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اعظم 100 كتاب في التاريخ: ما سر هذه العظمة؟- دراسة بحثية
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (
Russian
:
Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced
[vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf]
(
listen
)
; 22 April [
O.S.
10 April] 1899
c
– 2 July 1977) was a
Russian American
novelist.
[1]
Nabokov's first nine novels were in Russian. He then rose to international prominence as a writer of English prose. He also made serious contributions as a
lepidopterist
and
chess composer
.
Nabokov's
Lolita
(1955) is his most famous novel, and often considered his finest work in English. It exhibits the love of intricate word play and
synesthetic
detail that characterised all his works. The novel was ranked at No. 4 in the list of the
Modern Library 100 Best Novels
.
[2]
Pale Fire
(1962) was ranked at No. 53 on the same list. His memoir,
Speak, Memory
, was listed No. 8 on the Modern Library nonfiction list.
[3]
He was a finalist for the
National Book Award for Fiction
seven times, but never won it.
Life and career
Russia
Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899
Old-Style
), in
Saint Petersburg
,
b
to a wealthy and prominent
Saint Petersburg
family of the minor nobility. He was the eldest of five children of liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist
Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov
and his wife, Elena Ivanovna née Rukavishnikova. His cousins included the composer
Nicolas Nabokov
. He spent his childhood and youth in St. Petersburg and at the country estate
Vyra
near
Siverskaya
, south of the city.
Nabokov's childhood, which he called "perfect", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. In fact, much to his patriotic father's chagrin, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In
Speak, Memory
Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood, and his ability to recall in vivid detail memories of his past was a boon to him during his permanent exile, as well as providing a theme that echoes from his first book,
Mary
, all the way to later works such as
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
. While the family was nominally
Orthodox
, they felt no religious fervor, and Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest. In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate Rozhdestveno, next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasiliy Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in
Speak, Memory
), but lost it in the revolution one year later; this was the only house he ever owned.[
The
Rozhdestveno mansion
, inherited from his uncle in 1916: Nabokov possessed it for less than a year before the revolution
Emigration
After the 1917
February Revolution
,
Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov
became a secretary of the
Russian Provisional Government
, and the family was forced to flee the city after the
Bolshevik Revolution
for
Crimea
, not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to
Livadiya
; Nabokov's father was a minister of justice of the Crimean provisional government. After the withdrawal of the German Army (November 1918) and the defeat of the
White Army
in early 1919, the Nabokovs left for exile in western Europe. On 2 April 1919, the family left
Sevastopol
on the last ship. They settled briefly in England, where Vladimir enrolled in
Trinity College, Cambridge
, where he majored in zoology at first, and then
Slavic
and
Romance languages
. He later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write the novel
Glory
. In 1920, his family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaper
Rul'
(Rudder). Nabokov would follow to Berlin after his studies at Cambridge two years later.
Berlin years (1922–37)
In March 1922, Nabokov's father was assassinated in Berlin by Russian monarchist
Piotr Shabelsky-Bork
as he was trying to shield the real target,
Pavel Milyukov
, a leader of the
Constitutional Democratic Party
-in-exile. This mistaken, violent death would echo again and again in Nabokov's fiction, where characters would meet their deaths under mistaken terms. (In
Pale Fire
, for example, one interpretation of the novel has an assassin mistakenly kill the poet John Shade, when his actual target is a fugitive European monarch.) Shortly after his father's death, Nabokov's mother and sister moved to
Prague
.
Nabokov stayed in Berlin, where he had become a recognised poet and writer within the émigré community and published under the nom de plume
V. Sirin
. To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons.
[4]
Of his fifteen Berlin years,
Dieter E. Zimmer
wrote: "He never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within the lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, the petty immigration officials at the police headquarters."
[5]
In 1922 Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert; she broke off the engagement in early 1923, with her parents worrying that he could not provide for her.
[6]
In May 1923 he met a Jewish-Russian woman,
Véra Evseyevna Slonim
, at a charity ball in Berlin
[4]
and married her in April 1925.
[4]
Their only child,
Dmitri
, was born in 1934.
In 1936, Véra lost her job because of the increasingly anti-Semitic environment; also in that year the assassin of Nabokov's father was appointed second-in-command of the Russian émigré group. In the same year Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world. In 1937 he left Germany for France, where he had a short affair with Russian émigrée Irina Guadanini; his family followed, making their last visit to Prague en route. They settled in Paris, but also spent time in
Cannes
,
Menton
,
Cap d'Antibes
, and
Frejus
. In May 1940 the Nabokov family fled from the advancing German troops to the United States on board the
SS Champlain
.
[
America
The Nabokovs settled in Manhattan and Vladimir started a job at the
American Museum of Natural History
. In October he met
Edmund Wilson
, who became his close friend (until their falling out two decades later) and introduced Nabokov's work to American editors.[
citation needed
]
Nabokov went 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. The Nabokovs resided in
Wellesley, Massachusetts
during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942 they moved to
Cambridge
where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became a
naturalised citizen
of the United States. 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 the
de facto
curator of lepidoptery at
Harvard University
's
Museum of Comparative Zoology
.
[7]
After being encouraged by
Morris Bishop
, Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at
Cornell University
. Among his students at Cornell was future
U.S. Supreme Court
Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
, who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.
[8]
Nabokov wrote
Lolita
while travelling on butterfly-collection trips in the western United States that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as "secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy"; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of
Lolita
, it was Véra who stopped him. He called her the best-humoured woman he had ever known.
[4]
[9]
In June 1953 Nabokov and his family went to
Ashland, Oregon
, renting a house on Meade Street from Professor Taylor, head of the
Southern Oregon College
Department of Social Science.[
citation needed
] There he finished
Lolita
and began writing the novel
Pnin
. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem called
Lines Written in Oregon
. On 1 October 1953, he and his family returned to
Ithaca, New York
, where he would later teach the young writer
Thomas Pynchon
==
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