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Member Number: 11374
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).
AccomplishmentsWorks by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
| 1947 | Bend 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. |
| 1951 | Conclusive 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. |
| 1955 | Lolita. 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. |
| 1957 | Pnin. 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. |
| 1958 | Lolita. 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". |
| 1962 | Pale 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. |
| 1966 | Speak, 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. |
| 1969 | Ada 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. |
| 1972 | Transparent 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. |
| 1973 | Strong Opinions. Nabokov addresses journalists' questions about his life, his works, and his views on various topics. |
| 1974 | Look 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. |
| 1980 | Lectures 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. |
| 1981 | Lectures 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." |
- Biography
- Nabokov Library
- "Based on a truth Story", drama inspired by work of V.N.
- Nabokov Museum Saint Petersburg Nabokov Museum: Bolshaya Morskaya, 47.
- Nabokov's interview in The Paris Review
- Zembla - A comprehensive Nabokov website that includes a concise biography.
- Waxwing - A good Nabokov resource.
- Nabokov under Glass - A website of the New York Public Library exhibit.
- Review of Nabokov's Butterflies - In The Atlantic Monthly.
- Nabokov on Moshkow's site - Nabokov's fiction, translations, criticism, scientific papers, and interviews (mostly in Russian).
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lepidopterist - Short essay by S. Abbas Raza of 3 Quarks Daily
- The Life and Works of Vladimir Nabokov - a seminar by Rodney Phillips and Sarah Funke from the New York Public Library
- 1986 audio interview with Dimitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir Nabokov, by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
- 1991 audio interview with Brian Boyd, author of the biography Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
- 50 Years Later, Lolita Still Seduces Readers - from NPR
- "The Lolita Question" (Stanford Magazine)
- Info about the Nabokov Museum in St. Petersburg
- The Gay Nabokov Essay about VN's brother Sergei Nabokov by Lev Grossman
- Nabokov 'Bookweb' on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.
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."
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Dmitri Nabokov decides: publish, and be damn sure of making money Times Online, UK - Before he died in 1977 Vladimir Nabokov left instructions that the novel, The Original of Laura, be torched, but Dmitri demurred, then vacillated. ... |
Nabokov Novel Preserved, Against His Dying Wish NPR - Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (right) pictured with his son Dmitri in May 1961. Dimitri, now 73, has decided — against Nabokov's wishes — to save his ... |
Nabokov's Attempted Murder Rake, MN - Vladimir Nabokov compares a first draft to a loogey you've coughed into a tissue - it's this ugly thing that you don't want to show anyone, but also it came ... |
Arts, Briefly Son Plans to Publish Nabokov’s Last Novel New York Times, United States - Dmitri Nabokov plans to defy the wishes of his father, Vladimir Nabokov, by publishing his father’s final, incomplete novel rather than destroying the ... |
A Slate critic helps save Nabokov's last novel from destruction. Slate - The latest chapter in the intrigue surrounding The Original of Laura, the elusive, unfinished, unpublished final work of Vladimir Nabokov—a chapter that has ... Posthumous Publishing, Ctd |
Hannah Montana Latest Example of “The Lolita Effect”? Newswise (press release) - The author of Train Station – Garage – Hangar: Vladimir Nabokov and Poetics of Russian Urbanism, Dr. Levin is now working on two more books, ... |
 BBC News | Nabokov work to be published BBC News, UK - The son of late Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov has defended the decision to publish the novelist's final work - against his father's last wishes. ... |
 Guardian | Nabokov's last work will not be burned Guardian, UK - Vladimir Nabokov and wife Vera in 1965. Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Having kept the literary world in a state of suspense for years over ... |
His Father’s Siren, Still Singing New York Times, United States - Then, in words parroted by the editor, Nabokov would “deal himself a novel.” CARD TRICK Vladimir Nabokov liked to write in his car, using index cards. ... |
 Russia-InfoCenter | Nabokov's final unfinished novel to see light of day RIA Novosti, Russia - MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - The son of Vladimir Nabokov has announced that he will publish his father's final unfinished novel - a work which the ... Last Work by Nabokov Will Be Published |
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