Archives for People - Page 2
Lectures on Russian Literature
Nabokov had secured his May 1940 exit from Paris with the promise of a summer stint teaching creative writing - primarily drama - and Russian literature the following year at…
Vladimir Nabokov by Wilma Slaight
Nabokov was born in April 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. His parents were wealthy and had a commitment to public service. Nabokov, who categorized himself as "a perfectly normal trilingual…
Mashen
Shortly after his marriage to Véra, Nabokov began Mashen'ka , derived from an earlier, abandoned novel entitled "Happiness" - a title he retained almost until publication. On February 15, 1926,…
Lectures on Literature
Stories of Nabokov's presence on campus and his lecture style have grown beyond local legend. Cornell alumni recall Véra as a near appendage to the professor - she passed out…
Korol, dama, valet. Berlin, 1928 (King, Queen, Knave, 1968)
Korol', dama, valet was, like Mashen'ka, conceived, executed, and published in just over a year, with one excerpt appearing in Rul'. It focuses on the lives of three Germans: Franz;…
Pnin. Garden City, New York, 1957
Knowing from the start that he might never find a publisher for Lolita - and that if he did, he might have to resign his Cornell position - Nabokov began…
Zashchita Luzhina. Berlin, 1930 (The Defense, 1964)
Sogliadatai. Paris, 1930 (The Eye, 1965) Zashchita Luzhina , the novel Nabokov later described as the "story of a chess player who was crushed by his genius," was his first…
Pale Fire. New York, 1962
Nabokov called Pale Fire's form "specifically, if not generically, new." "Generically," perhaps, it is his answer to the verse novel exemplified by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Specifically, it is centered on…
Podvig. Paris, 1932 (Glory, 1971)
The serialization of Podvig began in Sovremennye zapiski in February 1931, and parts of it appeared in two other Parisian reviews, Poslednie novosti and Rossiia I Slavianstvo, as well as…
Eugene Onegin. New York, 1964
In a 1937 lecture delivered in Paris on the centennial of Pushkin's death, Nabokov claimed that reading Pushkin was "without a single exception . . . one of the glories…
Kamera obskura. Berlin, 1933 (Laughter in the Dark, 1938)
Nabokov developed Kamera obskura from the sketch of his earlier, unpublished story Bird of Paradise. It was serialized in Sovremennye zapiski from May 1932 to May 1933, and was excerpted…
The Nabokov-Wilson Correspondence
Nabokov's relationship with Edmund Wilson was the most public of the close friendships of his American career. In the introduction to his edition of 264 letters exchanged by the pair…
Otchaianie. Berlin, 1936 (Despair, 1966)
Nabokov visited Paris in October 1936 for his first reading there, and to assess the feasibility of moving from Berlin. A public triumph, the reading included the first two chapters…
Ada, or Ardor. New York, 1969
Nabokov once referred to Ada as his "most cosmopolitan and poetic novel." Simultaneously a family epic of the Russian aristocracy, a literary history of Russia, and a meditation on the…
The Second Time Through
This is my suggestion about reading Lolita - the first time, delve into it without the benefit of annotations. Read an edition other than Appels, or - if youre a…
Priglashenie na kazn. Paris, 1938 (Invitation to a Beheading, 1959)
Nabokov wrote this anti-totalitarian novel in "a burst of spontaneous generation," composing the first draft in Berlin during a short hiatus from his major Russian novel, Dar , during the…
Poems and Problems. New York, 1970
Poems and Problems includes thirty-nine of Nabokov's Russian poems with English translations printed on facing pages at his insistence; fourteen English poems, all of which had appeared in Doubleday's 1959…
Annotated version helps a lot
It is actually possible to read the story and make sense out of it without reference to any of the annotations, but almost any reader will be keenly aware of…
Dar. New York, 1952 (The Gift, 1963)
Nabokov's Russian masterwork tells the story of "a great writer in the making." It contains a good deal of autobiographical material, including the seemingly preordained courtship and marriage of the…
Strong Opinions. New York, 1973
This assortment of twenty-two "interviews," eleven letters, nine articles, and five lepidopteral papers covers Nabokov's views on every facet of his multiple careers. As a result of his stringent rules…