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This page is about the novelist. For his father, the politician, see Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov . Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ) (, Saint Petersburg – July 2 , 1977 , Montreux ) was a Russian - American Author . He wrote his first literary works in Russian , but rose to international prominence as a masterly prose stylist for the Novel s he composed in English . He is also noted for having made significant contributions to Lepidoptery and created a number of Chess Problem s. Nabokov's '' Lolita '' ( 1955 ) is frequently cited as one of the most important novels of the 20th Century . It is his best-known work in English, probably followed by the singularly structured '' Pale Fire '' ( 1962 ). Both of these works exhibit Nabokov's love of Wordplay and descriptive detail. BIOGRAPHY The eldest son of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife Elena, née Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, he was born to a prominent and aristocratic family in St. Petersburg , where he also spent his childhood and youth. The family spoke Russian, English and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. The Nabokov family left Russia in the wake of the 1917 February Revolution for a friend's estate in The Crimea , where they remained for 18 months. Following the defeat of the White Army in the Crimea, the Nabokovs left Russia for exile in western Europe. After emigrating from Russia in 1919 , the family settled briefly in England, where Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College , Cambridge and studied Slavic and Romance Languages . In 1923 , he graduated from Cambridge and relocated to Berlin , where he gained some reputation within the colony of Russian émigré s 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 . In 1922, Nabokov's father was assassinated in Berlin by Russian monarchists as he tried to shelter their real target, Pavel Milyukov , a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. This episode, of mistaken, violent death, would echo again and again in the author's fiction, where characters would meet their violent deaths under mistaken terms. In '' Pale Fire '', for example, John Shade is mistaken for the king of Zembla and is assassinated. Nabokov was a Synaesthete and described aspects of synaesthesia in several of his works. In his memoir ''Speak, Memory,'' he notes that his wife also exhibited synaesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colors with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colors he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents' hues—"which is as if Gene s 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 Wellesley . Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944-45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian Department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were 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 become chairman of Cornell 's comparative literature department. In 1945 , he became a Naturalized Citizen of the United States. 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 . However, this is irrelevant as Nabokov was born before then. In ''Speak, Memory'' Nabokov explains the cause of the error and confirms the correct date of 22 April . WORK '' 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 only composed 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 is noted for his complex plots, clever word play, and use of '' (1969). He devoted more time to the construction of this novel than any of his others. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by its linguistic playfulness. Nabokov's short story " The Vane Sisters " is famous in part for its Acrostical final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a ghostly 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 Russian soul epic '' 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 Iamb ic Tetrameter s 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 overattention 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." HEINZ VON ESCHWEGE'S "LOLITA" German academic Michael Marr's book ''The Two Lolitas'' (ISBN 1844670384) describes his recent discovery of a has always been a huge crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast...Nothing of what we admire in ''Lolita'' is already to be found in the tale; the former is in no way deducible from the latter." NABOKOV'S SYNAESTHESIA Vladimir Nabokov's case of Synaesthesia can be described in more detail than merely the association of colors with particular letters. For a synaesthete letters do not merely appear to be certain colors; they ''are'' colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. In '' Bend Sinister '' the main character Krug commented on his perception of the word "loyalty" as being like that of 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 his fabricated storyline by "starting with colors." Many other subtle references are made in Nabokov's writing that can be traced back to his synaesthesia. Many of his characters have a distinct "sensory appetite" distinctive among synaesthetes. Whether Nabokov intended his characters to be this way or he was merely writing what he knew is debatable. LEPIDOPTERY : 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 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 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 Chromosome s could be a valid way to distinguish species of insect. 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 = Novels and novellas written in Russian
= Novels written in English
Short story collections
Drama
Poetry
Translations = From French into Russian
= From English into Russian
= From Russian into English
Nonfiction Criticism
Autobiographical and other
Lepidoptery
WORKS ABOUT NABOKOV Biography By far the best biography is the large, two-volume work by Brian Boyd . A photograph collection complements this.
Bibliography 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 . Lepidoptery
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