Results for Vladimir Nabokov
On this page:
 
Who2 Biography:

Vladimir Nabokov

, Writer/Lepidopterist
Vladimir Nabokov
Source

  • Born: April 1899
  • Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
  • Died: 2 July 1977
  • Best Known As: Author of the novel Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita was so controversial that it went unpublished in America for three years after it was first presented in France in 1955. Nabokov left his native Russia after the 1917 revolution that overthrew Nicholas II, then lived in England and Germany before moving to the United States in the 1940s. A poet, translator, novelist and internationally recognized lepidopterist (butterfly expert), Nabokov taught at Cornell University from 1948 until 1959. Lolita created a firestorm of criticism due to its subject matter: "the affair between a middle-aged sexual pervert and a twelve-year-old girl" is how The Atlantic Monthly described it in a favorable 1958 review. The novel's obsessive protagonist, Humbert Humbert, and the manipulative nymph Lolita have become famous characters in 20th-century literature. The financial success of Lolita allowed Nabokov to devote his time to writing, and he settled in Switzerland, where he continued to write novels and study butterflies.

Lolita was first published in Paris by the obscure Olympia Press in 1955, then finally published in the U.S. by Putnam in 1958... Movie versions of Lolita were made in 1962 (with Sue Lyon as Lolita and James Mason as the aging Humbert Humbert) and in 1997 (with Dominique Swain as Lolita and Jeremy Irons as Humbert).

 
 
Biography: Vladimir Nabokov

The Russian-born American poet, fiction writer, critic, and butterfly expert Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), one of the most highly acclaimed novelists of his time, was noted for his sensuous and lyrical descriptions, verbal games and experimental narrative style, and his carefully structured and intricate plots.

Best known as the author of Lolita, the scandalous 1950s novel about an underage temptress, Vladimir Nabokov was much more than a chronicler of lecherous professors. He was one of the most productive and creative writers of his era. His novels, short stories, essays, poems, and memoirs all share his cosmopolitan wit, his love of wordplay, his passion for satire, and his complex social commentary. Nabokov's work appeals to the senses, imagination, intellect, and emotions. His themes are universal: the role of the artist in society; the myth of journey, adventure, and return; and humanity's concepts of memory and time, which he called a tightrope walk across the "watery abyss of the past and the aerial abyss of the future."

Child Prodigy

Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, as one of five children of a wealthy noble couple. Nabokov's parents encouraged the gifted youth to follow his mind and imagination. He played with language and linguistics, mathematics, puzzles and games including chess, and soccer, boxing and tennis. He read English before he read Russian. Interested in butterflies, he became a recognized entomological authority while still young and remained a noted lepidopertist his entire life. Nabokov began to write poems when he was 13 and, as he described it, "the numb fury of verse making first came over me." His first book of poetry was published in 1914, and a second appeared in 1917. He called his early writing an attempt "to express one's position in regard to the universe."

Nabokov's father, a lawyer who edited St. Petersburg's only liberal newspaper, rebelled against first the czarist regime, then against the Communists. Bereft of land and fortune after the Russian Revolution, the family fled Russia for London in 1919, where Nabokov entered Cambridge University. He graduated with honors in 1922 and rejoined his family in Berlin, where Nabokov's father was gunned down by a monarchist. Nabokov married Vera Slonim in 1925 and they had a son, Dmitri, who later became an opera singer. In Berlin, Nabokov taught boxing, tennis and languages and constructed crossword puzzles. He began writing under the pseudonym "V. Sirin," selling stories, poems and essays to Russian-language newspapers in Berlin and then, after fleeing the Nazis in 1938, in Paris. His work included translations as diverse as Alice in Wonderland and the poem La Belle dame sans merci into Russian, literary criticism, short stories, plays, and novels. He began writing in English and in 1940 moved to the United States.

Early Days in America

In 1940, Nabokov taught Slavic languages at Stanford University. From 1941 to 1948 he taught at Wellesley College and became a professor of literature. He also was a research fellow in entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University from 1942 to 1948, and later discovered several butterfly species and subspecies, including "Nabokov's wood nymph." While teaching, he wrote The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), a parody of the mystery-story genre, whose hero is derived from the author's own life. A Guggenheim fellowship in 1943 resulted in his scholarly 1944 biographical study of Russian author Nicolai Gogol. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and by then was a regular contributor to popular magazines.

Nabokov's 1947 novel Bend Sinister is about an intellectual's battle with a totalitarian police state. It is considered a parody of the utopia genre. In 1949 Nabokov was appointed professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University, where he taught until 1959. His memoir of his early life in Russia, Speak, Memory (1951), is a charming autobiography. Several short sketches published in the New Yorker, were incorporated into Pnin (1957), his novel about a Russian emigre teaching at an American university.

Lolita Brings Notoriety

Despite Nabokov's vast productivity, scholarly status, and high standing in literary circles, he remained relatively unknown to the general public until Lolita, a sadly hilarious account of Humbert Humbert, a pompous middle-aged professor who is seduced by a 12-year-old schoolgirl. It was first published in Paris in 1955. After its first American edition came out in 1958, some U.S. libraries banned it. The scandal helped the book become immensely popular. Critical reaction ran the gamut from outrage to high praise. Nabokov sold the film rights and wrote the screenplay for the 1962 movie directed by Stanley Kubrick. With royalties from the novel and the film, Nabokov was able to quit teaching and devote himself entirely to his writing and to butterfly hunting.

In 1959 Nabokov published Invitation to a Beheading, a story of a man awaiting execution, which he had first written in Russian in 1938. In 1960 he and his family moved to Montreux, Switzerland. Nabokov received critical acclaim for Pale Fire (1962), a strange, multidimensional exercise in the techniques of parable and parody, written as a 999-line poem with a lengthy commentary by a demented New England scholar who is actually an exiled mythical king.

Playing with Time

In 1963 Nabokov's English translation of Alexander Pushkin's romantic verse novel Eugene Onegin was published; the four-volume scholarly work was, Nabokov said, his "labor of love." Several translations of earlier Russian works followed, including The Defense, a novel about chess. Nabokov's Ada (1969), an "autumnal fairy tale" whose principal characters are imprisoned by time, is subject to many levels of interpretation, with its intricate construction, complex allusions, word games, staggering erudition, chronological ambiguities and literary parody. Time in this novel is blended into a totally free-ranging and distorting present, what Nabokov called "the essential spirality of all things in their relationship to time." The novel is the fulfillment of Nabokov's theme from Speak, Memory: "I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip."

Nabokov constructed his novels like puzzles, rather than working from beginning to end. In 1964, he told Life magazine: "Writing has always been for me a blend of dejection and high spirits, a torture and a pastime." Nabokov died July 2, 1977, at the Palace Hotel in Montreaux, Switzerland, where he had lived since 1959.

Further Reading

See Nabokov: The Man and His Work, edited by L.S. Dumbo (1967); Andrew Field's, VN, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (1986); Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years and Vladimir Nabokov: The British Years (both 1991) by Brian Boyd's; Escape into Aesthetics: The Art of Vladimir Nabokov (1966) and his introduction to Nabokov's Congeries (1968) by Page Stegners).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Nabokov, 1968
(click to enlarge)
Nabokov, 1968 (credit: © Philippe Halsman)
(born April 22, 1899, St. Petersburg, Russia — died July 2, 1977, Montreux, Switz.) Russian-born U.S novelist and critic. Born to an aristocratic family, he had an English-speaking governess. He published two collections of verse before leaving Russia in 1919 for Cambridge University, but by 1925 he had turned to prose as his main genre. During 1919 – 40 he lived in England, Germany, and France. His life before he moved to the U.S. in 1940 is recalled in his superb autobiography, Speak, Memory (1951). Beginning with King, Queen, Knave (1928), his writing began to feature intricate stylistic devices. His novels are principally concerned with the problem of art itself, presented in various disguises, as in Invitation to a Beheading (1938). Parody is frequent in The Gift (1937 – 38) and later works. His novels written in English include the notorious and greatly admired best-seller Lolita (1955), which brought him wealth and international fame; Pale Fire (1962); and Ada (1969). His critical works include a monumental translation of and commentary on Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, 4 vol. (1964).

For more information on Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Nabokov, Vladimir
(vlädē'mĭr näbô'kŏf) , 1899–1977, Russian-American author, b. St. Petersburg, Russia. He emigrated to England after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and graduated from Cambridge in 1922. He moved to the United States in 1940. From 1948 to 1959 he was professor of Russian literature at Cornell Univ. He moved to Switzerland in 1959.

One of the great novelists of the 20th cent., Nabokov was an extraordinarily imaginative writer, often experimenting with the form of the novel. Although his works are frequently obscure and puzzling—filled with grotesque incidents, word games, and literary allusions—they are always erudite, witty, and intriguing. Before 1940, Nabokov wrote in Russian under the name V. Sirin. Among his early novels are Mary (1926, tr. 1970) and Invitation to a Beheading (1938, tr. 1959). His first book in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1938).

Nabokov's most widely known work is undoubtedly Lolita (1958). The story of a middle-aged European intellectual's infatuation with a 12-year-old American “nymphet,” Lolita was considered scandalous when it was first published. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) is a philosophical novel that is both the chronicle of a long incestuous love affair and a probe into the nature of time. Among Nabokov's other novels are Bend Sinister (1947), Pnin (1957), Transparent Things (1972), and Look at the Harlequins! (1974).

Nabokov's volumes of poetry include Poems and Problems (1970). Among collections of his short stories are Nine Stories (1947), Nabokov's Dozen (1958), and A Russian Beauty (1973); many of them are gathered in The Stories of Vladimir Nobokov (1995). Among his other works are a critical study of Gogol (1944); translations from the Russian, notably a four-volume version of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1964); and several autobiographical volumes, most notably Speak, Memory (1966). His college lectures, posthumously published, include Lectures on Literature: British, French, and German Writers (1980) and Lectures on Russian Literature (1981). He also achieved an international reputation as a lepidopterist.

Bibliography

See biography by B. Boyd (2 vol., 1990–91); studies by A. Field (1967), W. W. Rowe (1971), D. Fowler (1974), L. Toker (1989), and M. Wood (1995); B. Boyd and R. M. Pyle, ed., Nabokov's Butterflies (2000). See also biography of his wife by S. Schiff (1999).

 
Works: Works by Vladimir Nabokov
(1899-1977)

1947Bend Sinister. Nabokov's first novel written after he had immigrated to the United States in 1940 concerns a university professor living in an unnamed totalitarian state who struggles to maintain personal integrity in the face of defeat, madness, and finally death. Nabokov, who left Russia after the revolution, attended Cambridge University and wrote his first novels and stories in Russian while living in Berlin. He would teach literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
1951Conclusive Evidence. Nabokov's first attempt at an autobiography is a series of sketches dealing with his Russian background and artistic development. It would be revised and expanded as Speak, Memory in 1966.
1955Lolita. Nabokov's darkly comic novel about an older man's relationship with a twelve-year-old girl garners critical plaudits and controversy. The book, rejected by four publishers in the United States, is first published in France by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press, better known for pornographic publications, and was subsequently banned in France. Copies of it surface in the United States, where U.S. Customs agents deem it objectionable. The publicity would eventually lead to Lolita's 1958 publication by Putnam in the United States and the surrounding controversy, which the author subsequently described as "hurricane Lolita," making Nabokov a much-debated, internationally known figure.
1957Pnin. Drawing on his own college teaching experience, Nabokov presents a satirical look at American higher education and campus social mores from the perspective of an émigré Russian professor at an upstate New York college. Some consider the protagonist one of the most endearing characters in modern fiction.
1958Lolita. Nabokov's darkly comic novel of pedophilia, in which Humbert Humbert records his obsession with teenager Dolores Haze, that first appeared in Paris in 1955 is finally published in the United States, provoking a storm of controversy. The book's popularity allowed Nabokov to retire from teaching to devote himself to his writing. He would, as he declared, be "kept by a girl named Lolita".
1962Pale Fire. Nabokov's complex tour de force about the nature of literature consists of a 999-line poem and a critical commentary. Readers of this sly but difficult work soon discover that it has more to do with its editor's fantasy life than with an exegesis of the poem itself. Mary McCarthy describes the book as "a Jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a trap to catch reviewers, a cat-and-mouse game, a do-it-yourself novel." It has been subsequently judged as one of the great modernist masterpieces and arguably Nabokov's supreme achievement.
1966Speak, Memory. Regarded by many as one of the greatest autobiographies in English, Nabokov's revision of his earlier memoir, Conclusive Evidence (1951), treats his boyhood in prerevolutionary Russia and his first forty-one years in vividly recalled incidents and a meditation on memory.
1969Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. The memoir of Van Veen, describing his lifelong love for his half-sister, is one of Nabokov's most ambitious works and his most exuberant celebration of language, artifice, and love. While granting the novel's genius, critics are divided over whether this is Nabokov's masterpiece or a self-indulgent exercise in literary exhibitionism.
1972Transparent Things. Nabokov's novella, dealing with Hugh Person's memories of several visits to Switzerland, serves as the writer's valediction, his final important meditation on the relationship between experience and the imagination and the persistence of memory.
1973Strong Opinions. Nabokov addresses journalists' questions about his life, his works, and his views on various topics.
1974Look at the Harlequins! Nabokov creates an alter ego and an alternative fictional memoir in this story of a Russian émigré who, as a successful American novelist, writes a controversial book about a nymphet.
1980Lectures on Literature. These lectures presented to Cornell students range across a spectrum of great works, including Bleak House, Madame Bovary, and Mansfield Park. Nabokov reiterates his view that literature has no instructive or moral purpose, although he argues that understanding the "textures" of literary works does strengthen, inspire, and make the mind more precise.
1981Lectures on Russian Literature. The second volume of Nabokov's college lectures provides insights into the writer's view on the great figures of Russian literature, including Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. Included as well is the lecture "The Art of Translation."

 
Quotes By: Vladimir Nabokov

Quotes:

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

"It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot."

"A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past."

"Genius is an African who dreams up snow."

"Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as nymphets."

"Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much."

See more famous quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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

Born: April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died: July 2 1977 (aged 78)
Montreux, Switzerland
Occupation: novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Literary movement: Modernism, Postmodernism
Influences: Andrei Bely, Anton Chekhov, Gustave Flaubert, Nikolai Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mayne Reid[1]
Influenced: Martin Amis, John Banville, Jeffrey Eugenides, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Edmund White

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced [vlʌˈdʲimʲɪr nʌ'bokəf]) (April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899, Saint Petersburg – July 2, 1977, Montreux) was a Russian-American author. Nabokov wrote his first literary works in Russian, but rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist for the novels he composed in the United States. He is also noted for having made significant contributions to lepidoptery and creating a number of chess problems.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, exhibiting his love of intricate wordplay and descriptive detail in his English works.[1]. Nabokov himself regarded his four-volume translation of Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin as his other major achievement. [citation needed]

Biography

Nabokov House - the house in Saint Petersburg where Nabokov was born and lived the first 18 years of his life
Enlarge
Nabokov House - the house in Saint Petersburg where Nabokov was born and lived the first 18 years of his life

The eldest son of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife Elena, née Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, he was born to a prominent and aristocratic family of St. Petersburg. He spent his childhood and youth at St. Petersburg and their country estate Vyra near Siverskaya. Nabokov's childhood, which he called "perfect", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. In fact, much to his father's patriotic chagrin, Nabokov could read and write English before he could Russian. In Speak, Memory Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood, and his ability to recall in vivid detail memories of his past was a boon to him during his permanent exile, as well as providing a theme which echoes from his first book, Mary, all the way to later works such as Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.

The Nabokov family left Russia in the wake of the 1917 February Revolution for a friend's estate in Crimea, where they remained for 18 months. The family did not expect to be out of Russia for very long, when in fact they would never return. Following the defeat of the White Army in Crimea in 1919, the Nabokovs left Russia for exile in western Europe. Using a Nansen passport the family settled briefly in England, where Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge and studied Slavic and Romance languages. His Cambridge experiences would later help him to write the novel Glory.

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, the poet Shade is mistaken for a judge who resembles him and is murdered.

In 1923, Nabokov graduated from Cambridge and relocated to Berlin, where he gained a 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.

Nabokov was a synesthete and described aspects of synesthesia in several of his works. In his memoir Speak, Memory, he notes that 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 if genes were painting in aquarelle".

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.

Nabokov came to 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 and pursue his lepidoptery. Nabokov is 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 Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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 popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian. At the same time he was curator of lepidoptery at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Biology. After being encouraged by Morris Bishop, Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at Cornell University. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Also in 1945, Vladimir Nabokov was told by a relative that his homosexual brother, Sergei, who had lived most of his adult life in Paris and Austria, had died in a Nazi concentration camp at Neuengamme, Germany.

Nabokov wrote his novel Lolita while traveling in the western United States. In June, 1953 he and his family came to Ashland, Oregon, renting a house on Meade Street from Professor Taylor, head of the Southern Oregon College Department of Social Science. There he finished Lolita and began writing the novel Pnin. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem "Lines Written in Oregon". On October 1, 1953, he and his family left for Ithaca, New York. [2]

After the success of Lolita, Nabokov was able to move to Europe and devote himself to writing. From 1960 to the end of his life he lived in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland.

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 February 1900. In Speak, Memory Nabokov explains the cause of the error and confirms the correct date of 22 April.

Work

May 23, 1969 TIME magazine cover
Enlarge
May 23, 1969 TIME magazine cover

Nabokov's first writings were in Russian, but he came to his greatest distinction in the English language. For this achievement, he has been compared with Joseph Conrad; yet some view this as a dubious comparison, as Conrad composed only in English, never in his native Polish. (Nabokov himself disdained the comparison for aesthetic reasons, declaring, "I differ from Joseph Conradically.") Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in cooperation with his son Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his artistry. He has metaphorically described the transition from one language to another as the slow journey at night from one village to another with only a candle for illumination. Nabokov himself translated two books which he wrote in English into Russian, Conclusive Evidence, and Lolita. The first "translation" was made because of Nabokov's feeling of imperfection of the English version. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into English, and to spend a lot of time explaining things which are well-known in Russia; then he decided to re-write the book once again, in his first native language, and after that he made the final version, Speak, Memory (Nabokov first wanted to name it "Speak, Mnemosyne").

Nabokov is noted for his complex plots, clever word play, and use of alliteration. He gained both fame and notoriety with his novel Lolita (1955), which tells of a grown man's devouring passion for a twelve-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularly Pale Fire (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century. His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, is Ada (1969). He devoted more time to the composition of this novel than any of his others. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by its linguistic playfulness. For example, his short story "The Vane Sisters" is famous in part for its acrostic final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a message from beyond the grave.

Nabokov's stature as a literary critic is founded largely on his four-volume translation of and commentary on Aleksandr Pushkin's epic of the Russian soul, Eugene Onegin. That commentary ended with an appendix titled Notes on Prosody which has developed a reputation of its own. It stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin's iambic tetrameters had been a part of Russian 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's Eugene 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 to Eugene Onegin in particular.

Nabokov's translation was the focus of a bitter polemic with Edmund Wilson and others; he had rendered the very precisely metered and rhyming novel in verse in (by his own admission) stumbling, non-rhymed prose. He argued that all verse translations of Onegin fatally betrayed the author's use of language; critics replied that failure to make the translation as beautifully styled as the original was a much greater betrayal.

Nabokov's Lectures on Literature also reveals his controversial ideas concerning art. He firmly believed that novels should not aim to teach and that readers should not merely empathise 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 teaching Ulysses, 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.

Nabokov's detractors fault him for being an aesthete and for his over-attention to language and detail rather than character development. In his essay "Nabokov, or Nostalgia," Danilo Kiš wrote that Nabokov's is "a magnificent, complex, and sterile art."

Nabokov's synesthesia

Vladimir Nabokov's case of synesthesia can be described in more detail than merely the association of colors with particular letters. For a synesthete letters do not merely appear to be certain colors; they are colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. In Bend Sinister Krug comments on his perception of the word "loyalty" as being like a golden fork lying out in the sun. In The Defense, Nabokov mentioned briefly how 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.

Lepidoptery

Echinárgus in the family Lycaenidae: one of the many genera discovered and named by Nabokov
Echinárgus in the family Lycaenidae: one of the many genera discovered and named by Nabokov

His career as a lepidopterist was equally distinguished. Throughout an extensive career of collecting he never learned to drive a car, and he depended on his wife Vera to bring him to collecting sites. During the 1940s, as a research fellow in zoology, he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. 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 his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. The genus Nabokovia was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species.[3]

Butterflies drawn by V (Vladimir) for V (Vera).Nabokov House of Saint Petersburg.
Enlarge
Butterflies drawn by V (Vladimir) for V (Vera).
Nabokov House of Saint Petersburg.

The paleontologist and essayist Stephen Jay Gould discussed Nabokov's lepidoptery in an essay reprinted in his book I Have Landed. Gould notes that Nabokov was occasionally a scientific "stick-in-the-mud"; for example, Nabokov never accepted that genetics or the counting of chromosomes could be a valid way to distinguish species of insects, and relied on the traditional (for lepidopterists) microscopic comparison of their genitalia. The Harvard Museum of Natural History, which now contains the Museum of Comparative Zoology, still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where the author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. [2], [3] "Nabokov was a serious taxonomist," according to the museum staff writer Nancy Pick, author of The 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." [4]

Many of Nabokov's fans have tried to ascribe literary value to his scientific papers, Gould notes. Conversely, others have claimed that his scientific work enriched his literary output. Gould advocates a third view, holding that the other two positions are examples of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. Rather than assuming that either side of Nabokov's work caused or stimulated the other, Gould proposes that both stemmed from Nabokov's love of detail, contemplation and symmetry.

List of works

Fiction

Novels and novellas

Samizdat copies of Nabokov's works on display at Nabokov House
Enlarge
Samizdat copies of Nabokov's works on display at Nabokov House

Novels and novellas written in Russian
  • (1926) Mashen'ka (Машенька); English translation: Mary (1970)
  • (1928) Korol' Dama Valet (Король, дама, валет); English translation: King, Queen, Knave (1968)
  • (1930) Zashchita Luzhina (Защита Лужина); English translation: The Luzhin Defense or The Defense (1964) (also adapted to film, The Luzhin Defence, in 2001)
  • (1930) Sogliadatai (Соглядатай (Eavesdropper)), novella; first publication as a book 1938; English translation: The Eye (1965)
  • (1932) Podvig (Подвиг (Deed)); English translation: Glory (1971)
  • (1932) Kamera Obskura (Камера Обскура); English translations: Camera Obscura (1936), Laughter in the Dark (1938)
  • (1936) Otchayanie (Отчаяние); English translation: Despair (1937, 1966)
  • (1938) Priglasheniye na kazn' (Приглашение на казнь (Invitation to an execution)); English translation: Invitation to a Beheading (1959)
  • (1938) Dar (Дар); English translation: The Gift (1963)
  • (Unpublished novella, written in 1939) Volshebnik (Волшебник); English translation: The Enchanter (1985)

Novels written in English

Short story collections

  • (1929) Vozvrashchenie Chorba ("The Return of Chorb"). Fifteen short stories and twenty-four poems, in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
  • (1947) Nine Stories
  • (1956) Vesna v Fial'te i drugie rasskazy ("Spring in Fialta and other stories")
  • (1958) Nabokov's Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories (Also reprinted as Spring in Fialta and First Love and Other Stories.)
  • (1966) Nabokov's Quartet
  • (1968) Nabokov's Congeries; reprinted as The Portable Nabokov (1971)
  • (1973) A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
  • (1975) Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
  • (1976) Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
  • (1995) The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (alternative title The Collected Stories) -- complete collection of all short stories
  • (2005) Cloud, Castle, Lake

Drama

  • (1938) Izobretenie Val'sa (The Waltz Invention); English translation The Waltz Invention: A Play in Three Acts (1966)
  • (1974) (Despite the credits given in the earlier film version, this was not used.)
  • (1984) The Man from the USSR and Other Plays

Poetry

  • (1916) Stikhi ("Poems"). Sixty-eight poems in Russian.
  • (1918) Al'manakh: Dva Puti (An Almanac: Two Paths"). Twelve poems by Nabokov and eight by Andrei Balashov, in Russian.
  • (1922) Grozd ("The Cluster"). Thirty-six poems in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
  • (1923) Gornii Put' ("The Empyrean Path"). One hundred and twenty-eight poems in Russian, by "Vl. Sirin".
  • (1929) Vozvrashchenie Chorba ("The Return of Chorb"). Fifteen short stories and twenty-four poems, in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
  • (1952) Stikhotvoreniia 1929–1951 ("Poems 1929–1951") Fifteen poems in Russian.
  • (1959) Poems. The contents were later incorporated within Poems and Problems.
  • (1969) Poems and Problems (a collection of poetry and chess problems) ISBN 0-07-045724-7
  • (1979) Stikhi ("Poems"). Two hundred and twenty-two poems in Russian.

Translations

From French into Russian

From English into Russian

From Russian into English

Nonfiction

Criticism

  • (1944) Nikolai Gogol
  • (1963) Notes on Prosody (Later appeared within Eugene Onegin.)
  • (1980) Lectures on Literature
  • (1980) Lectures on Ulysses. Facsimiles of Nabokov's notes.
  • (1981) Lectures on Russian Literature
  • (1983) Lectures on Don Quixote

Autobiographical and other

  • (1951) Conclusive Evidence: A Memoir - first version of Nabokov's autobiography. (British edition titled Speak, Memory: A Memoir)
  • (1954) Drugie Berega (Другие берега, "Other Shores") - revised version of the autobiography
  • (1967) Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited - final revised and extended edition of Conclusive Evidence. It includes information on his work as a lepidopterist.
  • (1973) Strong Opinions. Interviews, reviews, letters to editors.
  • (1979) The Nabokov–Wilson Letters Letters between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson
  • (1984) Perepiska s Sestroi (Переписка с Сестрой (Correspondence with the Sister)) Correspondence between Nabokov and Helene Sikorski; also includes some letters to his brother Kirill
  • (1987) Carrousel. Three long-forgotten short texts that had recently been rediscovered.
  • (1989) Selected Letters
  • (2001) Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov–Wilson Letters, 1940–1971. A revised and augmented edition of The Nabokov–Wilson Letters.

Lepidoptery

  • (2000) Nabokov's Butterflies, collected works on butterflies. ISBN 0-8070-8540-5

Collected Works

  • Boyd, Brian, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Novels and Memoirs 1943-1951 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301118-5
  • Boyd, Brian, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Novels 1955-1962 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301119-2
  • Boyd, Brian, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Novels 1969-1974 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301120-8

Works about Nabokov

Biography

  • Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian years. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-691-06794-5 (hardback) 1997. ISBN 0-691-02470-7 (paperback). London: Chatto & Windus, 1990. ISBN 0-7011-3700-2 (hardback)
  • Boyd, Brian, Vladimir Nabokov: The American years. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-691-06797-X (hardback) 1993. 0-691-02471-5 (paperback). London: Chatto & Windus, 1992. ISBN 0-7011-3701-0 (hardback)
  • Field, Andrew. Nabokov, his life in part. New York: Viking. 1977. ISBN 0-1400-4784-0
  • Proffer, Elendea, ed. Vladimir Nabokov: A pictorial biography. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1991. ISBN 0-87501-078-4 (a collection of photographs)
  • Schiff, Stacy. Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). New York, NY.: Random House, 1999. ISBN 0-679-44790-3.

Bibliography

Michael Juliar, "Vladimir Nabokov: A Descriptive Bibliography," New York, Garland Pub., 1986. ISBN 0-8240-8590-6.

Fictional works

Peter Medak's short television film, Nabokov on Kafka, is a dramatization of Nabokov's lectures on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. The part of Nabokov is played by Christopher Plummer. Nabokov makes three cameo appearances, at widely scattered points in his life, in W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants.

Lepidoptery

  • Johnson, Kurt, and Steve Coates. Nabokov's blues: The scientific odyssey of a literary genius. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-137330-6 (very accessibly written)
  • Sartori, Michel, ed. Les Papillons de Nabokov. [The butterflies of Nabokov.] Lausanne: Musée cantonal de Zoologie, 1993. ISBN 2-9700051-0-7 (exhibition catalogue, primarily in English)
  • Zimmer, Dieter. A guide to Nabokov's butterflies and moths. Privately published, 2001. ISBN 3-00-007609-3 (web page)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Nabokov said, "I do not believe that any particular writer has had any definite influence on me." (Strong Opinions, p. 46.) The list given above includes writers who he admired (including Mayne Reid, whose work Nabokov admired as a child) and writers he alluded to in fiction (such as Poe). Such a list might be extended greatly.
  2. ^ Article, Medford Mail Tribune, Nov. 5, 2006, p. 2, "Snapshot: Nabokov's Retreat"
  3. ^ http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dzbutt6.htm

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Commons-logo.svg
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Works by Vladimir Nabokov
Novels:
Short stories:

"The Wood-Sprite" • "Russian Spoken Here" • "Sounds" • "Wingstroke" • "Gods" • "A Matter of Chance" • "The Seaport" • "Revenge" • "Beneficence" • "Details of a Sunset" • "The Thunderstorm" • "La Veneziana" • "Bachmann" • "The Dragon" • Christmas" • "A Letter That Never Reached Russia" • "The Fight" • "The Return of Chorb" • "A Guide to Berlin" • "A Nursery Tale" • "Terror" • "Razor" • "The Passenger • "The Doorbell" • "An Affair of Honor" • "The Christmas Story" • "The Potato Elf" • "The Aurelian" • "A Dashing Fellow" • "A Bad Day" • "The Visit to the Museum" • "A Busy Man" • "Terra Incognita" • "The Reunion" • "Lips to Lips" • "Orache" • "Music" • "Perfection" • "The Admiralty Spire" • "The Leonardo" • "In Memory of L. I. Shigaev" • "The Circle" • "A Russian Beauty" • Breaking the News" • "Torpid Smoke" • "Recruiting" • "A Slice of Life" • "Spring in Fialta" • "Cloud, Castle, Lake" • "Tyrants Destroyed" • "Lik" • "Vasiliy Shishkov" • "Ultima Thule" • "Solus Rex" • "Mademoiselle O" • "The Assistant Producer" • "That in Aleppo Once..." • "A Forgotten Poet" • "Time and Ebb" • "Conversation Piece, 1945" • "Signs and Symbols" • "First Love" • "Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster" • "The Vane Sisters" • "Lance" • "Easter Rain"
Plays:

Death • The Grandfather • The North Pole • The Tragedy of Mr. Morn • The Man from the USSR • The Event • The Waltz Invention
Non-fiction:

Speak, Memory • Strong Opinions • Nikolai Gogol • Lectures on Literature • Lectures on Russian Literature • Lectures on Don Quixote • The Nabokov-Wilson letters • Selected Letters, 1940-1977 • Notes on Prosody
Miscellaneous :

Poems and Problems • Lolita: A Screenplay • The Annotated Lolita • Carrousel



Persondata
NAME Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint Petersburg, Russia
DATE OF DEATH July 2, 1977
PLACE OF DEATH Montreux, Switzerland

be-x-old:Уладзімер Набокаў


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Vladimir Nabokov" at WikiAnswers.

 

Copyrights:

Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Vladimir Nabokov biography from Who2.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Quotes By