Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov[b] (Russian:Владимир Владимирович Набоков[vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrvlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕnɐˈbokəf]ⓘ; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899[a] – 2 July 1977), also known by thepen nameVladimir Sirin (Владимир Сирин), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, andentomologist. Born inImperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife,Véra Nabokov. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled inMontreux, Switzerland.
From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University.[6] His 1955 novelLolita ranked fourth onModern Library's list of the100 best 20th-century novels in 1998 and is considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature.[7] Nabokov'sPale Fire, published in 1962, ranked 53rd on the same list. His memoir,Speak, Memory, published in 1951, is considered among the greatest nonfiction works of the 20th century, placing eighth onRandom House's ranking of 20th-century works.[8] Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for theNational Book Award for Fiction. He also was an expertlepidopterist andcomposer of chess problems.Time magazine wrote that Nabokov had "evolved a vivid English style which combines Joycean word play with a Proustian evocation of mood and setting".[9]
Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899Old Style) inSaint Petersburg[a] to a wealthy and prominent family of theRussian nobility. His family traced its roots to the 14th-centuryTatar prince NabokMurza, who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived.[10][11]: 16 [12] His father wasVladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, a liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist, and his mother was the heiress Yelena Ivanovnanée Rukavishnikova, the granddaughter of a millionaire gold-mine owner. His father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberalConstitutional Democratic Party, and wrote numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics.[13] His cousins included the composerNicolas Nabokov. His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign ofAlexander II. His paternal grandmother was theBaltic German Baroness Maria von Korff. Through his father, he was a descendant of the composerCarl Heinrich Graun.[14]
Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child. He had four younger siblings:Sergey, Olga, Elena, and Kirill. Sergey was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 after publicly denouncing Hitler's regime. WriterAyn Rand recalled Olga (her close friend at Stoiunina Gymnasium) as a supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics.[15][16] Elena, who in later years became Vladimir's favorite sibling, published her correspondence with him in 1985. She was an important source for Nabokov's biographers.
Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra nearSiverskaya, south of the city. His childhood, which he called "perfect" and "cosmopolitan", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first English book his mother read to him wasMisunderstood, byFlorence Montgomery. Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In his memoirSpeak, Memory,[17] Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood. His ability to recall his past in vivid detail was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing a theme that runs from his first book,Mary, to later works such asAda or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. While the family was nominallyOrthodox, it had little religious fervor. Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest.
In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estateRozhdestveno, next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" inSpeak, Memory). He lost it in theOctober Revolution one year later; this was the only house he ever owned.[citation needed]
Nabokov's adolescence was the period in which he made his first serious literary endeavors. In 1916, he published his first book,Stikhi (Poems), a collection of 68 Russian poems. At the time he was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg, where his literature teacher Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius had criticized his literary accomplishments. Some time after the publication ofStikhi,Zinaida Gippius, renowned poet and first cousin of his teacher, told Nabokov's father at a social event, "Please tell your son that he will never be a writer."[18]
After theOctober Revolution, the family fled the city for Crimea, at first not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved toLivadiya, at the time under the separatistCrimean Regional Government, in which Nabokov's father became a minister of justice.
After the withdrawal of theGerman Army in November 1918 and the defeat of theWhite Army in early 1919, the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe, along with other Russian refugees. They settled briefly in England, where Nabokov gained admittance to theUniversity of Cambridge, one of the world's most prestigious universities, where he attendedTrinity College and studiedzoology and laterSlavic andRomance languages. His examination results on the first part of theTripos exam, taken at the end of his second year, were astarred first. He took the second part of the exam in his fourth year just after his father's death, and feared he might fail it. But his exam was markedsecond-class. His final examination result also ranked second-class, and hisBA was conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novelsGlory andThe Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
At Cambridge, one journalist wrote in 2014, "the coats-of-arms on the windows of his room protected him from the cold and from the melancholy over the recent loss of his country. It was in this city, in his moments of solitude, accompanied byKing Lear,Le Morte d'Arthur,The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde orUlysses, that Nabokov made the firm decision to become a Russian writer."[19]
In 1920, Nabokov's family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaperRul' ("Rudder"). Nabokov followed them to Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge.
In March 1922, Russian monarchistsPyotr Shabelsky-Bork andSergey Taboritsky shot and killed Nabokov's father in Berlin as he was shielding their target,Pavel Milyukov, a leader of theConstitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. Shortly after his father's death, Nabokov's mother and sister moved to Prague. Nabokov drew upon his father's death repeatedly in his fiction. On one interpretation of his novelPale Fire, an assassin kills the poet John Shade when his target is a fugitive European monarch.
Nabokov stayed in Berlin, where he had become a recognised poet and writer in Russian within the émigré community; he published under thenom de plumeV. Sirin (a reference to thefabulous bird of Russian folklore). To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons.[20] Dieter E. Zimmer has written of Nabokov's 15 Berlin years, "he never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within the lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, and immigration officials at the police headquarters."[21]
In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert, but she broke the engagement off early in 1923 when her parents worried whether he could provide for her.[22] In May 1923, he metVéra Evseyevna Slonim, a Russian-Jewish woman, at a charity ball in Berlin.[20] They married in April 1925.[20] Their only child,Dmitri, was born in 1934.
In the course of 1936, Véra lost her job because of the increasingly antisemitic environment;Sergey Taboritsky was appointed deputy head of Germany's Russian-émigré bureau; and Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world.
In 1937, Nabokov left Germany for France, where he had a short affair with Irina Guadanini, also a Russian émigrée. His family followed him to France, making en route their last visit toPrague, then spent time inCannes,Menton,Cap d'Antibes, andFréjus, finally settling in Paris. This city also had a Russian émigré community.
In 1939, in Paris, Nabokov wrote the 55-page novellaThe Enchanter, his final work of Russian fiction.[23] He later called it "the first little throb ofLolita."[24]
In May 1940, the Nabokovs fled the advancing German troops, reaching the United States via theSSChamplain. Nabokov's brother Sergey did not leave France, and he died at theNeuengamme concentration camp on 9 January 1945.[25]
Nabokov joined the staff ofWellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer incomparative literature. The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue hislepidoptery. Nabokov is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. The Nabokovs resided inWellesley, Massachusetts, during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942, they moved to nearbyCambridge, where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became anaturalized 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. His classes were popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian.[citation needed] At the same time he was the de facto curator of lepidoptery atHarvard University'sMuseum of Comparative Zoology.[27]
After being encouraged byMorris Bishop, Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature atCornell University, where he taught until 1959. Among his students at Cornell was futureU.S. Supreme CourtJusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg, who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.[28]
Nabokov wroteLolita while traveling on the butterfly-collection trips in the western U.S. that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as "secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy"; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts ofLolita, Véra stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known.[20][29][30]
In June 1953, Nabokov and his family went toAshland, Oregon. There he finishedLolita and began writing the novelPnin. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem called "Lines Written in Oregon". On 1 October 1953, he and his family returned to Ithaca, where he later taught the young writerThomas Pynchon.[31]
The Nabokovs' gravesite at Cimetière deClarens nearMontreux, Switzerland
After the great financial success ofLolita, Nabokov returned to Europe and devoted himself to writing. In 1961, he and Véra moved to theMontreux Palace Hotel inMontreux, Switzerland, where he remained until the end of his life.[32] From his sixth-floor quarters, he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies.
Nabokov died of bronchitis on 2 July 1977 in Montreux.[33][34] His remains were cremated and buried atClarens cemetery in Montreux.[35]: xxix–l
At the time of his death, he was working on a novel titledThe Original of Laura. Véra and Dmitri, who were entrusted with Nabokov'sliterary executorship,[20] ignored Nabokov's request to burn the incomplete manuscript and published it in 2009.[36][37][38]
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 (also writing in French, seeMademoiselle O) master, he has been compared toJoseph Conrad, but Nabokov disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to the criticEdmund Wilson, "I am too old to change Conradically"—whichJohn Updike later called "itself a jest of genius". This lament came in 1941, when Nabokov had been an apprentice American for less than one year.[39]: 50 [40] Later, in a November 1950 letter to Wilson, Nabokov offers a solid, non-comic appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of mysolecisms, but neither does he scale my verbal peaks."[39]: 282 Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his art.[citation needed]
Nabokov himself translated into Russian two books he originally wrote in English,Conclusive Evidence andLolita. The "translation" ofConclusive Evidence was made because Nabokov felt that the English version was imperfect. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into English and to spend time explaining things that are well known in Russia; he decided to rewrite the book in his native language before making the final version,Speak, Memory (Nabokov first wanted to name it "Speak,Mnemosyne"). Of translatingLolita, Nabokov writes, "I imagined that in some distant future somebody might produce a Russian version ofLolita. I trained my inner telescope upon that particular point in the distant future and I saw that every paragraph, pock-marked as it is with pitfalls, could lend itself to hideous mistranslation. In the hands of a harmful drudge, the Russian version ofLolita would be entirely degraded and botched by vulgar paraphrases or blunders. So I decided to translate it myself."[41]
Nabokov was a proponent ofindividualism, and rejected concepts and ideologies that curtailed individual freedom and expression, such astotalitarianism in its various forms, as well asSigmund Freud'spsychoanalysis.[35]: 412ff Poshlost, or as he transcribed it,poshlust, is disdained and frequently mocked in his works.[35]: 628ff
Nabokov's creative processes involved writing sections of text on hundreds ofindex cards, which he expanded into paragraphs and chapters and rearranged to form the structure of his novels, a process that many screenwriters later adopted.[32]
Nabokov published under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin in the 1920s to 1940s, occasionally to mask his identity from critics.[42] He also makes cameo appearances in some of his novels, such as the character Vivian Darkbloom (ananagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), who appears in bothLolita andAda, or Ardor, and the character Blavdak Vinomori (another anagram of Nabokov's name) inKing, Queen, Knave. Sirin is referenced as a different émigré author in his memoir and is also referenced inPnin.
Nabokov is noted for his complex plots, cleverword play, daring metaphors, and prose style capable of both parody and intense lyricism.[citation needed] He gained both fame and notoriety withLolita (1955), which recounts a grown man's consuming passion for a 12-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularlyPale Fire (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century[citation needed] and multiple nominations for theNobel Prize in Literature.[43]
His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, isAda (1969). He devoted more time to the composition of it than to any other. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by linguistic playfulness. For example, his short story "The Vane Sisters" is famous in part for itsacrostic final paragraph, in which the words' first letters spell a message from beyond the grave. Another of his short stories, "Signs and Symbols", features a character suffering from an imaginary illness called "Referential Mania", in which the affected perceives a world of environmental objects exchanging coded messages.[44]
Nabokov's stature as a literary critic is founded largely on his four-volume translation of and commentary onAlexander Pushkin'sEugene Onegin published in 1964. The commentary ends with an appendix titledNotes on Prosody, which has developed a reputation of its own. It stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin'siambic tetrameters had been a part ofRussian literature for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by the Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words:
I have been forced to invent a simple little terminology of my own, explain its application to English verse forms, and indulge in certain rather copious details of classification before even tackling the limited object of these notes to my translation of Pushkin'sEugene Onegin, an object that boils down to very little—in comparison to the forced preliminaries—namely, to a few things that the non-Russian student of Russian literature must know in regard to Russian prosody in general and toEugene Onegin in particular.
Vladimir Nabokov'sLolita, cover image: Hugo Heikenwaelder, Edition ARTEMISIA, 1999
Nabokov's lectures atCornell University, as collected inLectures on Literature, reveal his controversial ideas concerning art.[45] He firmly believed that novels should not aim to teach and that readers should not merely empathize with characters but that a 'higher' aesthetic enjoyment should be attained, partly by paying great attention to details of style and structure. He detested what he saw as 'general ideas' in novels, and so when teachingUlysses, for example, he would insist students keep an eye on where the characters were in Dublin (with the aid of a map) rather than teaching the complex Irish history that many critics see as being essential to an understanding of the novel.[46] In 2010,Kitsch magazine, a student publication at Cornell, published a piece that focused on student reflections on his lectures and also explored Nabokov's long relationship withPlayboy.[47] Nabokov also wanted his students to describe the details of the novels rather than a narrative of the story and was very strict when it came to grading. AsEdward Jay Epstein described his experience in Nabokov's classes, Nabokov made it clear from the first lectures that he had little interest in fraternizing with students, who would be known not by their name but by their seat number.[48]
The Russian literary criticYuly Aykhenvald was an early admirer of Nabokov, citing in particular his ability to imbue objects with life: "he saturates trivial things with life, sense and psychology and gives a mind to objects; his refined senses notice colorations and nuances, smells and sounds, and everything acquires an unexpected meaning and truth under his gaze and through his words."[49] The criticJames Wood argues that Nabokov's use of descriptive detail proved an "overpowering, and not always very fruitful, influence on two or three generations after him", including authors such asMartin Amis andJohn Updike.[50] While a student at Cornell in the 1950s,Thomas Pynchon attended several of Nabokov's lectures.[51] His debut novelV. resemblesThe Real Life of Sebastian Knight in plot, character, narration and style, and the title alludes directly to the narrator "V." in that novel.[52] Pynchon also alluded toLolita in his 1966 novelThe Crying of Lot 49, in which Serge, countertenor in the band the Paranoids, sings:
What chance has a lonely surfer boy For the love of a surfer chick, With all these Humbert Humbert cats Coming on so big and sick? For me, my baby was a woman, For him she's just another nymphet.
Pynchon's prose style was influenced by Nabokov's preference for actualism over realism.[53] Of the authors who came to prominence during Nabokov's life,John Banville,[54]Don DeLillo,[55]Salman Rushdie,[56] andEdmund White[57] were all influenced by him. The novelistJohn Hawkes took inspiration from Nabokov and considered himself his follower. Nabokov's story "Signs and Symbols" was on the reading list for Hawkes's writing students at Brown University. "A writer who truly and greatly sustains us is Vladimir Nabokov," Hawkes said in a 1964 interview.[58]
Several authors who came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s have also cited Nabokov's work as a literary influence.Aleksandar Hemon has acknowledged the latter's impact on his writing.[59]Pulitzer Prize-winning novelistMichael Chabon listedLolita andPale Fire among the "books that, I thought, changed my life when I read them",[60] and has said, "Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language".[61]T. Coraghessan Boyle has said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing.[62] Bilingual author and criticMaxim D. Shrayer, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from the USSR, described reading Nabokov in 1987 as "my culture shock": "I was reading Nabokov and waiting for America."[63]Boston Globe book critic David Mehegan wrote that Shrayer'sWaiting for America "is one of those memoirs, like Nabokov'sSpeak, Memory, that is more about feeling than narrative."[64] More recently, in connection with the publication of Shrayer's literary memoirImmigrant Baggage, the critic andStanley Kubrick biographerDavid Mikics wrote, "Shrayer writes like Nabokov's long lost cousin."[65]
The song cycle "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical albumTroika comprises settings of Russian and English versions of three of Nabokov's poems by such composers asJay Greenberg,Michael Schelle andLev Zhurbin.
Butterflies collected by Nabokov in California in 1941
Nabokov's interest inentomology was inspired by books byMaria Sibylla Merian he found in the attic of his family's country home in Vyra.[68] 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 inzoology, he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection ofHarvard University'sMuseum of Comparative Zoology. His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in the relatively unspectacular tribePolyommatini of the familyLycaenidae, has left this facet of his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He described theKarner blue. ThegenusNabokovia was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species (e.g., many species in the generaMadeleinea andPseudolucia bear epithets alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels).[69] In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran orPeru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all."[32]
TheHarvard Museum of Natural History, which now contains theMuseum of Comparative Zoology, still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where the author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia.[70][71] "Nabokov was a serious taxonomist," says museum staff writer Nancy Pick, author ofThe Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. "He actually did quite a good job at distinguishing species that 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."[71]
Though professional lepidopterists did not take Nabokov's work seriously during his life, new genetic research supports Nabokov's hypothesis that a group of butterfly species, called thePolyommatus blues, came to theNew World over theBering Strait in five waves, eventually reaching Chile.[72]
Russia has always been a curiously unpleasant country despite her great literature. Unfortunately, Russians today have completely lost their ability to kill tyrants.[11]: 21
Throughout his life, Nabokov would remain committed to the classical liberal political philosophy of his father, and equally opposedTsarist autocracy,communism, andfascism.[11]: 24–36 Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was one of the most outspoken defenders of Jewish rights in theRussian Empire, continuing a family tradition that had been led by his own father, Dmitry Nabokov, who asTsar Alexander II's justice minister had blocked the interior minister from passing antisemitic measures. That family strain continued in Vladimir Nabokov, who fiercely denounced antisemitism in his writings; in the 1930s, he was able to escape Hitler's Germany only with the help ofRussian Jewish émigrés who still had grateful memories of his family's defense of Jews in Tsarist times.[11]: 24
When asked in 1969 whether he would like to revisit the land he fled in 1918, now the Soviet Union, he replied: "There's nothing to look at. New tenement houses and old churches do not interest me. The hotels there are terrible. I detest the Soviet theater. Any palace in Italy is superior to the repainted abodes of the Tsars. The village huts in the forbidden hinterland are as dismally poor as ever, and the wretched peasant flogs his wretched cart horse with the same wretched zest. As to my special northern landscape and the haunts of my childhood—well, I would not wish to contaminate their images preserved in my mind."[74]: 148
In the 1940s, as an émigré in America, Nabokov stressed the connection between American and English liberal democracy and the aspirations of the short-lived Russian provisional government. In 1942, he declared: "Democracy is humanity at its best ... it is the natural condition of every man ever since the human mind became conscious not only of the world but of itself."[77] During the 1960s, in both letters and interviews, he reveals a profound contempt for theNew Left movements, calling the protesters "conformists" and "goofy hoodlums".[74]: 139 [78] In a 1967 interview, Nabokov said that he refused to associate with supporters of Bolshevism or Tsarist autocracy but that he had "friends among intellectual constitutional monarchists as well as among intellectualsocial revolutionaries".[79] Nabokov supported theVietnam War effort and voiced admiration for both PresidentsLyndon B. Johnson andRichard Nixon.[78][80][81][82] Racism against African-Americans appalled Nabokov, who toutedAlexander Pushkin's multiracial background as an argument against segregation.[80]
Nabokov's wifeVéra was his strongest supporter and assisted him throughout his life, but Nabokov admitted to a "prejudice" against women writers. He wrote to Edmund Wilson, who had been making suggestions for his lectures: "I dislikeJane Austen, and am prejudiced, in fact against all women writers. They are in another class."[39][83] But after rereading Austen'sMansfield Park he changed his mind and taught it in his literature course; he also praisedMary McCarthy's work and calledMarina Tsvetaeva a "poet of genius" inSpeak, Memory.[39]: 274 Although Véra worked as his personal translator and secretary, he made publicly known that his ideal translator would be male, and especially not a "Russian-born female".[84][85] In the first chapter ofGlory he attributes the protagonist's similar prejudice to the impressions made by children's writers likeLidiya Charski,[86] and the short story "The Admiralty Spire" deplores the posturing, snobbery, antisemitism, and cutesiness he considered characteristic of Russian women authors.[disputed –discuss]
Nabokov was a self-describedsynesthete, who at a young age equated the number five with the color red.[87] Aspects of synesthesia can be found in several of his works. His wife also exhibited synesthesia; 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 ifgenes were painting inaquarelle".[88] Nabokov also wrote that his mother had synesthesia, and that she had different letter-color pairs.[89]
For some synesthetes, letters are not simplyassociated with certain colors, theyare themselves colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. InBend Sinister, Krug comments on his perception of the word "loyalty" as like a golden fork lying out in the sun. InThe Defense, Nabokov briefly mentions that the main character's father, a writer, found he was unable to complete a novel that he planned to write, becoming lost in the fabricated storyline by "starting with colors". Many other subtle references are made in Nabokov's writing that can be traced back to his synesthesia. Many of his characters have a distinct "sensory appetite" reminiscent of synesthesia.[90]
Nabokov described his synesthesia at length in his autobiographySpeak, Memory:[91]
I present a fine case of colored hearing. Perhaps "hearing" is not quite accurate, since the color sensations seem to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The longa of the English alphabet (and it is this alphabet I have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) has for me the tint of weathered wood, but the Frencha evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hardg (vulcanized rubber) andr (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmealn, noodle-limpl, and the ivory-backed hand mirror ofo take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my Frenchon which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steelyx, thundercloudz, and huckleberryk. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I seeq as browner thank, whiles is not the light blue ofc, but a curious mixture ofazure andmother-of-pearl.
Nabokov was a religiousagnostic.[92] He was very open about, and received criticism for, his indifference to organizedmysticism, to religion, and to any church.[93]
Nabokov was a notorious, lifelong insomniac who admitted unease at the prospect of sleep, once saying, "the night is always a giant".[94] Later in life his insomnia was exacerbated by an enlarged prostate.[95] Nabokov called sleep a "moronic fraternity", "mental torture", and a "nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius".[96] Insomnia's impact on his work has been widely explored, and in 2017Princeton University Press published a compilation of his dream diary entries,Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov.[97]
Nabokov spent considerable time during his exile composingchess problems, which he published in Germany's Russian émigré press,Poems and Problems (18 problems) andSpeak, Memory (one). He describes the process of composing and constructing in his memoir: "The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one's consciousness". To him, the "originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity" of creating a chess problem was similar to that in any other art.
^abcConfusion over his birth date was generated by some people misunderstanding the relationship between theJulian andGregorian calendars. At the time of Nabokov's birth, the offset between the calendars was 12 days. His date of birth in the Julian calendar was 10 April 1899; in the Gregorian, 22 April 1899.[98] The fact that the offset increased from 12 to 13 days for dates occurring after February 1900 was always irrelevant to earlier dates, and hence a 13-day offset should never have been applied to Nabokov's date of birth. Nevertheless, it was so misapplied by some writers, and 23 April came to be erroneously shown in many places as his birthday. In his memoirsSpeak, Memory Nabokov indicates that 22 April was the correct date but that he nevertheless preferred to celebrate his birthday "with diminishing pomp" on 23 April (p. 6).[vague] As he happily pointed out on several occasions during interviews, this meant he also shared a birthday withWilliam Shakespeare andShirley Temple.[11][99]
^abcdNabokov, Vladimir (2001). Karlinsky, Simon (ed.).Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940–1971 (Revised ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.: 268
^"John Hawkes: An Interview. 20 March 1964. John J. Enck and John Hawkes", Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 6.2 (summer 1965): 144. See alsoMaxim D. Shrayer, "Writing in Tongues",Brown Alumni Monthly September/October 2017;Bez Nabokova[permanent dead link]",Snob.ru 2 July 2017.
^abPick, Nancy (Spring 2005)."Blood, Sweat, and Bones"(PDF).Colloquy (Alumni Quarterly): 8. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 8 September 2015. Retrieved19 November 2014.
^Frank, Siggy (2012).Nabokov's Theatrical Imagination. Cambridge University Press. p. 170.
^Pifer, Ellen (1999). Connolly, Julian W. (ed.). "Her monster, his nymphet: Nabokov and Mary Shelley".Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives:158–176.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511597718.010.ISBN9780521632836.
^From Chapter 1: "Martin's first books were in English: his mother loathed the Russian magazine for childrenZadushevnoe Slovo (The Heartfelt Word), and inspired in him such aversion for Madame Charski's young heroines with dusky complexions and titles that even later Martin was wary of any book written by a woman, sensing even in the best of such books an unconscious urge on the part of a middle-aged and perhaps chubby lady to dress up in a pretty name and curl up on the sofa like a pussy cat."
^Martin, Patrick. "Synaesthesia, metaphor and right-brain functioning" inEgoist.
^"Nabokov's interview". BBC Television. 1962. Retrieved5 December 2015 – via kulichki.com.
^Morton, Donald E. (1974).Vladimir Nabokov. F. Ungar Publishing Company. p. 8.ISBN9780804426381.Nabokov is a self-affirmed agnostic in matters religious, political, and philosophical.
Chien, Evelyn Nien-Ming (2005). "A Shuttlecock Over the Atlantic".Weird English. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press.ISBN978-0-674-01819-8.
Field, Andrew.VN The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Crown Publishers. 1986.ISBN0-517-56113-1
Golla, Robert.Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2017.ISBN978-1496810953
Parker, Stephen Jan.Understanding Vladimir Nabokov. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1987.ISBN978-0872494954
Proffer, Elendea, ed.Vladimir Nabokov: A Pictorial Biography. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1991.ISBN0-87501-078-4 (a collection of photographs)
Barabtarlo, Gennady (1989).Phantom of fact: a guide to Nabokov's Pnin. Ann Arbor: Ardis.ISBN978-0-87501-060-1.
Blackwell, Stephen H. (2009).The quill and the scalpel: Nabokov's art and the worlds of science. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.ISBN978-0-8142-1099-4.
Connolly, Julian W. (2009).A reader's guide to Nabokov's "Lolita". Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history. Boston: Academic Studies Press.ISBN978-1-934843-65-9.
Foster, John Burt (1993).Nabokov's art of memory and European modernism. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-06971-5.
Hardy, James D.; Martin, Ann (2011)."Light of my life": love, time and memory in Nabokov's Lolita. Jefferson, N.C.; London: McFarland & Co.ISBN978-0-7864-6357-2.
Johnson, Donald B. (1985).Worlds in regression: some novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Ann Arbor: Ardis.ISBN978-0-88233-908-5.
Morris, Paul Duncan (2010).Vladimir Nabokov: poetry and the lyric voice. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.ISBN978-1-4426-4020-7.
Nicol, Charles; Barabtarlo, Gennady, eds. (1993).A Small Alpine form: studies in Nabokov's short fiction. Garland reference library of the humanities. New York: Garland.ISBN978-0-8153-0857-7.
Page, Norman, ed. (1982).Nabokov: The Critical Heritage. The Critical Heritage series. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.ISBN978-0-71009-223-6.
Rutledge, David S. (2011).Nabokov's permanent mystery: the expression of metaphysics in his work. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co.ISBN978-0-7864-6076-2.
Schuman, Samuel (2014).Nabokov's Shakespeare. New York: Bloomsbury.ISBN978-1-62892-426-8.
Trousdale, Rachel (2010).Nabokov, Rushdie, and the transnational imagination: novels of exile and alternate worlds (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-0-230-10261-3.
Vernon, David (2022).Ada to Zembla: The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Edinburgh, Scotland: Endellion Press.ISBN978-1739136109.
Wood, Michael (1995).The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-00632-1.
Alexandrov, Vladimir E., ed.The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995.ISBN0-8153-0354-8.
Funke, Sarah.Véra's Butterflies: First Editions by Vladimir Nabokov Inscribed to his Wife. New York: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 1999.ISBN0-9654020-1-0.
In 1986 his first novelMary (in RussianMaschenka) was loosely adapted for the movieMaschenka, starringCary Elwes.
The novelThe Defense was adapted as a feature film,The Luzhin Defence, in 2000 by director Marleen Gorris. The film starred John Turturro and Emily Watson.
Johnson, Kurt, and Steve Coates.Nabokov's blues: The scientific odyssey of a literary genius. New York: McGraw-Hill.ISBN0-07-137330-6 (very accessibly written)
Sartori, Michel, ed.Les Papillons de Nabokov [The butterflies of Nabokov]. Lausanne: Musée cantonal de Zoologie, 1993.ISBN2-9700051-0-7 (exhibition catalogue, primarily in English)
Zimmer, Dieter E.A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths. Privately published, 2001.ISBN3-00-007609-3 (web page)
Deroy, Chloé,Vladimir Nabokov, Icare russe et Phénix américain (2010). Dijon: EUD
Gezari, Janet K.; Wimsatt, W. K.,"Vladimir Nabokov: More Chess Problems and the Novel",Yale French Studies, No. 58, In Memory of Jacques Ehrmann: Inside Play Outside Game (1979), pp. 102–115, Yale University Press.
Vladimir-Nabokov.org – Site of the Vladimir Nabokov French Society, Enchanted Researchers (Société française Vladimir Nabokov : Les Chercheurs Enchantés).
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