with the ending and above all never proceed chronologically, if I’m writing a novel. I begin anywhere, then carry on somewhere else, to set down a quite different image, and end by filling in the holes.
And why do you write?
Out of an inner need, a necessity. I have always written, as I have always been interested in butterflies. I was seven years old when I tried to translate the then very well-known children’s book The Headless Rider into French and—just think—into alexandrines at that.
If you had to decide between your scientific and your literary work, what would you choose?
Both belong together; for me one without the other is unthinkable, they augment each other. The precision of poetry and the inspiration of science.
About Lolita…
Sometimes I get quite fed up with questions about Lolita, but, despite everything, it’s my favorite book.
* “Schmetterlinge und Lolita: Gespräch mit Vladimir Nabokov” (“Butterflies and Lolita: Conversation with Vladimir Nabokov”), Die Welt, Aug. 25, 1966. Although this was published in 1966, the biographical details in the interview clearly date it to the summer of 1964. The photographer Tappe lived in Territet, on the eastern edge of Montreux, and had been photographing VN since 1962.