弗拉基米尔•纳博科夫（Vladimir Nabokov）是位俄裔美籍作家，不过让他名声大噪的是他用英文写出的作品。1955 年他和英语谈了“一场恋爱”，写出了经典作品《洛丽塔》。
纳博科夫出生在圣彼得堡，家庭富裕，从小他就掌握了俄语、英语和法语。俄国二月革命爆发，他们一家离开苏联背井离乡，最终定居在英国。他去剑桥大学的三一学院读书，毕业后去了柏林与家人同住。在柏林的一场慈善化妆舞会上，他认识了犹太律师之女薇拉（Véra Slonim），两年之后喜结连理，终白头偕老。
Véra 是位典型的“背后的女人” “贤内助” “Do-it-all spouse”。除了在文学创作、家庭上不遗余力的相夫教子，她还是他的保镖，包里时刻放把手枪来保护丈夫的安全；她也是他的司机，还陪业余爱好研究昆虫的丈夫一起抓蝴蝶。
今天我们一起读一读纳博科夫写给薇拉的情书。对男生来说可以学学如何写英文情书，对女孩来说可以点评一下纳博科夫的情话。
1923 年六月，纳博科夫给刚相识两个月的情书写了这样一封表白信：
I won’t hide it: I’m so unused to being—well, understood, perhaps, —so unused to it, that in the very first minutes of our meeting I thought: this is a joke… But then… And there are things that are hard to talk about—you’ll rub off their marvelous pollen at the touch of a word… You are lovely…
Yes, I need you, my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought — and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds.
[…]
See you soon my strange joy, my tender night.
五个月后他又写了封情书，这一次字里行间中充满了恋爱的味道。
And I know: I can’t tell you anything in words—and when I do on the phone then it comes out completely wrong. Because with you one needs to talk wonderfully, the way we talk with people long gone… in terms of purity and lightness and spiritual precision… You can be bruised by an ugly diminutive—because you are so absolutely resonant—like seawater, my lovely.
I swear—and the inkblot has nothing to do with it—I swear by all that’s dear to me, all I believe in—I swear that I have never loved before as I love you,—with such tenderness—to the point of tears—and with such a sense of radiance.
下面这段话会让“文艺女青年”难以招架：
I am ready to give you all of my blood, if I had to—it’s hard to explain—sounds flat—but that’s how it is. here, I’ll tell you—with my love I could have filled ten centuries of fire, songs, and valor—ten whole centuries, enormous and winged,—full of knights riding up blazing hills—and legends about giants—and fierce Troys—and orange sails—and pirates—and poets. And this is not literature since if you reread carefully you will see that the knights have turned out to be fat.
如果有人给我女儿写下面这段话的话，我会对她说：嗯，可以嫁了。
I simply want to tell you that somehow I can’t imagine life without you…
I love you, I want you, I need you unbearably… Your eyes — which shine so wonder-struck when, with your head thrown back, you tell something funny — your eyes, your voice, lips, your shoulders — so light, sunny…
You came into my life — not as one comes to visit … but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps.
今年是我和 Lydia 在一起的第 9 年。我们一起读大学，一起支教，一起到处漂。爱情是激情和浪漫，爱情也是平淡和成长。
如果让我用一个关键词来描述爱情的话，那就是 “idiosyncrasy”，你的小性子和偏好，你的莫名其妙和突然的沉默，都是 idiosyncracy。
你懂她的 idiosyncrasies，她懂你的 peccadilloes，这就是“愿得一人心，白首不相离”吧。
Little things like that happen. Those are the things I missed her most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about. That's what made her my wife. She had the goods on me too. She knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but they are not. That's the good stuff. And we get to choose who we let into our weird little worlds.
——《心灵捕手》（Good Will Hunting）
