Vladimir Nabokov

Vladímir Vladimirovich Nabókov (Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набóков in Russian; Saint Petersburg, Russia; April 22, 1899-Montreux, Switzerland; July 2, 1977), known as Vladímir Nabókov , was a Russian writer, translator, entomologist (lepidopterologist), and professor with American and Swiss nationals.

He wrote his first writings in Russian, but became internationally recognized as a master of the novel for his work written in English, especially his novel Lolita (1955), a portrait of American society through the metaphor of the trip, in whose plot a middle-aged man falls in love and maintains a relationship with a twelve-year-old girl. In addition to novels, he wrote short stories and poems and was known for his significant contributions to the study of lepidoptera and for his creation of chess problems.

Biography

Childhood

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He was the eldest of the children of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and Yelena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, a wealthy and aristocratic family from Saint Petersburg.The family spoke Russian, English and French, so Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. Even, due to the work of his teachers, he learned to read and write in English before he learned in Russian. In 1919 his family went into exile in Germany for fear of Bolshevism and Nabokov entered Cambridge University. In 1922 his father was assassinated by royalists Piotr Shabelsky-Bork and Sergey Taboritsky, while trying to protect Pavel Miliukov, leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party.

Career

As a writer

House of St. Petersburg (Russia) in which Nabókov was born and lived his first 18 years of life.

In 1940 he came to the United States from France (having already abandoned the Russian language for several years), fleeing World War II; His brother Sergei had died in a German concentration camp in 1945 due to being homosexual.

Nabokov's first writings were in Russian, but he achieved international recognition for his English-language texts. For this circumstance he was compared to Joseph Conrad, who was of Polish origin; However, there are those who see this comparison as debatable, since Conrad only composed in English, and never in his natural language, Polish (Nabokov himself rejected such a comparison for aesthetic reasons). He was a fan of self-translation; he translated many of his early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son Dmitri's. His trilingual training had a profound influence on his art. He himself metaphorically described the transition from one language to another as the slow night journey from one town to another with only a candle to light it. Nabokov was famous for his complex arguments, his clever puns, and his use of alliteration. He gained fame and notoriety with his novel Lolita (1955), which deals with the consummate passion of a grown man for a twelve-year-old girl. This and his other novels, especially Pale Fire (1962) and, above all, Ada or the Burning (1969), gave him a place among the great novelists of the century XX.

Monument to Nabokov in Montreux, Switzerland.

Nabokov's stature as a literary critic rests primarily on his four-volume English translation and commentary of Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. The commentary ends with an appendix titled Notes on Prosody, which is highly valued.

Nabokov's translation was the subject of a bitter controversy with Edmund Wilson and other critics, for having translated what was a novel in verse into unrhymed prose.

Nabokov's lectures on literature also reveal his controversial ideas about art. He firmly believed that novels should not seek the didactic, and that readers should seek not just empathy with the characters but an aesthetic appreciation through attention to details of style and structure. He hated the usual ideas about the novel; When talking about James Joyce's Ulysses, for example, he insisted that his students keep a map of Dublin handy to follow the adventures of the characters, rather than talk about the complex Irish history that many Critics believe they see it as essential to understanding the novel.

His detractors accuse him of being an esthete and his excessive attention to language and detail rather than character development.

Unpublished work

In April 2008, Dmitri Nabokov, the writer's son and literary executor, told the press of his decision to publish an unfinished novel by his father. The manuscript, titled The Original of Laura, it consists of 138 index cards, the equivalent of about 30 manuscript pages. Upon his death, Nabokov had left instructions for the manuscript to be destroyed; his widow Vera Nabókova, however, chose to keep it.

As an entomologist

His career as an entomologist was also very prominent; he amassed a large collection of insects throughout his life. In the 1940s he was in charge of the butterfly collection at Harvard University. The genus Nabokovia was named in his honour, thus like that of other butterflies, especially those of the genera Madeleinea and Pseudolucia .

Works

Novels

• Morehenka, 1926 (Mâшенька), novel
• King, lady, valet1927-1928 (Король, дама, валет), novel
• The defense of Luzhin1929-1930, novel
• The eye, 1930 (Соглядатай), short novel
• The feat, 1932 (Подвиг), short novel
• Dark camera1932 (Камера обскура), novel
• Desperation, 1936 (Отчаяние), short novel
• The gift1937-1938, novel
• Invitation to implementation1938 (Приглашение на казнь), novel
• Rise in the dark, 1938 (Laughter in the Dark)
• The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, 1941 (The Real Life of Sebastian Knight), novel
• Sinister bar, 1947, (Bend Sinister1947, novel
• Lolita1955, novel
• Pnin1957, novel
• Pale fire1962 (Pale fire), novel
• Ada or the burning, 1969 (Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle), novel
• Transparent things (Transparent Things), 1972, novel
• Look at the corners! (Look at the Harlequins!1974, novel
• The Original of Laura (The original of Laura1975-1977 (published in November 2009), novel
• The original of Laura (postum and unfinished), 1977

Stories

• Return of Chorb, 1930 (Возвращение Корба), collection of stories
• The sorcerer1939 (Волшебник), tale
• Spring in Fialta1956 collection of stories (Весна в Фиальте)
• A Russian beauty1973 collection of stories

Theater

• Valts invention1938, drama

Autobiography

• The other shores, 1954 (DIругие берега), autobiography
• Speak, memory, 1967 (Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited) autobiography

Literary criticism

• European Literature Course (literary criticism)
• Russian literature course (literary criticism)
• Course on El Quixote (literary criticism)

Miscellaneous

• Strong opinions (interviews)1973
• Dreams of an insomne. 2019. ISBN 978-84-949725-4-6.