CHEKHOV. YES, I LOVE HIM. HE WRITES ABOUT MY LIFE. HE IS FUNNY; HE IS SAD.

belonged to the author: eyeglasses, manuscripts, butterflies and a butterfly net (Nabokov was an obsessive lepidopterist), as well as the index cards on which he famously wrote many of his works.

Nabokov, though, while well-respected, did not seem beloved by the city he left as a young man. The poet Alexander Pushkin seemed to be the most celebrated – or at least most romanticized – literary figure in the city, perhaps in part because he died after being shot in a duel with a French officer at age 37. Pushkin, who was born in Moscow but spent formative artistic years in St. Petersburg, is legendary for his drama Boris Godunov and Eugene Onegin, a serialized novel in verse. His apartment on Reki Moyki, where he died, has been carefully preserved and is now a museum. Admission to the apartment is 120 rubles ($2.50), and an accompanying audio tour costs 190 ($4).

My last stop was at the site of Pushkin’s fatal duel – a small, triangle-shaped park in the Primorsky District. It was a quiet, sunny day. I passed sunbathers, families and picnickers as I trudged through tall grass. There was an obelisk with a profile of Pushkin, a modest bouquet of purple flowers at its base, memorializing the duel with a French officer whom Pushkin accused of spreading scurrilous rumors about Pushkin’s wife. I noticed a couple of other people making this mini-pilgrimage as well, walking slowly and gazing up at the monument. We didn’t speak, but it was clear that a respect for these titans of Russian literature meant, ironically, that no words were necessary.