Poseshchenie muzeia [The Visit to the Museum], written in the autumn of 1938, was first published in the Russian language émigré review, Sovremennye zapiski [Contemporary Letters] in Paris, 1939. This Russian version later appeared in Nabokov’s collection, Vesna v Fialte [Spring in Fialta, 1956]. It was translated as The Visit to the Museum for the magazine Esquire in 1963, before being included in A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (1973) and The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (Knopf, 1995, reprinted as Collected Stories, Penguin, 1997).
The Visit to the Museum is narrated in the first person by an enigmatic Russian émigré, whose bizarre experience in a provincial French museum forms the basis for the story. A friend of his requests that, on a visit to a particular town, he attempts to buy back a lost portrait...
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Citation: Norman, William. "Poseshchenie muzeia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 April 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16885, accessed 09 June 2026.]
