Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov entered the world on the 22nd of April 1899 in Saint Petersburg. His family belonged to an ancient Russian nobility granted a coat of arms by Emperor Paul I on the 1st of January 1798. The boy grew up speaking three languages within his household: Russian, English, and French. He inherited the Rozhdestveno estate from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov at age sixteen. That property was the only house he ever owned before losing it during the October Revolution one year later. The family fled the city for Crimea after the February Revolution of 1917. They lived at a friend's estate and moved to Livadiya in September 1918 under the separatist Crimean Regional Government. Vladimir's father served as minister of justice there until the White Army collapsed in early 1919. The family sought exile in western Europe along with other Russian refugees. They settled briefly in England where Vladimir gained admittance to Trinity College at Cambridge University. He studied zoology and later Slavic and Romance languages. His examination results on the first part of the Tripos exam were a starred first. He took the second part of the exam just after his father's death. His final examination result ranked second-class and his BA was conferred in 1922.
Nabokov joined his family in Berlin two years after they had moved there in 1920. His father set up the émigré newspaper Rul which means Rudder. In March 1922 Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork and Sergey Taboritsky shot and killed Nabokov's father while shielding their target Pavel Milyukov. Shortly after this tragedy his mother and sister moved to Prague. Nabokov stayed in Berlin where he became a recognized poet and writer within the émigré community. He published under the nom de plume V. Sirin referencing the fabulous bird of Russian folklore. Dieter E. Zimmer wrote that he never became fond of Berlin and intensely disliked it by the end. He lived within the lively Russian community that was more or less self-sufficient. He knew little German and few Germans except for landladies shopkeepers and immigration officials at the police headquarters. To supplement his scant writing income he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons. In May 1923 he met Véra Evseyevna Slonim at a charity ball in Berlin. They married in April 1925. Their only child Dmitri was born in 1934. In 1936 Véra lost her job because of the increasingly antisemitic environment. Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world.
The Nabokovs fled France via the SS Champlain reaching the United States in May 1940. Vladimir settled in Manhattan and began volunteer work as an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. He joined the staff of Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position created specifically for him provided an income and free time to write creatively. He is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. The family resided in Wellesley Massachusetts during the 1941, 42 academic year. In September 1942 they moved to nearby Cambridge where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States he returned to Wellesley for the 1944, 45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He served through the 1947, 48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian department offering courses in Russian language and literature. After being encouraged by Morris Bishop he left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at Cornell University. He taught there until 1959. Among his students was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.
Nabokov wrote Lolita while traveling on butterfly-collection trips in the western United States that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as secretary typist editor proofreader translator and bibliographer throughout this process. When Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita Véra stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known. In June 1953 the family went to Ashland Oregon where he finished Lolita and began writing Pnin. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies and wrote a poem called Lines Written in Oregon. On the 1st of October 1953 he and his family returned to Ithaca where he later taught the young writer Thomas Pynchon. His 1955 novel Lolita ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 1998. It is considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature. The book recounts a middle-aged man's consuming passion for a twelve-year-old girl. This work won him fame and notoriety alongside multiple nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Time magazine wrote that Nabokov evolved a vivid English style which combines Joycean word play with a Proustian evocation of mood and setting.
Nabokov's interest in entomology was inspired by books by Maria Sibylla Merian found in the attic of his family's country home in Vyra. Throughout an extensive career of collecting he never learned to drive a car and depended on his wife to take him to collecting sites. During the 1940s as a research fellow in zoology he organized the butterfly collection of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He published eighteen scientific articles on lepidoptery and named twelve valid species and genera. His writings in this area were highly technical. This combined with his specialty in the relatively unspectacular tribe Polyommatini of the family Lycaenidae has left this facet of life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He described the Karner blue. The genus Nabokovia was named after him in honor of this work. Many species in the genera Madeleinea and Pseudolucia bear epithets alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels. The Harvard Museum of Natural History still possesses Nabokov's genitalia cabinet where the author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. Museum staff writer Nancy Pick noted that he actually did quite a good job at distinguishing species you would not think were different by looking at their genitalia under a microscope six hours a day seven days a week until his eyesight was permanently impaired.
Nabokov is known as one of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century. His first writings were in Russian but he achieved his greatest fame with the novels he wrote in English. As a trilingual master writing also in French he has been compared to Joseph Conrad though Nabokov disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to critic Edmund Wilson in 1941 that he was too old to change Conradically. John Updike later called this lament itself a jest of genius. Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English sometimes in collaboration with his son Dmitri. His creative processes involved writing sections of text on hundreds of index cards which he expanded into paragraphs and chapters and rearranged to form the structure of his novels. Many screenwriters later adopted this process. He published under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin in the 1920s to 1940s occasionally to mask his identity from critics. He made cameo appearances in some of his novels such as the character Vivian Darkbloom an anagram of his name appearing in both Lolita and Ada or Ardor. The character Blavdak Vinomori another anagram appears in King Queen Knave. His fiction is characterized by linguistic playfulness including acrostic final paragraphs and characters suffering from fictional illnesses like Referential Mania.
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Common questions
When and where was Vladimir Nabokov born?
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov entered the world on the 22nd of April 1899 in Saint Petersburg. His family belonged to an ancient Russian nobility granted a coat of arms by Emperor Paul I on the 1st of January 1798.
What languages did Vladimir Nabokov speak during his childhood?
The boy grew up speaking three languages within his household: Russian, English, and French. He later became a trilingual master writing also in French alongside his native Russian and adopted English.
Who killed Vladimir Nabokov's father and when did this event occur?
In March 1922 Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork and Sergey Taboritsky shot and killed Nabokov's father while shielding their target Pavel Milyukov. This tragedy occurred shortly after the family fled the city for Crimea following the February Revolution of 1917.
Where did Vladimir Nabokov teach from 1948 until 1959?
He left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at Cornell University where he taught there until 1959. Among his students was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.
How long did it take Vladimir Nabokov to distinguish butterfly species under a microscope?
Museum staff writer Nancy Pick noted that he worked six hours a day seven days a week until his eyesight was permanently impaired. During this extensive career of collecting he never learned to drive a car and depended on his wife to take him to collecting sites.