Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov, who presented the world with many surprising in depth works, lived a very interesting life. Having managed to live in different countries, from a young age he was inspired by literature, which was later reflected in his work. Biography Nabokov replete with amazing events, and reading it, you know where he got his inspiration for his books.
By origin Vladimir Nabokov is a Russian nobleman. He was born in the Russian Empire, in St. Petersburg, where he passed the first part of his life. Nabokov studied at the same university where the poet Osip Mandelstam, who was later repressed by the Soviet authorities, studied shortly before him. For most of his life, Nabokov was a passionate entomologist. He perfectly versed in insects and adored them on a par with books. The writer had two brothers and two sisters. A year before the revolution, the young Vladimir Nabokov received an inheritance of a million rubles – an incredibly huge sum for those times. While still a student at the school, Nabokov, with his own money, published the first collection of his works, which he simply called Poems. It included 68 poems. Later, the collection by the writer himself was not reprinted.
Vladimir Nabokov in his whole life has published in co-authorship only one work – the anthology “Two Ways”. Co-author was the poet Andrei Balashov. The grandfather of the writer was the Minister of Justice during the reign of two Russian emperors. After the revolution, the Nabokov family moved to the Crimea, away from the Bolsheviks, and a year later left Russia forever. After emigrating, young Nabokov settled in Germany, in Berlin, where he earned his living by private English lessons, which he had mastered perfectly (see interesting facts about languages). When he was 23 years old, he was going to marry, but a year later, the bride’s family terminated the engagement because of the time that Vladimir Nabokov had failed to find a permanent job. The writer’s father was killed in Berlin when he tried to prevent the attempt on the lecturer during a speech.
In the end, Vladimir Nabokov, who had been married by that time, had to leave Germany because of the growing anti-Semitic sentiments in her, as his wife was Jewish. As a result, the family moved to the United States. In the US, the writer of the first 18 years of his life there earned mainly by conducting lectures on Russian and world literature.
The main work of Nabokov was created by him after moving to the United States, and he wrote his novels not in Russian, but in English. It was in English that the famous “Lolita” was written. It was he who translated the famous “Alice in Wonderland” into Russian. He did this in his youth, when he studied in the UK. In his entire life, Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Russian only an early collection of poems, mentioned above, and his autobiography. The novel “Lolita” in different years was banned in Argentina, France, South Africa, Great Britain and New Zealand, and in the USA one large publishing house refused to publish it. Nabokov himself recalled that he was trying to burn the manuscript with the novel twice, but he did not dare. In the USSR, the book was published only in 1989. The first edition of “Lolita” was published in France, in a publishing house specializing in low-grade erotic novels. The writer himself learned about this specificity only after the release of the first edition.
Nabokov’s only child, Dmitry, devoted a fair amount of life to translations, publishing and popularizing his father’s works. The publication of “Lolita” made Vladimir Nabokov rich and famous. He was able to leave lectures and teaching, later moving from the United States to Switzerland (see interesting facts about Switzerland). There he lived until the end of life. Nabokov was a great chess player and the author of a number of difficult chess problems. Nabokov himself said about himself and his intricate biography, that his head spoke English, his heart spoke Russian, and his ears spoke French. The novels and plays of the writer were screened 10 times in different countries. About the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov shot 6 biographical and documentary films.
