Vladimir Nabokov

:This page is about the novelist. For his father, the politician, see Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.

Biography

The eldest son of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife Elena, née Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, he was born to a prominent and aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, where he also spent his childhood and youth. The family spoke Russian, English and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age.

Related Topics:
Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov - St. Petersburg - Russian - English - French

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The Nabokov family left Russia in the wake of the 1917 February Revolution for a friend's estate in the Crimea, where they remained for 18 months. Following the defeat of the White Army in Crimea, they left Russia for exile in western Europe. After emigrating from Russia in 1919, the family settled briefly in England, where Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Slavic and romance languages. In 1923, he graduated from Cambridge and relocated to Berlin, where he gained some reputation within the colony of Russian émigrés as a novelist and poet, writing under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin. He married Véra Slonim in Berlin in 1925. Their son, Dmitri, was born in 1934.

Related Topics:
February Revolution - White Army - 1919 - Trinity College, Cambridge - Slavic - Romance languages - 1923 - Berlin - émigré - 1925 - 1934

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In 1922, Nabokov's father was assassinated in Berlin by Russian monarchists as he tried to shelter their real target, Pavel Milyukov, a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. This episode, of mistaken, violent death, would echo again and again in the author's fiction, where characters would meet their violent deaths under mistaken terms. In Pale Fire, for example, John Shade is mistaken for the king of Zembla and is assassinated.

Related Topics:
Pavel Milyukov - Pale Fire

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Nabokov was a synaesthete and described aspects of synaesthesia in several of his works. In his memoir Strong Opinions, he notes that his wife also exhibited synaesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colors with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colors he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents' hues—"which is as if genes were painting in aquarelle".

Related Topics:
Synaesthete - Gene - Aquarelle

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Nabokov left Germany with his family in 1937 for Paris and in 1940 fled from the advancing German troops to the United States. It was here that he met Edmund Wilson, who introduced Nabokov's work to American editors, eventually leading to his international recognition.

Related Topics:
1937 - Paris - 1940 - Edmund Wilson

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Nabokov came to Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature, a position created specifically for him, providing an income, free time to write creatively and pursue his lepidoptery. He is also remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian Department. His lecture series on major nineteenth-century Russian writers was hailed as "funny," "learned," and "brilliantly satirical." During this time, the Nabokovs resided in Wellesley. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944-45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian Department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were wildly popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian. Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to become chairman of Cornell's comparative literature department. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Related Topics:
Wellesley College - 1941 - Wellesley - Cornell - 1945 - Naturalized citizen

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After the success of Lolita, Nabokov was able to move to Europe. From 1960 to the end of his life he lived in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

Related Topics:
Lolita - Montreux - Switzerland - 1977

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Note on Nabokov's date of birth

His date of birth was April 10, 1899 according to the Julian calendar in use in Russia at that time. The Gregorian equivalent is April 22, which is achieved by adding 12 days to the Julian date. Some sources have incorrectly calculated a date of 23 April, by inappropriately using the 13-day difference in the calendars that applied only after 28 Feb 1900. However this is irrelevant as Nabokov was born before then. In ?Speak, Memory? Nabokov explains the cause of the error and confirms the correct date of 22 April.

Related Topics:
April 10 - 1899 - Julian calendar - Gregorian - April 22

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