Vladimir Nabokov: quotes and biography

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov is a Russian writer, poet, translator and entomologist. He spent most of his life in exile, many works were written in foreign languages and translated into Russian by the author himself. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Biography

Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in St. Petersburg. Father - a famous lawyer and politician Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov. Since childhood, the future writer was fluent in three languages, in addition to Russian, French and English were actively used in the family.

While studying at the famous Tenishevsky School, he became interested in entomology. In 1916, he received a huge inheritance from his maternal uncle and published the first collection of poems with his own money. After the revolution, he moved to the Crimea, where he continued to publish his works and write plays for the local theater.

After the capture of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks, the family moved to Berlin, and Nabokov went to study at Cambridge University. continuedwrite and began to translate foreign works into Russian.

After the murder of his father in 1922, he moved to Berlin, where, under the pseudonym Sirin, he published several collections of poems and nine novels in Russian. In 1936, due to the political situation, Nabokov moved to Paris, and from there in 1940 he moved to the United States.

For the next twenty years he lectured on Russian literature at US universities. Starting from 1938, he wrote prose in English, however, for a long time, the writer's novels were not successful. Everything changed after the publication of the novel "Lolita", which instantly caused a wave of discussion around the world and brought Nabokov an impressive fortune.

In 1960 he moved to Switzerland, where he continued to write until his death in 1977.

Prose quotes

Vladimir Nabokov is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His novels "Lolita", "Luzhin's Defense", "Chamber Obscura" and "Invitation to Execution" are still studied at universities and read with pleasure. Many of Nabokov's quotes are known even to people who are not familiar with the works of the author:

I am an American writer, born in Russia, educated in England, where I studied French literature before moving to Germany for fifteen years. …My head speaks English, my heart speaks Russian and my ear speaks French…

My desires are very modest. Portraits of the head of state must not exceed the size of a postage stamp.

True -one of the few Russian words that doesn't rhyme with anything.

It is not guided tours that come to God, but single travelers.

These are all quotes from one small preface to the anniversary edition of the novel "Lolita".

Here are some quotes from Vladimir Nabokov from his early work "The Potato Elf".

We should distinguish between sentimentality and sensitivity. A sentimental person can be extremely cruel in private. A sensitive person is never cruel.

My personal tragedy, which cannot, which should not be anyone else's concern, is that I had to leave my native language, my native dialect, my rich, infinitely rich and obedient Russian language, for the sake of a second-rate English.

The novel "Lolita" can be literally pulled apart into quotes if desired, however, you can try to give at least a few of the most witty and beautifully worded passages.

I was crying again, drunk on the impossible past.

A change of scenery, the traditional delusion that doomed love and incurable consumption pin their hopes on?

Kill her, as some expected, I certainly could not. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, last sight, eternal sight.

I knew I fell in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew that she would not remain Lolita forever.

A fog of tenderness enveloped mountains of melancholy.

Another well-known novel by Vladimir Nabokov -"Protection of Luzhin". Here are some highlights from there:

Free-willed mercury fell lower and lower under the influence of the environment. And even the polar bears at the Zoological Gardens cringed, finding that the management had overdone it.

The future vaguely seemed to him like a silent embrace, lasting without end, in a happy semi-darkness, where the various toys of this world pass, fall into the beam and hide again, laughing and swaying.

Next, a few quotes from Nabokov from another famous novel - Camera Obscura.

He had a colorful education, his mind was grasping and perceptive, the craving for playing others was irresistible.

Magda had exactly the same charming sketch he had dreamed of, the cheeky naturalness of nudity, as if she had long been accustomed to running naked along the seaside of his dreams.

Death, he said, seems to me just a bad habit that nature can no longer eradicate in itself.

Very often Nabokov, a professional entomologist, introduced the image of a butterfly into his works, which served as a way of life, the opposite of death in the writer's artistic world. Here is a quote from Nabokov's story "Christmas":

Sleptsov closed his eyes, and for a moment it seemed to him that earthly life was completely understood, completely naked - sad to the point of horror, humiliatingly aimless, fruitless, devoid of miracles … And at the same moment something clicked - a thin sound - as if a stretched rubber had burst. Sleptsov opened his eyes and saw: in the biscuita torn cocoon sticks out of the box, and along the wall, above the table, a black, shriveled creature the size of a mouse is quickly crawling up. It stopped, clutching the wall with its six black furry legs, and began to tremble strangely. It hatched because a grief-stricken man carried the tin box to his warm room; it broke out because heat penetrated through the tight silk of the cocoon; grew. Crumpled shreds, velvet fringes slowly unfolded, fan veins grew stronger, filled with air. It became winged imperceptibly, as imperceptibly a manly face becomes beautiful. And the wings - still weak, still wet - all continued to grow, straighten out, now they turned to the limit set for them by God, - and on the wall there was already - instead of a lump, instead of a black mouse, - a huge night butterfly, an Indian silkworm that flies like a bird, at dusk, around the lanterns of Bombay. And then the outstretched wings, bent at the ends, dark velvet, with four mica windows, sighed in a burst of tender, delightful, almost human happiness.

Poetry quotes

Vladimir Nabokov began his career in literature precisely as a poet, however, the success of his prose works overshadowed his poetry collections, and now many people who are superficially familiar with his work may not even know that Nabokov, in addition to prose, wrote poetry. However, many of his works turned out to be quite popular and can be found on social networks even without mentioning the name of the author. For example, this poem:

Live. Don't complain, don't number

no past years, no planets, and slender thoughts merge

the answer is one: there is no death.

Be merciful. Do not demand kingdoms, cherish everyone gratefully.

Pray for a cloudless sky

and cornflowers in wavy rye.

Not despising the dreams of experienced, try to create the best.

Birds, quivering and small, learn, learn to bless!

Here are a few other, less well-known, but no less beautiful, poetic quotes from Nabokov:

We were enclosed in a crystal ball, and you and I flew past the stars, quickly, silently we glided

from glitter to glitter blissful blue.

And there was no past, no goal;

delight united us for eternity;

in the sky, embracing, we flew, dazzled by the smiles of the luminaries.

But someone's breath broke our crystal ball, stopped our fire rush, and the kiss interrupted our beginningless, and threw us into the captive world, separating us.

And on earth we have forgotten a lot:

only occasionally remembered in a dream

and our trembling, and the trembling of stardust, and a wonderful rumble that trembled in the air.

Although we are sad and rejoice differently, your face, among all the beautiful faces, I can recognize by this star dust, remaining at the tips of the eyelashes.

Another poem:

From a look, a babble, a smile

in the deep soul sometimes

light lights up unshakable, a big star is rising.

And life is not ashamed and does not hurt;

you learn to appreciate the moment, and the words of one are enough, to explain everything earthly.

And one more poetic excerpt from the work of Vladimir Nabokov:

Let me dream… You are the first suffering

and my last happiness, I feel moving and breathing

your soul… I can feel it

like a distant and reverent singing…

Let me dream, oh pure string

let me cry and believe in rapture, that life is like you, only full of music.

In general, Nabokov's poetic heritage is huge, on the basis of these quotes one can only get a rough idea of his style, range of topics and direction in poetry. For a more detailed acquaintance, it is worth reading at least a couple of poetry collections by Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Interview quotes

In addition to quotes from Nabokov's books and poetry collections, you can also find a lot of interesting things in his interviews for various publications. Here is what the writer said about the difficult situation with his linguistic identity:

I don't think in any language. I think in images. I don't believe that people think in tongues. Thinking, they don't move their lips. Only an illiterate person of a certain type moves his lips while reading or thinking. No, I think in images, and only sometimes a Russian or English phrase will foam up in a brain wave, but that's probably all.

Here are some quotes from Nabokov about creativity:

Only ambitious nonentities and beautiful souls of mediocrity put their drafts on display.

I think that even now some people write well in Russian. For example, Mandelstam, who died in a concentration camp, was a wonderful poet, but literature cannot flourish when the human imagination is limited.

All writers worth something are comedians. I am not P. G. Wodehouse. I'm not a clown, but show me a great writer without a sense of humor.

This is how Nabokov spoke about his Motherland:

I will never return, for the simple reason that all the Russia I need is always with me: literature, language and my own Russian childhood. I will never return. I will never give up. And in any case, the grotesque shadow of the police state will not be dispelled in my lifetime.

And this quote allows you to learn more about the great writer from a human point of view:

Things that disgust me are easy to list: stupidity, tyranny, crime, cruelty, popular music. My passions are the strongest known to man: writing and catching butterflies.

Vladimir Nabokov's creative heritage is huge, besides, anyone interested in literature should read the famous "Lectures on Russian Literature", which the writer gave for many years at US universities.